A musical luminary’s return visit
Conductor Kent Nagano, gone 10 years since his Berkeley era, brings his orchestra to town
Bay Area audiences know as well as anyone about Kent Nagano’s ability to forge a foundational relationship with an orchestra. After all, he spent more than 30 years as music director of the Berkeley Symphony, a period during which he and an ambitious community orchestra grew together from modest beginnings into a flourishing artistic partnership.
So it makes a certain kind of sense that Nagano’s visit to the Bay Area this weekend, a musical homecoming of sorts, finds him demonstrating a close bond with another orchestra — the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal (or Montreal Symphony Orchestra, for Anglophones), where he became music director in 2006.
The touring program of works by Debussy, Prokofiev and Stravinsky promises to showcase what he and the Montreal ensemble have achieved during their decade together. It has been a matter, Nagano said during a recent phone interview, of building on the orchestra’s existing traditions but taking them in a new direction for the 21st century.
“What I’ve tried to do is to develop the orchestra and audiences by putting a new emphasis on the music of Bach, Haydn and Mozart. as well as reworking our ideas of how to play Beethoven, Bruckner and Brahms. And that took place alongside the emphasis on the French repertoire that has always been there.”
At 65, Nagano retains the calm, unruffled manner of speaking familiar from his Berkeley years. Conversation rolls out in sleek paragraphs.
That placid demeanor only hints at the turmoil that attended his early tenure in Montreal. When he took over, shortly stepping down in Berkeley, the Canadian ensemble was going through a tempestuous period. Former Music Director Charles Dutoit had resigned abruptly four years earlier after a quarter century in the post, leaving a long hiatus during which the orchestra worked without a music director.
The financial picture was far from rosy, there was an acrimonious work stoppage, and all of this coincided with what Nagano calls a “generational change within the orchestra.” To top it all off, the management decided to build a new concert hall, just as the financial crisis of 2008 hit.
Yet those tribulations seem
to have receded safely into the past. The new concert hall, which opened in 2011, has proved to be a cultural meeting point for the city, Nagano says, and the orchestra has found a new potential.
“I think a music director needs to be careful not to be too egocentric,” Nagano says. “You always start with what was already there. This orchestra is older than me or Dutoit — Zubin Mehta was the music director, and Leonard Bernstein came and conducted here as well.”
What Nagano has tried to add to the mix, he says, is a historically informed approach to music making.
“This has always been a highly precise orchestra, with plenty of instrumental precision and clarity. I wanted to build on that, but also to look at certain areas of the repertoire that had been underperformed.
“That’s not to say that the repertoire wasn’t there, but the research hadn’t been done. It’s important to me to start asking the questions about historical style, and maybe situate this music within a larger European panorama.”
That attitude extends to Canadian music as well, which has long been a priority for the orchestra.
“I remain very much involved with music of Canadian composers, but there’s a slight difference in emphasis as far as how that music should be performed. I want to be sure that we perform not only works by living Canadians, but also by composers of the past — most importantly Claude Vivier.”
Nagano says he came to Montreal with long experience in both the United States and Europe, and found his new home to be something midway between the two, culturally speaking.
“I was surprised to come to Quebec and find that this particular region was historically the oldest region of European influence, and those influences and ties remain strong through hundreds of years.
“Even today, I feel a very living European sensibility there. When I fly between Europe and Quebec, I honestly don’t feel a border the way I do when I fly from Europe into New York or L.A. or San Francisco.
“But at the same time, Quebec is the New World, with Cirque de Soleil, gaming companies, technology centers. In many ways it’s a reflection of America.”
In addition to his Montreal post, Nagano recent began a stint as music director of the Hamburg State Opera, where he is also making an effort to mine the cultural history of the city.
And although he hasn’t conducted in the Bay Area in several years, Nagano still maintains a house in San Francisco.
“That’s where my piano and my library are. It’s a place I return to often, because that’s where the work gets done.”