The struggle for audience -- and personal life

David Robertson: Career chromatics

In this story: 'Need a career to have a career' 'Human condition' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Porter Anderson
CNN Career

(CNN) -- There's a common assumption -- particularly among overworked staffers at nonprofit arts organizations -- that Europeans are the easiest sell in the world on good music, dance, theater, visual art, you name it.

But a conversation with David Robertson suggests the Euro-grass may not be all that much greener.

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The California-born Robertson -- who this week conducts the New York Philharmonic in part of its Arnold Schoenberg retrospective -- is music director of the Orchestre National de Lyon in France. And if the Austrian-American Schoenberg (1874-1951) changed the course of modern musical composition with his 12-tone scale (thus the introduction of "atonality"), Robertson says that drawing a crowd to the arts, wherever you are, is a matter of matching your setting to your service.

"We're blessed in Lyon," he says, "to have a town with a compact center -- and people living in it," as opposed to the non-residential urban cores now at the heart of many large cities. "The solutions I've put into place in Lyon are intrinsic only to it. We do concerts at different times of day, of different lengths, using different repertoire."

For example, there are his lunchtime 45-minute "Espresso Concerts" that fit the time and duration of most Lyon careerists' lunch hour. "Each concert is a unique event. We make no bones about the music, it's lighter -- you get your sandwich, and instead of looking at shop windows, you listen to music. Spiritual food instead of material food."

While the Lyon appointment -- which includes control of the city's auditorium -- is relatively recent for Robertson, "I've been on French terrain for some nine years."

Born in 1958 in Santa Monica, California, Robertson is the son of parents who loved music. "My father was a research scientist at Hughes Laboratory (in Malibu). He worked in chemistry, physics, applied chemistry, even the space program, pretty much an all-'rounder. My mother was an English major specializing in Shakespeare. Near the end of her life she became a baker. When Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan came out to Malibu at Pepperdine (University), she catered for them.

Arnold Schoenberg A New York Philharmonic retrospective •  Occasion: 50th anniversary of Schoenberg's death (1874-1951) •  Runs: Through May 12 •  Schoenberg works being performed: "Erwartung," "Accompaniment to a Film Scene," "Pelleas und Melisande," •  Where: Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City •  Concert information: Philharmonic Web site (see Related Sites below)

"So coming to Lyon has some recognition for me. The dinner table conversations were far-reaching. I liked music early on and Santa Monica's schools have a great music program. In the end, I went to the Royal Academy of Music in London to major in (French) horn playing and composition."

After several years of education in Europe, Robertson realized his stronger contacts in music -- and the conducting invitations that were starting to arrive -- were there, not Stateside. As in many other professions, Robertson was learning, in music, "You need a career to have a career."

And part of Robertson's growing career came from speaking assignments with the (now defunct) U.S. Information Agency. "They'd call and say, 'Ankara and Istanbul -- they're doing a conference on popular culture between the world wars. Can you do music?'"

Those gigs and free-lance opera-conducting stints between 1987 and 1992 brought Robertson steadily into the light now focused on him as the first artist to appear in a new four-year program, the Diamond American Conductor Debut Week, with the New York Philharmonic.

The Diamond initiative is intended to put emerging American conductors onto the podium, with funding from the Irene Diamond Fund.

Robertson -- in concert Thursday through Saturday -- will be conducting Schoenberg's 1909 "Erwartung" ("Expectation"), a monodrama based on poetry of Richard Dehmel. The piece is about a woman who discovers her lover's murdered body. Soprano Françoise Pollet makes her Philharmonic debut in the work. Also on Robertson's program this week are Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" prelude and Ludwig von Beethoven's Symphony No. 5.

'Human condition'

Robertson's comfort in 20th-century music includes his work with more than 35 operas and was recognized in a Conductor of the Year citation from Musical America for 2000. He's a past recipient of the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductor Award, which is conferred on American conductors who are deemed to have exceptional potential for career development.

"But this is a hard life, personally and professionally," Robertson says.

David Robertson

"You're talking to someone who's divorced for the second time. I have two wonderful boys. They live with their mother in Germany. Single-handedly, I'm supporting many of the telephone companies of the world. And I have frequent-flyer miles off the chart. "Thank God for e-mail -- and sometimes, yeah, it's about a little less sleep," the work of maintaining close relationships internationally.

And in his career development, Robertson continues to focus on what he sees as a need to specify, target, focus artistic expression.

"One tends to say 'the public.' That's a generalization possibly worse than any other. All classes, races, social strata, colors.

"But as Montaigne said so well, each person contains inside him the human condition. We're all developing at different rates. The effect we want is one-on-one. If you manage to convey that message in a concert -- if that message changes from day to day, from concert to concert -- then, you can make something clear to your audience."

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Musical America
The New York Philharmonic
Pepperdine University
Royal Academy of Music

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