David Robertson: preference

Transcript context

…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? Well, it’s very funny you should say that because that’s one of the things that I always found fantastic listening to Pierre, either in a concert or a rehearsal or a recording. I once asked him, “How do you get such incredible clarity?” He said, “Oh, it’s very simple.” As an aside, I must say that one of the things Pierre often said in the most complex situations would be to preface it with, “It’s very simple.” It became a joke at the Ensemble. “Pierre, how do I do 13 in the time of 17?” He would say, “Oh, it’s very simple.” That was the standard go-to line. He said, “It’s very simple. You make sure that you have very clearly what you want to hear in your head, and then, even without realizing it, you will instinctively do what is necessary to make sure that you hear it.” And he’s absolutely right. So, for me, having worked with composers and struggling with writing music myself, I think very long about how I’m going to put something down on the page. This precise instrument, that detail. John Adams used to say that you have just reams of details in a score. As an interpreter of someone else’s music, I try to take all of that, with as much precision and good faith as possible, that they didn’t just do it willfully. Therefore, I think if they want to hear something, they have put it in there in the score. It seems inconceivable to me that we wouldn’t try and make sure that it’s heard, even if it would seem, “Ah, well, the bassoons have the trombones blaring right behind them. Therefore, we won’t hear the bassoons.” No, if there are moments when Janáček just leaves out the bassoons, great. But if the composer has put the bassoons in there, if it’s Berlioz, and he’s got his four bassoons and his trombones, and they’re all playing fortissimo, then you have to figure out what is necessary to make sure that the bassoons don’t just hang up their instrument and go home when it gets to that passage. It’s true that without doing this consciously, you immediately bring the trombones down or you bring the bassoons up or you set the orchestra up differently. There are all sorts of ways that you can accomplish what’s necessary, but I think the fundamental idea is, every person in the orchestra, like every person in an ensemble of soloists, is equally important, and their viewpoints are equally valid. Your job is to figure out how to take all of that and synthesize it so that you have a unified whole that has as much clarity as possible. To be a great conductor, what is it you need to read in fiction or history or other non-musical areas? Anything? A lot?…

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