Marin Alsop's masterclass: female conductors

7 September 2015, 15:52 | Updated: 22 August 2017, 12:45

Marin Alsop is one of the greatest conductors in the world – and she happens to be a woman. What difference, if any, does that make to the way she conducts?

Women and gesture

Marin has always led the way for women in the world of classical music – she was the first woman to be named music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, in 2005 she became the first ever conductor to be named a MacArthur Fellow and she now runs a fellowship (called Taki Concordia) to help female conductors in the early stages of their career.

Catch up on the rest of Marin Alsop's exclusive set of video masterclasses

In the final video in our exclusive series of masterclasses she grapples with the tricky question of whether female conductors need to act differently on the podium and have a different store of gestures from their male colleagues.

"Society interprets gesture differently for women than for men," begins Marin: