Rising conductor takes baton at Tanglewood
Seven years ago, Karina Canellakis was a conducting fellow at Tanglewood where she received coaching and guidance from elders like Charles Dutoit and Stephen Ashbury and soaked up the lore of Koussevitzky and Bernstein. On Sunday, Aug. 8, she returns to the Berkshires in her own right, making her debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in a program featuring Yo-yo Ma and music by Tchaikovsky and Mazzoli.
It has been a relatively fast rise for Canellakis, 39, who was recently named music director of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and is also the principal guest conductor for major orchestras in London and Berlin.
“One of the things I love about classical music is you learn and grow and go out into the world. Yet music is a small world and you keep seeing people years later,” Canellakis said. As an example, she points to her friend Bracha Malkin, a violinist in the BSO. The two have known each other since they were 8 years old.
When asked how a conductor builds a reputation and finds opportunities, she points to the music. “I’m always focused on preparing for next week and learning repertoire for the next six to 12 months. But I’ve never planned anything, I let the cards fall where they may,” she
said. When good things are happening, word gets round among players and administrators. Social media also contributes to the buzz. “To be invited for a debut, you have to prove yourself in other places,” Canellakis said.
Born and raised in New York City in a family of musicians, she started as a violinist and studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in Manhattan. Many summers were spent performing chamber music at Marlboro in Vermont. During a two-year residency with the Berlin Philharmonic, Canellakis caught the attention of music director Simon Rattle who encouraged her curiosity and ambition to be a conductor. Her first post with a major orchestra was as assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, a position she held for more than two years.
“It was a big adjustment when I had to move from Texas,” Canellakis said. “I loved having a car and the sunshine and being able to drive everywhere in 10 to 15 minutes. The DSO has such loyal audiences, teenagers go there on dates. There’s a long history of education programs for like 30 years, so music is not just for rich people but for everyone. It sets an example.”
Amsterdam is home base for Canellakis and her husband, who is German. She never set her sights on one continent or the other as a place of residence and said that prior to COVID, her engagements were close to an equal balance between the U.S. and Europe. “Now posts with three European orchestras tips the scale slightly,” she said. “I have no plan on which orchestras and where I’ll be. That’s chemistry.”
Canellakis stayed relatively
engaged and active during the shutdowns, working with ensembles in six European capitals performing on webcasts, virtual concert halls and TV shows.
“We experimented with lighting and finding other ways of keeping people interested,” she said. It can get boring just watching an orchestra. But I leave most of that up to the production team. It’s best to stay with what you know.”
There were, however, some special concerts that were scrubbed from the schedule causing Canellakis to reluctantly put aside some repertoire, including scenes from Wagner operas. “It’s too heartbreaking to study anything that was canceled. I’m a carrot-dangling person, I need the concert to be scheduled to learn the music,” she said.
Besides a steady stream of musical scores, something else Canellakis has been studying is the Russian language, which she is adding to her repertoire of German, French and Italian. “I’m conducting ‘Onegin’ in
Paris this fall and the Russian lessons open up a whole new world of opera,” she said. “It’s exciting when you start thinking in a new language and don’t have to translate. It allows you to chisel away at a world closed to you and peel away the layers of knowledge.”
It’s surprising that Canellakis is new to Russian, considering that it’s the native tongue of her dad, the retired conductor Martin Canellakis. “He’s proud of me for trying and gets sort of amazed when we’ve had short basic conversations over the phone,” she said.
Canellakis’ father will likely come up in conversation when she meets Yo-yo Ma, who performs Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations in the Tanglewood concert. Though this is the first time for Canellakis to work with the famous cellist, there is a history. Martin Canellakis conducted Ma in the Dvorak Concerto, while the cellist was still a teen. It just goes to show that Canellakis is right when she says, “Music is a small world.”
▶