Antonio Pappano and the London Symphony: Conductor as Team Player

In Tuesday’s (2/25) New York Times, Joshua Barone writes, “The [March 5 and 6] Carnegie Hall concerts will be Antonio Pappano’s first appearance with the London Symphony Orchestra in New York since becoming the orchestra’s chief conductor last year. They will be something of a homecoming for Pappano, who cut his teeth in Manhattan as a humble rehearsal pianist before rising to the top of his field, conducting at the coronation of King Charles III and receiving knighthoods in England and Italy. Pappano, 65, is a rarity in classical music: a maestro who never went to a music school. Born in England to Italian immigrant parents, then transplanted to Connecticut at 13, he learned through experience … But his formative experiences weren’t so different from a conservatory student’s. He watched Leonard Bernstein and André Previn teach at Tanglewood…. He picked up assistant conducting work with Daniel Barenboim … All this ‘working in the trenches,’ as Pappano called it, began to bear fruit in the 1990s. He became the music director of La Monnaie in Brussels, and, [later], was appointed at the Royal Opera House in London…. Pappano stayed at the Royal for over two decades, a period that overlapped with his tenure leading the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome…. In … 2024… Pappano [took] over the podium of the London Symphony…. ‘He knew everyone’s name within about five minutes,’ the violinist Clare Duckworth said. ‘There’s something there that says, “I’m part of a team.” ’