Page 283 - Liverpool Philharmonic 22-23 Season Coverage Book

I don’t believe that a conductor’s roots should dictate their repertoire: being Venezuelan doesn’t
mean I’m going to do all South American music, any more than I’d do all German music if I were
German! But nevertheless I do know this repertoire very well, and the audience and orchestra
love it, so there will definitely be more…We have so many great composers from the 1940s-60s
in particular, including people like Alberto Ginastera (who went to Tanglewood to work with
Copland) and Carlos Chávez. A few of their most important pieces are pretty well known over
here already, so I’m going to bring some of the less familiar ones.

The orchestra already has a strong tradition of doing UK premieres and world premieres, and
we’ll continue with that: there’s going to be a lot of new music this season! Then there’s my
beloved German repertoire, which I grew to love as a student in Geneva and continued with
during my time in Berlin. Bruckner is coming back, almost every season! He’s a composer that
still seems strange to a lot of people, I think, but I’ve loved him since childhood: when I was 13 or
14 I used to play the symphonies at full volume on my stereo like I was blasting rock and roll!
(Listen to those massive brass moments in the last three symphonies and you’ll see why this was
so much fun…).

You're also very active as an opera conductor,

both at Liverpool and further afield - how much of

an opera tradition did the orchestra have before

your appointment?

They did some operas with Vasily [Petrenko, Hindoyan's predecessor], including Tosca , Così fan
tutte and Mendelssohn’s Die Hochzeit des Camacho , and there’s a great agreement with the
European Opera Centre which is going to continue. In my first season I did Bartók’s Bluebeard’s
Castle , and the orchestra enjoyed it as much as the audience: it’s a very symphonic piece, and
the orchestra’s as important as the singers. It’s my plan to programme a different style of opera
every season, and next up is Gianni Schicchi with Bryn [Terfel] in March…

I love doing concert-versions of opera because they take you to the heart of the music so
directly; even if something’s been done two years ago at Opera North or Covent Garden,
sometimes it’s still nice to do it like this here!

Your friend and mentor Daniel Barenboim will be

joining you for a concerto early in the New Year -

how did you come into his orbit, and what role

has he played in your career to date?

[This conversation took place before Barenboim's recent announcement that he would be
stepping back from performing activities to focus on his health for the foreseeable future - it has
not yet been confirmed whether the concerto performance in January will go ahead as planned].