This article is an excerpt from the interview (in Dutch) in the September edition of Preludium, the monthly magazine of the Concertgebouw Orchestra and The Concertgebouw.
Orozco-Estrada loves doing concerts in unusual places. ‘Of course, performing outdoors has its hazards – it’s tricky for some instruments, the acoustics are challenging, etc. But it’s an incredibly good way to get closer to your audience, as well as to attract other people you might not reach otherwise.
I don’t know Nelson Mandela Park, but I’ve seen that it’s a nice open park – I’m looking forward to being there, as well as to the programme. It’s not easy to think up a good programme for a concert like this. But I can remember that at the very first meeting I had with the orchestra programmers, we all said that whatever we do, we have to ensure that the music on the programme is appropriate to the Concertgebouw Orchestra. So not only cross-over stuff, and not only popular pieces, but a genuinely serious programme. And that’s what we’ve come up with.
Of course this isn’t the time to play a Mahler symphony, and maybe not Death and Transfiguration by Richard Strauss, but we are playing some of his waltzes, from Der Rosenkavalier. They’re not just pretty dance tunes; they’re vintage Strauss, you hear the master composer at work. We’ve also got some high-energy pieces by Stravinsky, and Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre, as well as two very modern pieces. And working with sor is going to be exciting – I don’t know his work yet, but I understand that all of you are familiar with him and that he does interesting things.’
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‘Having fun on the podium’ is what Andrés Orozco-Estrada thinks is important. This is a quality that he radiates, and he did even as a fourteen-year-old, when he first conducted a school orchestra in his native Medellín. When he came to Vienna to study at age nineteen, one of his teachers said to him, ‘You have a whole lot of energy, but just cool down now.’
In Vienna, Orozco-Estrada discovered that, in his own words, he ‘could breathe with an orchestra, and that the whole process is very organic. And above all, make it happen with a lot of joy and enthusiasm!’ And he does.
He became the chief conductor of the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, then for seven years starting in 2014, he combined conductorships with both the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt and the Houston Symphony Orchestra. After his farewell concert in Frankfurt, the Frankfurter Rundschau wrote: ‘An orchestra (…) aims to do its job with pleasure and at the same time make serious progress musically, and of course that’s easier said than done. Yet it is precisely this combination of dancing playfulness and an uncompromising pursuit of perfection that clearly distinguishes the Colombian’s work.’ Since last season, Orozco-Estrada has been leading Italy’s RAI orchestra, and still has the same youthful energy.
At the time this interview took place (last spring), Orozco-Estrada was conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Beethoven’s Fidelio for Dutch National Opera. This was nine years after his debut with the orchestra. Does he remember any of that? ‘I remember all of it! The programme, the musicians, the mood, Mendelssohn with Janine Jansen… I do think it went well, but I was a bit nervous, and it’s always tricky to get a feel for a new orchestra when you only have a short time. It’s nice to have a little bit more time to spend with each other, and an opera production gives you that opportunity. We’ve been working for a few weeks now, and so we can go into much more depth.
It's unbelievable, but since then this orchestra has become even better. Somehow the musicians are more open than nine years ago, more free. I feel very lucky to be getting to know the Concertgebouw Orchestra better and better now.’
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Read the complete interview (in Dutch) by Martijn Voorvelt in Preludium, the magazine of The Concertgebouw and Concertgebouw Orchestra’.
