Meet music’s last-minute maestro
mainIn September, the Danish conductor Thomas Søndergård stepped in at three days notice to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam.
Last month, he stood in for Valery Gergiev with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Next week, he’s replacing Dan Ettinger for Turandot at the Bavarian State Opera.
He’s classical music’s last-minute.com.
The next stage of this will be that such brilliant talents will be able to retroactively subsitute for proactively cancelling conductors, thanks to time travelling and flexible social media networks which predict weeks in advance who will fall ill.
A taste of future worm hole opportunities can already be experienced by orchestras who had booked Gergiev on evenings where he had already been booked elsewhere, so that he appears at two or three locations at the same time, an ability in former times exclusively exercized by RC Saints.
Must be reflection on all the fantastic opportunities and repertoire that Thomas has been working on with the BBC National Orchestra of wales over his term as Principal conductor!
Funnily enough he came to their notice originally by stepping in for someone who was ill. . . . Of such moments, careers are made.