David Robertson conducts the Music Academy of the West’s Academy Festival Orchestra. Photo by Emma Matthews.
In Tuesday’s (8/13) San Francisco Classical Voice, Tom Jacobs writes, “There are countless analogies for the job of a conductor, but David Robertson chose a particularly vivid one during a relaxed interview … ‘As a composer, when you have a fabulous musical idea, getting it down on the page feels very much like a butterfly lover who catches this miraculous, beautiful thing in your net,’ Robertson said…. ‘It’s still beautiful, but it’s not flying anymore. I think my job as an interpreter is to take all the incredible butterflies that are stuck on the page and allow them to start flying around.’… Now 66, the former music director of the St. Louis Symphony keeps busy guest conducting many of the world’s great orchestras, including those of Philadelphia and Cleveland … Q: When you give a world premiere, does the composer generally keep a close eye on what you’re doing?… Robertson: ‘It varies depending on [the composer’s] personality. When [conductors] get a score, we’re trying to figure out the meaning the composer put into that score—why that combination of pitches meant so much to the composer … I’m happy to have the composer there. There are times I wish Schubert was there so I could ask him about some passages!’ “
