All essays

The famous Ritual Fire Dance has taken on a life of its own — but it is a scene, not a crowd-pleaser. My reading is that El amor brujo does not depict a ritual from outside; it is a ritual in music. From the 1915 Pastora Imperio commission and the Andalusian Roma world of Granada, the work carries the shape of an exorcism: a call, a lament, the fire that burns something out, and the morning bells that return us to day. On leading an audience through an action, not merely an i

El sombrero de tres picos is two things at once: an authentic Spanish festival of dance and an advanced modernist score. From the 1919 Ballets Russes premiere in London — Ansermet, Massine, Picasso, de Falla — the work carries both the folklore and the modernism without letting go of either. For me as a conductor it is at once the invitation to let loose and the reminder that I may not. On the opening '¡Olé!', the miller's farruca, and the closing jota.

Symphonie fantastique opens not in a symphonic landscape but inside a head — one that remembers, dreams, searches. My reading is that this is the first work where the orchestra is so openly moved into a consciousness: the sound points not outward toward storm or bird, but inward. The unanswered horn call is not an image of loneliness — it is loneliness. On the transformations of the idée fixe, and what it means for a conductor to make the orchestra a mind rather than a narrat

I thought I knew La Traviata. It took me half an hour of the first rehearsal to understand that I really didn't.