David Robertson on Conducting, Pierre Boulez, and Musical Interpretation

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello everyone, and welcome back to conversations with tyler. Today, I'm happy to be here in New York City with David Robertson, who is one of my favorite classical conductors. In the year, I think, 2003, I went to hear David in Paris at IRCAM, and I've been thinking about him and what he does ever since. He served as principal conductor of the Ensemble Intercontemporaine from 1992 to 2000, has been chief conductor in Sydney, Australia, music director in Saint Louis, where he's credited with having revitalized that symphony, and he is very well known for his numerous recordings, including those of John Adams, Pierre Boulez, George Gershwin, and much more. He teaches at Julliard, and he conducts regularly at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. And this summer, he's conducting with the New York Philharmonic, an exciting concert featuring Stravinsky's Petrushka 1911 edition. David, welcome. Thank you very much. Now as we both know, it's the hundredth birthday of Pierre Boulez on March 22, and we're recording just a few days before then. And you studied with Boulez. I didn't actually study with him. That's in a sense, that was the benefit of coming to him relatively late. I went to London to study in 1976 at the Royal Academy of Music. And, of course, that was when Boulez was no longer the chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, but he still had a very strong relationship with the organization. So he came a lot, and I got to see all sorts of amazing concerts at a very formative period of my life. Later on, I figured out how to get into the studio where the BBC Symphony Orchestra rehearses. And so I would go to rehearsals that he had, and he was very always very nice. And he would say hello when he saw, you know, this stranger sitting in the back of the room. But I I never had the courage to speak to him. He had this reputation of being a bit severe and uncompromising. You think that's wrong? I think that he came of age in a period that was fraught with all sorts of musical challenges. And I think his as he often used to say, I'm Capricorn, so I'm very stubborn. And so I think that he he was somewhat combative as a young man, and I got to know him, you know, we we never had a sort of filial relation. We had a grand filial, if I can call it that. And so, you know, your your grandfather looks at you and is is very forgiving of all of the things that you you do which are silly. And I think this was the nice relationship that I had …