Speaker

David Robertson

David Robertson

American orchestral conductor (born 1958, Santa Monica, California), long a leading interpreter of Pierre Boulez and contemporary music, and Director of Conducting Studies at the Juilliard School.

Robertson trained at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he first encountered Boulez conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. From 1992 to 2000 he was music director of the Paris-based Ensemble Intercontemporain — the new-music ensemble Boulez founded — the first American to hold the post, and it was there, working with 31 soloists, that he says he learned each instrument from the inside. He went on to lead the Orchestre National de Lyon, serve as principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and hold two major music directorships: the St Louis Symphony Orchestra (2005–2018), which he is widely credited with revitalising, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (chief conductor, concluding 2019). He conducts regularly at the Metropolitan Opera, records widely (John Adams, Boulez, Gershwin), and teaches at Juilliard.

Core positions

  • Conducting is leadership by listening, not command. ‘You can only do your job by listening.’ The baton looks like will imposed on others; in fact the work is harnessing many players’ collective artistry toward one direction — a lesson he draws explicitly across to management.
  • Interpretation is good faith made audible. Take a composer’s every mark as deliberate, never willful, and ensure each written line is heard; clarity of sound comes, as Boulez told him, from hearing exactly what you want in your head first, then instinctively doing what’s needed to produce it.
  • Boulez was an emotional composer masked by a precise performer. For all the ‘Iceman’ reputation, Robertson found Boulez welcomed — even urged — intense emotion put into his scores by others, though he could not supply it himself on the podium.
  • ‘Contemporary’ is a movable feast, and access can be designed. A listener’s tolerance tracks their comfort with discomfort; a programmer can lower the barrier — front-loading a hard piece with its gentlest passage so newcomers have context before the onslaught.
  • Trust the original. He conducts the 1911 Petrushka over Stravinsky’s 1947 revision, which thinned the orchestration and simplified hard rhythms partly for copyright and conducting fees.

In the wiki