Q & A WITH DAVID ROBERTSON AND ORLI SHAHAM

David Robertson and Orli Shaham at  Powell Symphony Hall (Photo by Robert Bullivant)

David Robertson and Orli Shaham both appeared dapper and refreshed, despite arriving in St. Louis from Germany the night before the announcement of Robertson's appointment as Music Director of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra. They both showed obvious exuberance for the occasion. In the Music Director's suite of Powell Symphony Hall, the two responded to questions in an affable, thoughtful, and at times, moving manner. One thing is clear about both artists - they are passionate about what they do.

You already have a relationship with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, but let's begin with the most intimate aspect of that relationship - I understand you met your wife at Powell Hall. 

Robertson: We joke - or at least I joke - that the Green Room should have a big plaque in front of it, because that is where I first saw her with Diet Coke in her hand. 

Shaham: As always. 

Robertson: The thing that was really extraordinary about those first rehearsals was the total wonder of the thing. Here was the Orchestra -- with whom it was probably the easiest to make music with that I have ever found. Right from the start.

            It's very difficult to explain precisely what it was. You often have the feeling that you're having to force an orchestra to play - and you do that because that's sometimes part of your job. Here they just seem to make music simultaneously with me.

            I didn't know Orli. I actually knew her older brother, Gil. We had gone back and forth about the program and I had heard she played fantastic Mozart. So I said, 'What about a Mozart concerto?' It turned out they already had a couple of Mozart concertos in the season, so that didn't work. They gave me her repertoire list and there were various pieces on it and I said, 'Well, what would she like to play?' Then it came back that she only wanted to play Chopin One.

            I had once done a competition in Jerusalem, when I was the Resident Conductor there, where I did six Chopin Ones in one day for a competition. So if that hadn't killed the piece for me….

            As it turns out, at this first meeting, the way Orli was talking about what she wanted to do, I thought, 'This sounds like it's really going to be not just "It's all about me'" -- which frequently seems to happen with the Chopin One. Plus, it's the classic case where the orchestra part is not interesting, so you basically all go to sleep while the pianist does the thing.

            However, It doesn't work like that. It's a very hard piece of music to bring off. And what Chopin's trying to do with the orchestra nobody yet knew how to write when he was writing. It really requires a lot.

            The partnering that went back and forth with what the orchestra was able to do and what she was then able to do meant that it was a fabulous experience from a musical point of view.

            I was so happy to have met a soloist of this caliber at that age. You were what -- 23? So here was this 23-year-old who could play with this extraordinary depth, which I had not come across before with somebody of that age. I immediately said to my agent, 'I would like to play again with her in some other places.'

            We immediately hooked up some dates. And we started corresponding through E-mails and found that there were all sorts of other connections there, which were almost scary - in the sense that the musical communication that had been so obviously right just extended to all aspects of life.

 
Is that accurate?

Shaham: Absolutely. When you meet your soul mate it's a pretty surprising event in all the different ways it unfolds. Each level of it is shocking. 

Shocking is a good word. 

Shaham: The punchline to the story is that in fact I had never said anything about wanting to play the Chopin concerto, but it was one of those classic cases where somebody in the agency probably thought it was a good idea for me to be playing it. So they were the ones who suggested it. I had plenty of other things I could have done. 

Robertson: It was a big surprise to both of us that this was the piece we ended up performing together. Of course, it's a very romantic piece. One could say that some of the spell of the music was involved.  

Shaham: Some of the spell of the orchestra was also involved. 

Robertson: Right, absolutely.
 

Your appearance as pinch-conductor in the 11^th hour (Shaham makes the motion of a batter's swing) at Carnegie Hall is becoming the stuff of legend. Can you talk about that experience? 

Robertson: It was very funny because it was just during the period I was actually moving my base of operations from Europe back to the States, so I had looked forward to having this week-and-a-half to learn all sorts of scores because I had some important concerts coming up in Boston, Chicago, and Minnesota. And they were one right after another - they were literally wedged in with a shoehorn. I was flying back-and-forth between performances.

            So I thought, 'This is good. This is a week-and-a-half of absolute utter calm with nothing to do.'

            I arrived in New York. I got this telephone call. They said, 'Could you do this?' I said, 'Oh, my goodness.'

            The thing is, normally I would have said 'No,' for a number of reasons.

            One: the free time. Really, it's dangerous if you use it up, because it means later on you'll arrive and you won't be as prepared as you should be.

            Two: on paper, I had only spent a total of five dates with that Orchestra - three performance dates and two rehearsal dates - and that had been three years previous. We're not talking about a group that I know very well.

            In addition: the program was one that we would have to change. And we would have to change it to works that neither the orchestra nor I had played recently.

            All of that being the case, I thought, 'Yeah, but this is these people. And this is Hans. And they're in trouble.' So I said, 'Yes.'

            We had a three-hour rehearsal on Friday. What was fascinating was that in coming back it seemed like it had maybe been a couple of months since I had seen them rather than three years. It was just amazing.

            There was this type of communication. We were all coming into it a little bit nervous. I think after the first 10 minutes it felt like we'd been doing this so often that it was practically a routine that everybody understood.

            That was really extraordinary. And that meant that under extremely difficult circumstances we were able to give a concert that was of really great quality. That was something that really, really was a special moment. I think that was the moment where I said 'I'm going to watch this orchestra very carefully and see what happens.'
 

I think you've already been alluding to this, but talk about this Orchestra in terms of how it attracted you as its Music Director - speaking both of the legacy here and the realm of opportunities. 

Robertson: I think the thing that impressed me first with the Orchestra was the absolute generosity of spirit. The music is the thing that comes first and it's as though the whole ego question - which you can get when you're trying to blend a group of artists to a really unified presentation of a piece - that doesn't seem to exist here. It's all about really making the music and getting that message across - what the music has to offer. That was probably the first thing that impressed me.

            I was happy to come back and immediately say 'Let's do more things.' But the thing which -- in terms of accepting the long-term position -- was one of the main convincing factors had to do with when they really got in trouble financially.

            When many other groups in that situation would have said 'We're going to either let the artistic level drop or let go of programs that are less interesting to us,' the things that they held onto with great tenacity were the education and outreach programs. That seemed to me a huge indicator of the type of people that I want to build something with, because that's the most important part of the job.

            You see, the concert is the top of the pyramid. Any musician knows this. Any musician knows that the performance - we've seen it with Orli. She'll work on a piece like the Paganini Variations of Rachmaninoff. And if you count the number of notes that she has to play - in a concert it's probably five cents a note. It's a pretty good deal. Yet at the same time, the amount of preparation that goes into it means that in monetary terms, the concert is actually - because of the number of times those notes need to be played and thought about and caressed and cared for - may be 1/100^th of a cent.

            So, in economic terms, you can't make that part work. You have to make the whole aspect work, the whole process of learning and getting to know music. The concert is one part, but everything at the base of the pyramid - from getting people to understand how to listen, to getting them to understand that a live performance or a live interaction with musicians is simply like a live conversation. They're a part of it.

            So the Orchestra decided it had to keep the education and outreach programs in place - and those programs are some of the best in the country.

            That was one of the moments at which I said 'These people may be having difficulty at the moment, but they're trying to move forward, and they're doing it the right way.'

            I think that combined with the extraordinary quality  - in German I would want to say Menscheit, this real 'human,' in the best sense - that the musicians have, that people in the staff have, that people in the chorus have. All of this was something that made it very difficult not to say 'Yes!' immediately when they said 'Would you be involved?'

            But the point is that in any relationship like this you want to be absolutely certain that it blesses everyone -- that I am really the thing they want and they are going to be able to do the things that I think are important. I think that it's really an excellent match.
 

I don't expect you to give your takes on St. Louis because you haven't been here enough, but if you want tell me. But you've talked about how a conductor needs to be a part of the community in which he works. What does that mean to you and how do you see your role in the community? 

Robertson: It's very interesting, because one of the things that I despise in the music profession is this sort of generic programming. 'I play these pieces, so this is what I'm going to do with your orchestra.' That seems to be a pretty common occurance. You can notice the artists who take around the same piece and the same program from place to place - not taking notice how one community is different from another. I really like to think about the place, the type of music that they like - the tradition, the sort of people they are - to make something that is really special for them.

            If you're going to do that on more than a single one- or two-concert program basis or season, you really need to begin to know the community better. When the formal request came, 'Would you like to be associated with us on a long-term basis?' one of the first things I said, and I discussed it with Orli, was 'Could we go on a three-day fact-finding tour?'

            In fact, we came down and we toured around all sorts of different kinds of neighborhoods and saw the different qualities that each one possessed. We met with a lot of different people. We started to actually explore what the place was like.

            Everything we saw there indicated that this is the right type of place to come to. We went to Busch Stadium and saw the Cardinals absolutely clobber the Mets. I found that I didn't feel any remorse about the Mets getting beat by such a good team.

            Although I'm not happy about other artists who take the same program around, I understand their point of view. But it's important for the organization to say 'Look, we have this here. Our idea of music is this. And it is nurtured from the actual community in which we live.' This is the whole reason to have a permanent symphony orchestra.

 
Do you want to add your impressions of the city when you took your three-day tour? 

Shaham: The thing that impressed us the most is how many different types of communities - communities plural - there are. And yet they're all integrated; they're all part of St. Louis. It really is one big city but it has so many different things to offer.

            It's also such an exciting place at the moment. We both have seen this neighborhood -- since the very first time that we came -- Grand Center, has grown up like you wouldn't believe. 

Robertson: It's blossoming. 

Shaham: All these buildings coming up. Not only is it a great type of place but it's a great time for the place. It really seems that the convergence of those two things make it the perfect time to come in and see what we can do.
 

You have to ask this in St. Louis. Are you sports fans? 

Robertson: We like sports. I have to be very careful because Orli is the real aficionado.  

Shaham: I'm a big baseball fan, so with the Cardinals I'm very happy. David has a personal connection to the Rams. 

Robertson: That's true. I don't want to make the Orchestra upset, but finding out that my home football team that I grew up with was actually here was a big part of the ease of making the choice. 

Shaham: We wouldn't want to leave anybody out - we like ice hockey too. 

I've come across more than one critic using the word 'adventurous' in describing you both as a conductor and a programmer. Of course the hard part is to convince both the musicians and the audience to participate in the adventure. How do you do that?

Shaham: Not these musicians. 

Robertson: 'Adventure' is one of these words that cuts both ways. If somebody comes back from holiday or vacation and you say, 'How was it?' And they say, 'It was a real adventure,' you wait for more information, because you don't know if they're using it in the sense of 'And we never want to do it again,' or 'We discovered things that we had no inkling of before we left, even though we knew we might find some things like this when we went to the place.'

            For example, we went to Australia this summer. We knew a number of the things we were going to find there, and yet, the actual experience of the place, and being in the different areas, totally overwhelmed any sense that we had of what it was before we went.

            This is precisely the area in which music works. Somebody can say to you, 'You know, this piece by Johann Sebastian Bach is really great.' And you say, 'Well, that's good.' And yet, you hear this piece performed and it brings things out that you never suspected were possible, because it is doing it in its own medium, in its own world.

            For an audience and an orchestra, the sense of an adventure, the sense that every single time the musicians pick up their instruments - particularly musicians of this caliber - it's something of a minor miracle.

            The real power of music: the whole opera of Wagner's Rienzi -- which has this huge story -- he starts it with a single note on the trumpet with a crescendo and a diminuendo. And there is this type of magic in just a single note played that completely transforms the atmosphere.

            You've certainly heard it with children. I've done many youth concerts in Lyon. There's the moment they're all making little sorts of noises, and you suddenly start to sing, just softly. Two thousand kids suddenly become absolute listeners. The silence is huge. Every mother knows this when she's singing to a crying child.

            It's not something that should be a surprise, and yet because this adventure is so open ended and can go in so many different ways, I think what first needs to be built up is a sense of trust. A sense that if I come to this and I give myself to this adventure I will be rewarded by a very special experience that cannot be replaced by any other experience. And once you gain that sense of trust, there isn't any area that you can't go into.
 

From Lyon to St. Louis is something of a leap. I'm reminded of Rita Hayworth's comment when she came back to the States after she married Aly Khan. They asked her what was the first thing she wanted to do. She said, 'I can't wait to eat a hot dog.'   I wonder if there is something welcome about getting back to the American familiar. 

Robertson: There are so many things it's actually hard to name them all. One of the things that is very nice - it's kind of prosaic but it's really nice - is just that we all have the same reference. We know the same TV shows. There are all sorts of things in the culture that I can allude to and people will get things. I can also do this in other cultures, but it doesn't have the same degree of richness that it does when I'm working with an American orchestra. It's not just a question of language; it's really a question of experience.

            There are so many different aspects. I think one of the things that is very refreshing in the United States is that you don't need to be introduced to someone before you can talk to them. You can just talk to a taxi driver. You can just talk to somebody in the airport. Particularly in Europe this is not done because you need a formal introduction by a third person. If you don't have that you make a joke about it, 'We acted like adults so we just introduced ourselves.' But it's to cover over the embarrassment that this wasn't done. The people that you meet in a bus station or in a restaurant or waiting in line for a ballgame - you can actually have a human interaction with them, which is really open and easy and serves its purpose there. It serves its purpose to say, 'Yes, we're all in this together. Isn't that great?' I think that's one of the nicest things about the American culture. 

Shaham: That's one of the things I see in him the most. I'm watching this transition, and the thing is there's a philosophy here. That's where the heart of it is: the American philosophy of openness and open-mindedness and inclusiveness. That's the thing that's so different, and that's where I see David sort of drinking it up. He's so thirsty for it. It's not that you don't have that in certain circles in other places, but here this is really a way of life. It's a pretty impressive change.
 

Have you visited such St. Louis icons as Ted Drewes? Has Perlman told you about the Ted Drewes concrete? 

Robertson: (Laughter) We've heard about Ted Drewes. 

Shaham: We're looking forward to a Ted Drewes visit. 

Robertson: You see, my mother in the latter part of her life took up a second career as a pastry chef. One of the things for which she was famous was custard. I think of myself as having a real discerning taste with regard to custard. Part of the problem is that every time one's had custard in other places you always think, 'You know (sighs), this isn't real custard.' So finally I am in a place that has custard of the standard that one can use the name appropriately and call it 'custard.'
 

And how do you feel about Krispy Kremes? 

Shaham: (Laughter) We're big fans. 

Robertson: In fact we go to the gym quite frequently. I work on the treadmill or the bicycle and I look and say 'There we go. I just managed to work that donut off.'

Can a native Californian find happiness in the Midwest? 

Robertson: It's very interesting. My family - especially on my father's side, but even to some extent on my mother's side - they're pioneer stock. They actually came across, homesteaded. Though they settled around the areas of Utah, Oregon, Idaho, California, they did spend time in the Midwest. 

Shaham: Your father actually lived here. 

Robertson: My father actually lived in St. Louis for about six months. My grandfather worked for Royal Dutch Shell during the Depression. They spent some time in New Mexico and then they went to Europe for a year. Then they came back to the United States, and before settling near Houston they spent some time in St. Louis before the company transferred them back to Houston.

            It's a nice sense of 'This is a part of the country.' One of the things that's also fascinating for me is that it's a part of the country that I don't know very well. I'm looking forward to discovering it. When I was a child we got in the car. I know intimately all of the western states up to Canada and Alaska. We didn't have the time to actually explore this part of the country. For me, in a sense, it's very new and exotic. It's nice to look at that as a possibility to actually explore it, to delve beneath the surface and see what there is.
 

I wanted to give you a big lollapalooza question to end. This is a city that faces a lot of challenges and a lot of opportunities in this first decade of the 21^st century. How can a world-class orchestra with a world-class conductor affect the character of a city? 

Robertson: In so many ways.

            One of the ways is that music is a kind of place where everybody's free to meet regardless of what their background is, regardless of their heritage, or regardless of their personal preoccupations. It's this sort of open space. It's an open form where you can come and be involved with what it means to be part of the human community.

            When that's done on a nice level, it's one of those things where you say 'OK. That's good. It's nice to see that human beings can do good things.'

            When it's done on the highest level possible, it reminds you that this is what people are capable of - despite the fact that when you turn on the television you see so many things that point in the opposite direction.

            This constantly putting in front of people 'This is what you can achieve. This is what being human ought to be about. This is what working together really means.' You have this whole orchestra in front of you and they're all playing different instruments, which all have a different background, and they all have a different way of coming to the fore. Yet at the same time, the thing that's going on is that every single person is adding their own quality to this communal experience. Without one single member of that orchestra, it wouldn't be fulfilled, it wouldn't be whole, and it wouldn't be what it is that we need.

            This aspect of having really the world class, really the highest level of achievement, in the midst of a group of people, can be a constant source of inspiration on so many different levels. It's impossible to describe. However, it's not impossible to make that felt over the course of one season, two seasons, three seasons. That's the reason that we have a symphony orchestra here