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Just weeks after guest conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival, where he was music director from 2005 to 2015, James Conlon will have an unexpected reunion with the ensemble Oct. 21-23 in Orchestra Hall.
The maestro is substituting for Michael Tilson Thomas, who was to lead two sets of concerts with the CSO. But it was announced in August that Tilson Thomas had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and had undergone successful surgery immediately afterward. Months of necessary follow-up therapy necessitated his canceling all of his appearances through October.
“First and most importantly, I hope that Michael gets well soon,” Conlon said. “I am always happy to help out when one of my colleagues is indisposed, and especially so when it is the CSO.”
In what he called “complete happenstance,” Conlon was able to squeeze the CSO rehearsals and performances between the first and second performances of a Tannhäuser production at the Los Angeles Opera. “It fit like a jigsaw puzzle,” he said.
To accommodate Conlon, who didn’t have time to learn or relearn the repertoire that had originally been scheduled for these CSO concerts, the program has been modified, with short works by Grieg and Brahms dropped. As part of the CSO’s season-long salute to Sergei Prokofiev, Conlon will lead the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Ukrainian-born soloist Alexander Gavrylyuk. The CSO gave the American premiere of the work in 1918 with the composer at the keyboard. Rounding out the line-up is Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a, and Schubert’s Symphony No. 3.
“I wanted to pair something Russian with the Prokofiev, and the Chamber Symphony — which is an orchestral version of the Eighth String Quartet — seemed perfect,“ he said. ”The quartet is among Shostakovich’s masterpieces and most universally loved works. As a total contrast, I chose the Schubert Third Symphony. It needs no introduction nor explanation if you love Schubert. I do.”
Conlon, 71, has a reputation for longevity in the major posts he has held. Nowhere was that more in evidence than at the Cincinnati May Festival, where he served for 37 years as music director, one of longest tenures ever of any artistic leader of an American classical-music institution.
But he broke that tradition last year when he stepped down after just four years as principal conductor of the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI (RAI National Symphony Orchestra) in Turin, Italy — the first American to hold the position. The official ensemble of RAI, the Italian public broadcasting network, it is one of the world’s leading radio orchestras.
Conlon explained that his departure was simply a matter of his contract ending. He will continue to return to the orchestra as a guest conductor, and indeed, he already made one such appearance in March and has other engagements planned elsewhere in Italy. “It’s true that if you compare the amount of time at the RAI with all my other music-director tenures, which are historically long compared to most tenures of most people, it’s a short tenure,” he said.
But if Conlon’s time in Turin was unusually condensed, he is holding true to form at the Los Angeles Opera, where he began his 16th season as music director with Verdi’s Il trovatore, which opened Sept. 18. Earlier that month, the opera company announced that it had extended Conlon’s contract through the end of 2024-25.
“This is a music directorship that has given me particular pleasure and sense of mission,” he said. “It was still a comparatively young opera company when I came to it. What I could not have known is how much I was going to love it. So, I hope and intend to stay.”
The latest title that the conductor has added to his resume is artistic adviser of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Marin Alsop concluded her 14-year music directorship with the ensemble at the end of the 2020-21 season, and Conlon was invited to oversee its artistic activities as it engages in a search for her replacement; he will lead several sets of concerts each season. “They came to me, explained what they needed and the situation, and I accepted,” he said. “I am not a candidate for the position. I’ve made that clear. I’m there to run the ship for three years or until they find a music director, and I’m very happy to do so.”
For his first set of concerts Oct. 1-2 with the Baltimore Symphony, he helmed a program that included William Dawson’s largely forgotten Negro Folk Symphony. Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered the work in 1934 at Carnegie Hall, and the famed conductor later recorded it with another ensemble. Conlon led the work with the Aspen Festival Orchestra on July 18 at the Aspen Music Festival, and he has plans to perform it as well with the Cincinnati Symphony. “I am now officially baptized as an advocate of this piece,” he said.
Conlon believes many other works by Black composers have been unfairly ignored and await rediscovery. “Since the George Floyd murder [by Minneapolis police last year] we are looking at ourselves again and asking ourselves questions, which we should be, and one of the things that comes up for a classical musician is that there’s a lot of good music there that has been neglected,“ he said. ”So this is a small step in trying to help to correct that.”
With the end of Conlon’s tenure with the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, he no longer has a music director post with a symphony orchestra, something he has had for much of his career. He has no plans to seek another such position, but he is open to one should it come along. “I will just continue to do what I’ve always done, which is to conduct and to be serious about my music-making and not to look for jobs,“ he said. ”If a job finds me, and I like it, I will take it. So nothing’s changed.”
