THE DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN MAESTROS:
ANDREW LITTON
Born in New York City in 1959, Andrew Litton is currently Music Director of the New York City Ballet Orchestra. Litton shot to international attention in his mid-twenties after winning the BBC/Rupert Foundation International Conducting Competition in 1982, and quickly became Assistant Conductor at the National Symphony of Washington under Rostropovich. He then took on successive Principal Conductor appointments with the Bournemouth Symphony (1988-1994), Dallas Symphony (1994-2006), and the Bergen Philharmonic (2003-2015). He also directed the Minnesota Orchestra’s summer festival from 2003-2017. Litton has now recorded over 140 CDs, primarily on the Virgin, Delos and BIS labels. He is also known for his virtuosity on the piano and his love of jazz and Gershwin. This interview tracks the conductor’s development and his achievements in detail. It took place coincident with his appearance with violinist Anne Akiko Meyers and the Vancouver Symphony in October 2024. (review)
1. YOUR FORMAL CONDUCTING TRAINING AT JUILLIARD STARTED ONLY AFTER YOU COMPLETED YOUR DEGREE IN PIANO. SURELY, YOUR INSPIRATION TO CONDUCT STARTED MUCH EARLIER THAN THAT?
Actually, it started from when I attended Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s concerts in New York at the age of 9. It would be too good a story to suggest that I fell in love with conducting right then and there. No, it was about a year later, maybe the 4th or 5th concert I attended, that a performance of Respighi’s Pines of Rome really managed to blow me away. Bernstein was so vivid in describing these four vistas in Rome, and then the music just completely amplified what he had described. And of course, there was the ending with the extra brass – and he’s jumping up and down and everything! It just fascinated my mind, and I came out of Philharmonic (now Geffen) Hall knowing that piano studies alone were never going to be enough. When my mother came to pick me up, I boldly said “Mom, I want to be a conductor.” She just rolled her eyes because, until that morning, I had wanted to be a fireman, like many kids of my age.
Fortunately, my family's closest friend, Richard Horowitz, principal timpanist at the Metropolitan Opera, quickly assessed the situation and said, “OK, I got this. Whenever you can, let Andrew come to our performances.” (Horowitz was principal timpanist at the Met from 1946 to 2012, an amazing 66 years.) And so I would go to the Met three to four times a week, sitting next to the timpani and wedged against the wall between the large drum: I could see the whole orchestra and the conductor, and 60% of the stage. Of course, a little 11-year-old kid doesn't know when all the big, dramatic subito fortissimo timpani rolls occur, so Richard would signal these to me by whispering ‘pst’ – and I would quickly cover my ears. A couple of years in, I knew where most of these passages were, so I didn't need the pst anymore. Eventually, I knew how to score-read well enough that Richard even set me up with my own music stand. I'm sure people looked at me, thinking, “What's that kid doing there?”
2. SO YOU ENDED UP FALLING IN LOVE WITH OPERA?
Yes I did, and I got to know many operas better than I knew other things because I was seeing them again and again. There were some amazing first impressions, like my first Tristan and Isolde with Birgit Nilsson and Jess Thomas, with Karl Böhm conducting. There were fantastic performances of Rosenkavalier and Salome. And Otello, back when Jon Vickers was singing that.
3. IT’S AMAZING YOU GOT SO MUCH EXPOSURE TO THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF PERFORMANCE AT SUCH A YOUNG AGE. SO HOW DID YOU EVENTUALLY GET YOUR HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE AND VISIBILITY AS A CONDUCTOR?
Well, all that came very quickly ten years later, and it was really luck, luck, and I guess a little talent. After being accepted for the Master’s conducting program at Juilliard, I first joined Eduardo Mueller for a year long opera conducting course at La Scala, then continued my studies with Sixten Ehrling. My big decision was to enter the BBC/Rupert Foundation International Conducting Competition in January 1982. The timing coincided with our winter break, and I booked a week in London. However, it turned out that I really never got to see more than my hotel room and the Maida Vale Studios because I kept progressing in the competition, and eventually won it. The very first full length orchestral concert I ever conducted was with the BBC Symphony.
Further developments came quickly: my London debut with the Royal Phiharmonic Orchestra was in January 1983. This started a wonderful relationship with the RPO which lasted for about 10 years, and produced my initial Virgin recording of the Rachmaninoff complete symphonies. It is still highly regarded. But there was one more lucky break: in May 1982, I won the competition to be Rostropovich's assistant at the National Symphony in Washington. So, talk about starting off: it was an absolutely amazing year!
4. THE NATIONAL SYMPHONY APPOINTMENT MUST HAVE BEEN THE GREATEST LEARNING EXPERIENCE.
Yes, it was like the ultimate finishing school to have access to great musicians whom you could go up to and ask ‘silly’ questions like: Why did you do this there? Why did you phrase it that way? While you could never do this as a guest conductor, it is expected from a staff conductor. They also expect you to direct, and of course Rostropovich turned out to be the greatest possible mentor. He gave me so much personal time on scores, and while some might downplay his conducting talents, he was still a great, great musician. And what he had to impart to a young starving mind like mine was absolutely vast – not just in the Shostakovich symphonies, which was the ultimate master class, but also in Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, and indeed anything he touched with his passion and energy.
When my debut with the RPO was approaching, Rostropovich suggested I come over and bring the Tchaikovsky score. But it was not a Tchaikovsky symphony that was on the programme; rather, the famous Piano Concerto which I thought I knew intimately, having played it as a pianist. What can he possibly tell me? I want to tell you that 90 minutes later I emerged with my eyes like saucers going, “Whoa!” It was fascinating: this world-famous cellist telling a pianist more about the Tchaikovsky concerto than could ever be imagined. He was an incredible inspiration.
Over these years as assistant (then associate) conductor of the National Symphony, I sort of lived in 2 worlds, and there were many surprises. I'd be sitting at home in DC and the phone would ring, and it would be my UK manager saying, “How fast can you get here? Tennstedt has cancelled or Previn has cancelled.” I remember once meeting the RPO in Lucerne hot off the plane from New York and we just dove straight into a performance of Brahms 4th Symphony. We were playing the beautiful, drawn out ending of the second movement and, suddenly, a person starts clapping at the back. It was a weird feeling. I turned to concertmaster Barry Griffiths, and he said, “Oh, it's Ashkan,”. Yes, it was Vladimir Ashkenazy, a musician I respected so much.
5. YOUR FIRST MAJOR APPOINTMENT WAS WITH THE BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY FROM 1988-1994. DID YOU FIND YOU HAD TO GET ACCLIMATIZED TO BRITISH REPERTOIRE DEMANDS?
We did a substantial amount of British music, but it certainly was less than the amount of Scandinavian music expected of me in my Bergen Philharmonic appointment much later. I think everyone was reasonably happy if you threw in the odd piece of Bax or Bliss alongside the more standard British orchestral items. The real irony here is I decided, since everywhere else was asking me for American music, I wasn't going to do any American music with the orchestra. And then somehow in the third season, we wound up doing a suite from Bernstein’s West Side Story. And they played it like they were possessed! I said to myself, “Why am I keeping this from them? They're natural at it.”
The funniest thing, though, came during the first rehearsal of ‘Dance at the Gym’, where the orchestra must shout out “ MAMBO!” with true Cuban/American verve. It was really such a cheeky thing for a young conductor to do, but I stopped 3 minutes before the end of rehearsal, and said “It's my great pleasure to announce that I'm going to give you an elocution lesson.” I asked, “How do you call the Queen mum? Mom. Yes. that's right. Now do Mom-Bo and they politely came forth with the Bo. No, BO: it’s MAM-BO.” I emphasized! It was so much fun. Anyway, fast forward three years, we got a review saying that the Bournemouth Symphony was the best ‘American’ orchestra in the UK. We recorded a Bernstein album, including The Age of Anxiety, and I'm still proud of it. We also play-recorded the Gershwin Concerto in F alongside the Ravel G major. Mind you, I could really play the piano back then.
6. YOUR RECORDING PROJECTS TOOK OFF AT BOURNEMOUTH, INCLUDING A COMPLETE TCHAIKOVSKY SYMPHONY CYCLE FOR VIRGIN CLASSICS, FOLLOWED BY WHAT MAY HAVE BEEN A SURPRISE TO MANY, THE 4-DISC SET OF ALL THE MAJOR ORCHESTRAL WORKS AND CONCERTOS OF SIR WILLIAM WALTON FOR DECCA. BOTH HAVE BEEN WIDELY PRAISED OVER THE YEARS.
Yes, it was again my lucky time. Virgin Records was starting up, needed repertoire, and I'm a young conductor in my 20s: they liked the idea of this Bournemouth/Litton combination. And so we did the Tchaikovsky Orchestral Works as an extended recording project.
My interest in Walton might have been influenced by the enthusiasm of André Previn and Leonard Slatkin, but likely started much earlier, when a friend said, “You gotta listen to this”. I was immediately amazed by the rhythmic propulsion of Walton’s music and its absolutely unmitigated passion that often seemed very un-English. You can hear all the big tunes, and that’s where you think of the monarchy walking by, but much of its underlying musical core is jazz-driven. I would regard him as the most American of the British composers. This project was very late in my Bournemouth period. Decca simply approached me and I said ‘Absolutely. Let’s do it”.
7. IT WAS WALTON’S BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST WITH BRYN TERFEL THAT GOT THE GREATEST ATTENTION OF THE SERIES AND WON A 1997 GRAMMY AWARD FOR BEST CHORAL PERFORMANCE. IT WAS ITS SPECTACULAR RECORDING THAT GRABBED THE INTEREST OF MANY: A TRUE JOHN CULSHAW EXPERIMENT!
Chris Hazell was the producer, indeed from the same gene-pool as Culshaw. The 2 symphonies and the 3 concertos were recorded in Southampton, which is quite a nice hall, but the big thing was that Decca wanted to do Belshazzar in Winchester Cathedral, which has a good 10-second echo. And the way they had it set up – if you imagine a cathedral – I'm sort of in the middle of the transept, and all the strings except basses, plus the woodwinds, are set up by the alter. The large chorus is behind the woodwinds. Behind me are the basses, and behind them are the brass and percussion and timpani. And behind them are the brass bands. So I had to alternate between conducting backwards and forwards for this recording. Bryn set up right next to me. It was incredibly difficult to conduct this way and get it all together, but it does sound tremendous because it's such a huge piece with the 14 extra brass and the chorus of 250. You need a very spacious acoustic to help transfer that sense of enormousness that normally a recording can’t impart. I can always tell it's my recording because none of the others have that much echo.
8. YOUR TIME WITH THE DALLAS SYMPHONY (1994-2006) WAS MAINLY ABOUT BUILDING THE ORCHESTRA’S SIZE AND SOUND, AND BRINGING A FRESH ENTHUSIASM TO THEIR MUSIC MAKING. ONE NICE THING IS THAT YOU HAD A NEW HALL TO WORK WITH.
Yes, the Myerson Symphony Center was only 3 years old when I arrived. It was beautiful: I.M. Pei was the architect and Russell Johnson of Artec was the sound guy. Yet it was not without its challenges – it was such a reverberant space if left to its own devices. Fortunately, we were armed with technology, one of the amazing things about all these new halls. In rehearsal, we were able to dry it up so it was like 2000 people were sitting there. That got us the needed clarity. Sometimes I wonder how the sound engineers managed in the old days when they had no technology at all.
9. PERHAPS THEY SIMPLY HAD TO BE MORE INTUITIVE ABOUT THE VENUES THAT MIGHT PROVIDE IDEAL REVERBERATION. ALLEGEDLY, JOHN CULSHAW OF DECCA WALKED INTO LONDON’S KINGSWAY HALL IN THE EARLY 50S, SNAPPED HIS FINGERS AND SAID “THIS IS IT”.
That’s an interesting observation. I made one recording of Copland with the Colorado Symphony. Unfortunately, Boettcher Hall in Denver is not very satisfactory acoustically. It's tragic because the orchestra is so good, but it's one of those halls where you can be sitting five rows back and the orchestra sounds like it's 30 rows away. All the sound goes straight up into the round. It’s unsatisfactory for the audience, but as a recording venue, it can be successful, since the microphones are placed above the orchestra, capturing all that luscious ambience that does not project forward. And then this same thing you mentioned: when we started, the engineers went, ‘snap snap’, and said, “Yeah, we can make this work.”
10. IN DALLAS, YOU RECORDED MAHLER AND SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONIES, AN ESPECIALLY FINE SET OF IVES SYMPHONIES, AND EXCELLENT CONCERTO DISCS WITH THE LIKES OF MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN AND ANDRÉ WATTS – ALL FOR DELOS. NONETHELESS, THE ONE RECORDING FROM THIS PERIOD WHICH IS ALWAYS MENTIONED TO THIS DAY IS THE HYPERION SET OF COMPLETE RACHMANOFF CONCERTOS WITH STEPHEN HOUGH.
Stephen and I were at Juilliard together and we collaborated a lot when I was in Bournemouth. In fact, he was my very last soloist while I was still principal conductor at Bournemouth. I don't remember when we cooked up the idea of doing the Rachmaninoff concertos, but we had performed them all together elsewhere, and so it just seemed natural. I said, “Stephen, I've been recording the Mahler symphonies live, which works really well, because we have four performances and you never have four complete takes in the studio. You know, it’s four takes, then a patch session”. You spend the next morning after each concert listening to what you've got and what you need, and you try and fix it. I would send memos to the orchestra: “We need this chord in tune. If you have a second, we also need to get better ensemble in this or that passage.” And it worked! Stephen was very dubious at first because he’s never done anything like that but I convinced him. The rest is history. This process is now standard fare for making orchestral recordings. One of the keys is getting the right recording producer. One of my best buddies is esteemed producer Andrew Keener: he has done over one half of my 140 CDs.
11. YOUR LATER APPOINTMENT WITH THE BERGEN PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA (2003-2015) WAS ALSO ABOUT ORCHESTRA BUILDING, PLUS YOU WERE ABLE TO RECORD EXTENSIVELY FOR BIS, WITH THEIR SUPERB ENGINEERING. THIS SOUNDS LIKE A VERY RICH EXPERIENCE.
The Bergen story is quite unique. I guest conducted the orchestra for the first time in 1998, and I couldn’t believe that such a fabulous orchestra existed in this small city on the west coast of Norway. It was ‘love at first beat’, so to speak! The orchestra asked me twice if I would consider being their next Music Director while I was in Dallas, but this would have proved extremely difficult to do. Finally, on one later guest conducting visit, I was taken out for dinner by a few of the principals and told that 100% of the players wanted me to be their next Music Director. I asked if they were all willing to take on the challenge of dramatically increased touring and recording. They were completely on board, and I agreed. Within two years, we were having residencies in Vienna, touring all over Europe, making debuts at the Concertgebouw and the London Proms, followed by a US Tour. Another important offshoot was the founding of the Bergen National Opera.
This was an incredibly rich experience, only augmented by having the superb BIS engineers around to make recordings. We recorded the complete Prokofiev and Mendelssohn Symphonies, as well the three big Stravinsky ballets. All in all, almost 25 recordings! I was truly honoured to be knighted by the King of Norway for my service to culture. It has become no small source of pride for me that when I left Bergen, the orchestra was bigger, better and more renowned than when I started. And I think this is true for Dallas and Bournemouth too.
12. SO, LETS GET BACK TO YOUR FIRST LOVE, OPERA. I KNOW YOU DEBUTED AT THE MET WITH EUGENE ONEGIN WHEN YOU WERE JUST STARTING OUT (1989), BUT HOW CONSISTENTLY HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO PURSUE OPERA OVER YOUR CAREER?
I would say pretty consistently and I have performed in many of the world’s distinguished opera houses. Perhaps my most concentrated efforts came in the Minnesota Orchestra’s summer festival, Sommerfest, which I directed from 2003-2017, where I was able to do many of the Italian opera staples and probably my favorite opera composer, Richard Strauss. These overlapped with opera productions in Bergen. One of my special recollections internationally was performing Der Rosenkavalier for the first time in the Sydney Opera House in 2010. It is such a gorgeous space from outward appearances, but the orchestra pit is really tiny and poses challenges. However, the experience was thrilling: this is one of my favourite operas. Since they made a video of the performance and released it as a DVD, it was absolutely head-swimming for me to go into brick-and-mortar record shops (which still existed in those days) and find this video tucked right next to the classic performances of Karajan and Carlos Kleiber.
13. YOUR APPOINTMENT AS MUSIC DIRECTOR OF NEW YORK CITY BALLET IN 2015 SEEMED LIKE A MAJOR CAREER SWITCH. JUST HOW DIFFERENT HAS IT PROVEN?
In one sense, it is not that different. I think the reason why Peter Martins hired me is that he wanted a symphonic conductor, not a ballet conductor, and 80% of our repertoire is orchestral music. We do very few full length ballets, only the 3 big Tchaikovsky, Coppélia (which we just finished) and sometimes Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and that's it. The rest of the time it's doing George Balanchine constructs, which are ballet settings of orchestral pieces.
That said, there are some obvious differences in conducting ballet. First, you inevitably learn that what you do with the music is only one part of a bigger production. As well, as a conductor, you have to learn to follow ‘sight’ when most of your training involves following ‘sound’. Often the orchestra has to come in exactly when a jump is finished, and you have to be right there. The timing of orchestral entries can be tricky. One thing I’ve had to learn is ballet counts are critical. Dancers rely on numbers, and they are indeed genius number counters. The problem is that their ‘one’ is very often, and especially in the case of Stravinsky, not the musician’s ‘one’. So the counts are different: it's quite wild. Sometimes we have resorted to singing to indicate when I should start. When the dancers start singing, I say, “OK!” and we’re set.
14. HOW HAVE YOU ADJUSTED TO DOING ALL THOSE PERFORMANCES OF THE NUTCRACKER?
It’s fine. We do about 50 performance of The Nutcracker but, fortunately, I only do 10 of them, broken up 5 and 5. We have a slew of guest conductors. I always think it’s ironic that I was one of those kids who was dragged to The Nutcracker at the age of 6 or 7 and, now, I’m conducting the same production.
15. YOU ARE DOING PART OF A BALANCHINE PROGRAMME FOR US: STRAVINSKY’S ‘DIVERTIMENTO’ FROM LE BAISER DE LA FÉE. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STRAVINSKY AND GEORGE BALANCHINE WAS A FASCINATING ONE.
What’s interesting about Balanchine’s setting of ‘divertimento’ is that it uses different pieces from the ballet than Stravinsky’s own: the only common item is the pas de deux. Balanchine tried four times during his career to stage the complete ballet, but he just couldn't make it work. Stravinsky knew there was trouble a few years after he wrote it, and that’s when he assembled his own suite of dances. It doesn’t begin to tell the story: there's no fairy! Balanchine finally gave up the prospect of staging the complete ballet and came up with his own ‘Divertimento’ for the Stravinsky Festival he had in New York in 1974 to honor his friend’s passing.
But there were so many successes: Balanchine was able to make Orpheus and Agon work: these were ballets specifically written for him. Their friendship was so unique and symbiotic that they continually pushed each other forward. Balanchine could take even lesser Stravinsky, like the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, and turn it into an amazing ballet. It's brilliant and so much fun. It always brings the house down. And eventually he set the Violin Concerto, and even the Symphony in Three Movements. They’re all masterpieces completed after Stravinsky passed. The story on the latter was that Balanchine drove the dancers absolutely crazy because he kept changing the count as the work is rhythmically so complicated. Finally, two weeks before the premiere, Balanchine walked in with this huge Cheshire cat grin and said, “I’ve got it, I figured it out!” and everyone sighed, “Thank God.” Yet Balanchine was totally against setting Rite of Spring because he thought it was a perfect piece. Why ruin it with dance? He had done a Firebird years before, but it eventually disappeared from the company’s repertoire until Marc Chagall begged him again later, saying “Can we please do it? I want to do the sets and costumes.” And so we still have the ballet of the shorter 1945 suite and, thanks to Chagall, it is our most visually stunning ballet. I love performing that.
16. I HAVE HEARD THAT BALLET EXPERIENCES WERE NOT TOTALLY FOREIGN TO YOU WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER, SINCE YOU ACCOMPANIED RUDOLF NUREYEV ON THE PIANO IN HIS RARE, LATE 1970S, VISIT TO NEW YORK.
Yes, that was my first year at Juilliard when I was 18. I was pretty nervous since I was told he had a vicious temper. I actually did see him light up on a few people, but I figured out that if you don't mess up, everything would be fine. In any case, we're on stage at what was then called the Minskoff Theater on Broadway and 45th. I'm off-center stage, and he's leaning on the piano, stretching. We can hear the hubbub of this packed audience through the curtain and I’m a nervous wreck already. Impulsively, I turned to Nureyev and said, “Tell me, Rudy, “Do you ever get nervous?” Suddenly his eyes got really big and flashed with rage! He said, “What a stupid question! Of course I get nervous. You have to get nervous. Do you hear all those people out there? Do you know how much money they've paid? You've got to get nervous, but you have to learn to channel that into energy and excitement.” And just then, the stage manager called “Places!” and he went to his spot on the stage. My nerves just disappeared because I thought, “OK, I just got yelled at by the most famous living dancer. And he says it's OK to be nervous.” It was such a wonderful lesson to learn at such a young age.
17. LET’S MOVE TO YOUR PIANO PLAYING, WHICH YOU HAVE OBVIOUSLY KEPT UP. CRITICS STILL GIVE THE STRONGEST PRAISE TO YOUR PIANO RECORDINGS WITH ORCHESTRA, ESPECIALLY OF GERSHWIN AND OTHER JAZZY ITEMS. I’VE HEARD THAT OSCAR PETERSON WAS A DEFINING INFLUENCE.
I knew nothing about jazz when I was a kid because my parents didn't listen to it and, growing up in Manhattan, I spent all my time at symphony and opera performances. However, on my 16th birthday, one of my friends happened to bring an Oscar Peterson LP. I didn’t really know what it was and, as soon as everybody left, I put it on my little turntable and this very up-tempo ‘Give Me the Simple Life’ starts. I had never heard anything like it. I played Gershwin on the piano but this was a whole new world. I became a total groupie and I'd go see him wherever, whenever. Two days after my concert with the RPO with Buddy Rich in 1983, Oscar happened to be appearing with his trio in London. I asked the chairman of the orchestra to introduce me, and he agreed. I was in such awe and I just didn't want to be somebody – I wanted to be somebody. But it turned out to be completely unnecessary because Oscar was an incredibly nice and generous-spirited man. So when I was introduced, he was uber friendly and actually he told me some funny Buddy Rich stories. After that, every time I went backstage to see him, he remembered me immediately.
A memorable moment came in 2003 when I started running the Sommerfest festival of the Minnesota Orchestra, which Leonard Slatkin started back in 1980. I immediately put a jazz component into the festival and, yes, my first guest was Oscar Peterson. By then, he was quite on in years, but it was just so cool to go from just worshipping somebody to actually being able to invite them to play in your festival. A wonderful full circle! In 2014, I released my first solo piano album, A Tribute to Oscar Peterson.
18. ON TO YOUR CONDUCTING STYLE. DO YOU THINK IT HAS CHANGED OVER TIME? YOU HAVE BEEN A REGULAR VISITOR TO THE VANCOUVER SYMPHONY FOR MANY YEARS, AND MY INITIAL IMPRESSIONS WERE THAT YOU CREATED AN UNUSUALLY BIG, RICH SOUND WITHIN A RATHER MUSCULAR STYLE, WITH CONTOURED PHRASING, VERY STRUCTURALLY AND TONALLY INTEGRATED IN TERMS OF BUILDING A WORK’S SHAPE.
That's nice to hear. That's what I go for, absolutely true. I first conducted the VSO 35 years ago, in 1989. It was very different orchestra then, but it has always had great spirit and warmth. My ideas of what I wanted from an orchestra perhaps started from a teenage dream that I could conduct an all-star ensemble that had both the sound of Philly and the precision of Cleveland. A key for me in creating the rich sound is to always build the sound from the bottom up. If an orchestra has a great bass section, that is the first step, and I can relax. Otherwise, we may have to really work. I certainly pay attention to detail, maybe more now than I used to, but it's all to arrive at the same basic end: to get orchestral players themselves to hear when they're not playing together rather than just superficially following me. At the same time, I do think a lot of work can be done publicly. You try very hard to make sure that you're making your points very clearly and you can do that a lot with gestures.
19. A KEY CONCERN OF THE TWO OTHER AMERICAN CONDUCTORS I HAVE INTERVIEWED IN THIS SERIES, GERARD SCHWARZ AND LEONARD SLATKIN, IS THE CURRENT NEGLECT OF THE MUSIC OF 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN COMPOSERS SUCH AS HANSON, DIAMOND, PISTON AND SCHUMAN. BOTH ARE MAKING GREAT EFFORTS TO RESUSCITATE INTEREST. DO YOU HAVE ANY PERSPECTIVE ON THIS PROBLEM?
Well, I have little doubt that Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein will always be in the public eye, whether we want that or not, but there are many other American tonal composers of this period that did not ever make it so big that they’re not indispensable now, and that’s part of the problem. The maximum we might expect is they are remembered by audiences for maybe one or two works, like Samuel Barber and Howard Hanson. At the same time, while we’re back to tonality now, there was a lengthy period where music went pear-shaped, and there’s still a whole world out there today that loves minimalist music. It's sort of beyond me. I have to conduct some of this for the ballet, but I certainly would never electively do so. It’s is not my thing, yet there are plenty of people for whom it is, so that’s great.
20. SPEAKING OF THE OTHER CONDUCTORS, DO YOU EVER CROSS PATHS WITH THEM, OR ARE YOUR CAREERS JUST SO DIFFERENT AND BUSY?
It’s interesting that you ask this question, since Leonard Slatkin and myself have become closer in recent years. His younger brother, Fred Zlotkin, was in fact the principal cellist of the New York City Ballet Orchestra from 1972. I developed a really nice friendship with Fred and then, in 2021, during the pandemic, he retired. And sadly, he passed away the next year. Leonard became much closer to me after that because, I don't know, we just sort of found each other. We now look forward to dinner together twice a year in New York.
21. SO A FINAL QUESTION: I KNOW YOUR CAREER AS A BALLET CONDUCTOR IS ACTUALLY TAKING OFF, FEATURING A DEBUT AT THE ROYAL BALLET LAST YEAR AND IN MUNICH THIS YEAR, BUT HOW MUCH DO YOU MISS A STANDARD ORCHESTRAL CONDUCTING POSITION? IF AN ORCHESTRA ASKED YOU TO PERFORM A SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NEXT WEEK, WOULD YOU WANT TO DO IT?
I would happily do it, and I do miss Shostakovich. And Beethoven, Mahler, Richard Strauss, and many others too! Fortunately, my schedule does allow room for guest conducting and, if the conditions were right, I could take on a symphony orchestra appointment as well. However, I do conduct a lot of symphonic music with the ballet, and the prospect of being able to work at Lincoln Center with such an amazing company, just blocks from where I grew up, somehow seems not too shabby at this point in my life.
© Geoffrey Newman December 2024
Photo Credits: Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, Steve J Sherman, Danny Turner, Kent G Becker, Andrew Litton Personal Archive
I thank the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra for making this interview possible and Kelly Bao for editing and transcription assistance.