David Robertson: belief

Transcript context

…You’re very well known for working with younger conductors. As you observe the flow of them over the years, do you think they’re reading less as a whole, and they need more encouragement? How’s that evolving? I’m going to boomer here. I think that part of the thing is that we’ve had a really fundamental shift in society with the age of smartphones. The internet was already the first major move in that direction, but the idea that you have essentially a supercomputer in your pocket is a huge change. I have no idea how that’s really going to affect things, but I think that the challenge for us in what we call classical music — for want of a better term — is the idea of long form. That has phenomenal rewards, but it is dealing with what is seen as a very scarce resource, which is attention, and its concomitant aspect, time. I think that one of the things that one needs to learn to do for young conductors is to, in a sense, slow down and learn about yourself. That can be done through books, and much of it is done through contemplation of the score, whatever that score might be, whether it’s written by a man in Leipzig 300 years ago, or whether it’s something that was written yesterday by a person who is trying to wean themselves off of social media, as you are. What do you enjoy most in what might be called popular music? Another bad term, but you know what I mean.…

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