David Robertson: evaluation

Transcript context

…Which part of the orchestra do you have the most trouble with? I’ve never thought about it. I think at the beginning, you tend to have the most trouble with the instrument or the group of instruments with whom you have the least practical experience. When I was first starting out as a 21-year-old, the idea of telling a brass and woodwind section, “Let’s breathe here,” felt far more comfortable than turning to the first violin and saying, “What would that be like if we started it up bow?” Then with time, you gain a greater understanding of what’s going on. This is why the work with the Ensemble Intercontemporain for nine years, for me, was absolutely formative because there are two things. One is, when Boulez founded this group, he made it so that each one of the players was considered a soloist. It was an ensemble of 31 soloists, and their contract was modeled on the soloist’s contract in an orchestra, which is usually closer to two-thirds of the time so that they’re not playing every single piece every single week because they need the time to keep themselves, like a great sports player, a tennis player, or a gymnast, in top form. There’s lots of practice that’s going on on the side. That’s one aspect of it. Then the other aspect was that when I would come into a rehearsal, and you have composers pushing the envelope, there would be times when I would think, “You can’t possibly play this on the instrument.” They would say, “Oh yes, you can if you do this this way.” They would show me a fingering, or they would show me a combination of the position on the string instrument or a type of circular breathing on the woodwinds in such a way that I felt I was getting a master class in every single instrument. What’s been fascinating is to be able to — and this is the heart of music in itself as a tradition where you give on the things that you’ve gotten from those before you — I would get to orchestras, and the percussion player would say, “No, I don’t think you can do this.” I would say, “Try it this way,” and they, “Oh, yes.” Because they haven’t necessarily come across something like that. So, most of my knowledge I owe to the members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain. Now, many of my favorite conductors, Boulez himself, you, Masaaki Suzuki — you can attain this incredible clarity of sound which seems distinct from simply the quality of the orchestra. How is it you all do that?…

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