Alan Smale's role as leader of the NSO has always been to get the best from conductor and players. Now, though, he has the chance to indulge himself in taking his favourite composer, Frederick Delius, on tour

'Lots of people can't say who their favourite composer is," says the leader of the National Symphony Orchestra, "but Delius is definitely mine." Alan Smale smiles slightly. He's not joking, though. On the contrary, he's very serious about the music of Frederick Delius, whose violin concerto he will play in four cities when the orchestra goes on tour across Ireland this week.

Written in the middle of the first World War, the piece is described on a publicity flyer as "a rhapsodic, broodingly ecstatic meditation on what might have been or what never has been, with its stream of limpid melody soaring aloft ..." Smale grins, delighted. "Nice description, isn't it? His music has to appeal to you at a very basic, instinctive, emotional level. It's not an acquired taste. But once you love it, you're bitten forever."

Often thought of as a quintessential Briton along the lines of, say, Elgar, Frederick Delius was actually born to German parents, emigrated to Florida in his 20s, studied in Germany and finally settled in France.

"Of course there's a very English strain in his music," says Smale, "but although people associate his nature poems, like On Hearing The First Cuckoo in Spring and Summer Night On The River, with the English countryside, in fact it's the French countryside they refer to. And other pieces, like Song of the High Hills, were inspired by the landscapes of Norway." "

As part of his preparation for the concerto performances Smale spent 10 days up close and personal with the concerto in the depths of rural Somerset, at the home of his sister and brother-in-law.

"Not exactly Delius country, but a very peaceful and inspiring place to work," he says. "I got up late every day and practised from the late morning until about six in the evening."

In a strange kind of way, this marked a return to his musical roots. Born in Devon, Smale spent the first 16 years of his life in and around Torquay. "It wasn't the happiest household," he says frankly. "My parents split up when I was nine or 10. I had already started violin lessons, but I became very intense, very serious about music around that time - I think probably as a release from some of the pressures that were on me at home."

His violin teacher was Harold Petts, a pupil of the great English violinist Albert Sammons - to whom Delius dedicated the violin concerto. "Sammons would have taught Harold from wartime until about the early 1920s, and this always fascinated me; I've always felt, rightly or wrongly, that it gives me a connection to that whole area of composition. The Elgar concerto, Arnold Bax, Hamilton Harty. The first concerto I performed publicly in Ireland was the Elgar."

That was way back in 1978, shortly after Smale, newly graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in London, arrived in Dublin as co-leader of what was then the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. A quarter of a century ago. Is that a scary thought? "Very," he admits. "But there has been so much variety that the time has flown. I was a member of the contemporary music group Concorde for 20 of those years. And I was leader of the Concert Orchestra from 1980 to 1993 - the pioneering days when the orchestra first got out of the studio. We did everything from pure chamber concerts - Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky - to Eurovision."

Then, in his late 30s, he found himself leading the symphony orchestra, a job with both musical and social responsibilities. "I'm definitely a member of the orchestra, not a management figure or an authority figure. But if things aren't going smoothly I have to bring the orchestra into line. My role is to make sure that the conductor gets a fair deal from the players, and vice versa."

One big change over that quarter-century is that the days of the megalomaniac conductor are, he says, long gone. "I've hardly met anybody who comes into that category in the last five or six years."

Hardly? There were a few, then? "A few," he admits, with another of those fleeting smiles. "But they tend not to get asked back." Twenty-five years in Ireland have clearly not unravelled Smale's very English talent for wry understatement. Nor have they turned him into a begrudger; Dublin, he insists, is a very good place to work as a musician. No complaints, then? "It's not a bed of roses. There are problems here, the same as anywhere else."

There could, for example, be more foreign touring, the "lifeblood" of an international orchestra. "An opera season would be nice, but they don't seem to be on the agenda any more." There also needs to be more educational outreach work. "We had a marvellous time last year working with children in Dingle. It was a lovely thing to do and a very good substitute for the Wexford Festival, which we're extremely sorry to have lost."

By Smale's standards, this is a rant. As for highlights, he cites his recordings of contemporary concertos by Raymond Deane and James Wilson, and two concerto performances under the baton of the late Bryden Thomson; the Lennox Berkeley concerto for the composer's 80th birthday celebrations in 1983, and the Walton concerto in 1997. "And also the friendships I've made through music. People like Colman Pearce and James Wilson have made the transition from being friends in music to close personal friends - it's not always the same thing."

Smale insists that even after a decade as leader of the NSO, every programme excites him. What - even Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto? He laughs.

"I love Tchaikovsky One. I'm not mad about the modern Viennese school, to be honest; Schoenberg, Berg and Webern. And I wouldn't be a big Mahler fan. I find him a little bit self-indulgent and over the top. Bruckner, who's often lumped with Mahler, has far more integrity and emotional honesty. But then lots of people will tell you Bruckner is a long-winded bore, so there you are."

As he approaches his 50th birthday, Smale is as enthusiastic about music as ever. This year, for instance, he's taking an MA in music performance at the Cork School of Music "just to prove that I can". But change, he feels, is on the way. "Since I got the symphony orchestra job I've given it absolutely 100 per cent; but, while I love the job and the orchestra very much, I realise that it's not a job for lifeand it's not going to be there for ever. So I have to make preparations for when I decide to move on - or RTÉ decide they've had enough of me."

These include more solo work, teaching, coaching young ensembles - and putting on a mammoth 50th birthday concert of vocal and instrumental music. "Because if I don't celebrate my 50th birthday, nobody else will." No prizes for guessing who the musical guest of honour will be . . .

Alan Smale will be the soloist in the Delius violin concerto when the NSO, conducted by Gerhard Markson, tours to Leisureland Galway (tonight), University Concert Hall, Limerick (tomorrow), City Hall Cork (Thursday) and Waterford Institute of Technology (Friday). The programme also includes Bruckner's "Romantic" symphony and Varèse's Octandre.