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L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
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November 1 - 30, 2017
One thing Davis particularly enjoys
about his life on the podium is that “the
orchestras that I’ve conducted so frequently
over the years – Lyric, the BBC Symphony
Orchestra, the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra, now the Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra – know what I’m looking for.
It’s one of the great mysteries of conducting
that you can get a specific sound from
what you do gesturally and facially. Many
years ago, the principal second violin of the
Philadelphia Orchestra was talking to me
about [music director Eugene] Ormandy
and how he got a special sound from the
orchestra, because his beat never stopped
moving. I’ve watched Ormandy, and that
was indeed true.”
When not at Lyric, Davis can frequently
be found Down Under, as chief conductor
of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
He debuted there in 2009, leading first
a real rarity, Elgar’s
Falstaff
, and then a
Wagner-Strauss program with American
soprano Christine Brewer. Following those
memorable concerts, “I went back every year
and started to think I wanted to be in
charge of a symphony orchestra again.” Huw
Humphreys, the MSO’s artistic administrator
at the time, came to New York when Davis
was leading
Don Giovanni
at the Met. “We
walked around Central Park one day, and he
convinced me!”
One very exciting development in
Davis’s association with the MSO is the
release of numerous CDs on the Chandos
label. The latter include a recent three-box
set of Charles Ives’s symphonies, recorded
live. A huge highlight of Davis’s Melbourne
performances was Ives's
Symphony No.4
,
“one of the greatest masterpieces of the
twentieth century, which I’d done only four
or five times before. The orchestra captured
that piece in a way I’d never achieved before
in my previous performances. That music
is complex, and you’re usually just happy
if it doesn’t fall apart! They really got the
visionary quality of it. I can’t imagine any
orchestra playing it more perfectly.”
Davis continues to do a great deal
of guest-conducting (at the time of this
conversation, he’d just returned from the
Cleveland Orchestra, and he also appears
regularly with the New York Philharmonic
and Boston Symphony, as well as with
the major British orchestras and the
Bergen Philharmonic). How does guest-
Curtain call after
Das Rheingold
, 2016.
TODD ROSENBERG
Conducting the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s
Symphony No. 3.
DANIEL AULSEBROOK
The
Bel Canto
creative team: front row, librettist
Nilo Cruz and composer Jimmy López;
back row, Sir Andrew Davis and director
Kevin Newbury.
TODD ROSENBERG
Sir Andrew’s conducting at Lyric has embraced
repertoire of truly extraordinary variety.
To view his complete Lyric performance history, see p. 29.