Jader Bignamini in Detroit

Recorded in concert last November and releaed on Pentatone at the end of June, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's account of Orff's Carmina Burana with their Music Director Jader Bignamini has made quite an impact, with BBC Music Magazine selecting it as their Choral Choice for July and describing the dynamic Italian as 'a maestro with eyes ablaze'; Gramophone enthused that the massed forces 'deliver in spades, the chorus in particular relishing the onomatopoeic drive of the texts' and also appreciated Bignamini's 'cool way with the more fragrant pages of springtime and the court of love'. 

A few hours before conducting one of the orchestra's annual Salute To America concerts (which this year featured John Williams's Olympic Fanfare and the overture to Bernstein's Candide, Bignamini spoke to me from a sweltering Greenfield Village about the challenges involved in making such a popular work feel fresh and exciting, some of the people who supported and inspired him throughout his transition from the woodwind section to the podium, what he learned from his two-decade career as an orchestral clarinettist, and why symphony concerts in Detroit often 'feel like being at a football game'!

How did Carmina Burana come into your life: as a child chorister, audience-member, or orchestral player?

I don’t actually remember when I first heard it, but I was probably very young: the piece is super-popular in Italy, up there with Beethoven 9 and the Verdi Requiem. They’re so satisfying for the performers and audiences alike, but in all honesty I didn’t find it particularly interesting when I came to it as a clarinettist. It was only after I became a conductor that I fell under its spell, because it’s a very peculiar score in terms of the way it blends old and new elements: sometimes it’s primitive, sometimes it’s modern, sometimes it’s rock! 

I was so happy to get the chance to record it. The orchestra began a collaboration with Pentatone last year - sometimes they propose repertoire to us and sometimes it works the other way round. Carmina was one of their suggestions, and I was very up for it because I love to have a lot of people on stage! What with the large children’s chorus and all those percussionists I think we had around 200 musicians on the platform – almost like one of the big Mahler symphonies!

What do you see as the main challenges of the score?

There’s no one passage that gives me sleepless nights, but there are so many interesting contrasts to work on: Carmina only comes alive if you have a different sound for every section of the piece. A lot of that comes down to the string sound - which might seem a bit strange in a piece that’s such a great showcase for brass and percussion! - and we did some really detailed work on how to use different parts of the bow to achieve specific colours and textures. We’re very lucky to have a great concertmaster in Robyn Bollinger, who is very precise and forensic in sectionals: she always knows just what I want and exactly how to get it from her players.

Rhythm is so important, not only because there’s so much percussion but also because it drives so much of the choral writing – I told the singers that I needed them to bite the words! Each phrase needs to be full of energy. Of course there are some calmer stretches but nailing that rhythmic incisiveness is the basis for building the whole piece. 

With every piece I conduct, my goal is always to observe what the composer has written as closely as possible, and that’s especially true with something as popular as Carmina. There are probably hundreds of recordings, and the only reason to do another one is to stick with what’s there in the score…Listening back to the edits, I thought we achieved that - and I still do!

How did the young singers of the Detroit Opera Youth Chorus respond to the piece?

They enjoyed every second, and so did I – I love having children on stage, because they bring this contagious energy which infects the older musicians too! Their enthusiasm was incredible, and so was the quality of their singing: the children’s choir doesn’t actually have that much to do in Carmina, but what they do have is so crucial to the performance’s success. Our young singers were so well prepared, and super-responsive in rehearsals: they really understood what sort of atmosphere I wanted and found exactly the right colours to create that.

What was the thinking behind casting a countertenor rather than a high tenor as the roasted swan?

That’s one of the decisions you have to make about this piece, and to my mind it was the right choice to use a countertenor because it fits so well with that uncanny, neo-medieval soundworld that Orff creates. And Reggie [Mobley] is just incredible – we played through the movement once, I asked him to do a couple of small things, and he nailed them all on the first attempt!

Is this a live recording with patching, or did you set down the piece in the studio after the concerts?

I always prefer to record live: the energy is great in Detroit because we have a very big and very warm audience, and that fuels us to give better performances every night. For Carmina, we recorded three concerts and had our usual short patch-session afterwards: just twenty minutes on the very beginning and end of the piece to catch any extraneous noise from the audience as they’re settling down or getting ready to leave!  Other than that, it’s genuinely a live recording. 

How did your transition from clarinettist to conductor come about?

I started playing the clarinet professionally when I was twenty, but I began conducting my wind band when I was nineteen – I was always passionate about conducting, but it was just something I enjoyed on the side. Over the fifteen years I spent as an orchestral clarinettist, the drive to pursue conducting seriously became stronger. I enjoyed my career as a clarinettist, but as an orchestral player your job is basically to do what the conductor asks of you: I realised that I wanted to be the person doing the asking! There was no sabbatical, and no grand announcement or resignation: I just did both things in parallel for a weird crossover period where I was a clarinettist and Assistant Conductor in the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano. 

The transition felt very natural and I was lucky to be surrounded by people who believed in me. I had a lot of mentors, starting with Riccardo Chailly who was my Music Director when I joined the Milan orchestra as a clarinettist - he gave me lots of helpful suggestions at the beginning of my conducting career, and his successor Xian Zhang (who’s now Music Director of the Seattle Symphony) was also incredibly supportive. 

I also learned a lot from observing conductors from my position in the orchestra, but eventually I reached a point where the most important thing was having the opportunity to get up there and do it myself! Luigi Corbani, who was then the General Manager of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, was so instrumental in making that happen – he gave me the right opportunities step by step, starting with the family concerts and working up from there. I had the opportunity to study 200 or 300 scores over a couple of years, and that was such a meaningful way to learn the craft.

The most important thing I learned from my time as an orchestral musician was how to read people, how to take the temperature of an orchestra. I might want the same thing from the concertmaster, the principal cello and the first horn but need to frame it in a different way for each of them, just because people vary!

Breath is so important for music. As a wind player and an opera lover it’s very natural for me, but teaching the orchestra to breathe together can have such a transformative effect - string players understandably forget to do that sometimes, which can lead to all kinds of musical and physical problems. 

What’s the story behind your appointment in Detroit?

It happened in 2018, when the outgoing Music Director Leonard Slatkin had planned to mark the end of his tenure with a concert performance of Turandot but had to cancel because of surgery. A few months before that, the Detroit CEO Erik Rönmark (who was then Artistic Director) had seen me conducting Madama Butterfly at the Metropolitan Opera, so he asked my management if I was available to step in. The travel involved was crazy because I had to fly into Detroit for Turandot, then straight off to Japan afterwards - it was literally a trip around the world, and I ended up losing a day of my life because of the time zones!

It was absolutely worth it, though, because Turandot was great and they invited me back immediately to do Mahler’s Symphony No. 4; a couple of days later 100% of the players voted me in as Music Director! It meant so much to have unanimous backing from the orchestra, and it was the perfect way to start a relationship.

What struck me about this orchestra from the very beginning was that they’re extremely professional but also extremely relaxed – they work and smile at the same time, which I love! My contract runs through till 2031, and working here is such a joy: I've definitely found the right place for me.

I spend twelve weeks per year in Detroit, and outside of that I do a lot of guest conducting across Europe and the rest of the US, so things are pretty busy: mostly it works because my wife is such a rockstar! 

What’s next for the orchestra?

We have a great season coming up with some fabulous soloists like Daniil Trifonov, James Ehnes and Joshua Bell, and we’re very lucky to have a wonderful Principal Guest Conductor in Tabita Berglund. Every year we do a concert performance of an opera: this year it was Carmen and next season it’s La bohème, both of which are fantastic opportunities for our wonderful children’s chorus. It’s a great way to connect all the strands. The orchestra is in such a good place at the moment, and I don't think I’m biased when I say we’re one of the best in the US right now. Our audience is growing all the time, and they’re so enthusiastic – sometimes it feels like being at a football game because people whoop and scream at the end of a piece! I love that.

You mentioned your love of opera, and have a busy schedule on that front next season - do you specialise in a particular period or genre?

I love all opera – bel canto, verismo, Mozart, Wagner, there’s nothing that doesn’t excite me! Having said that, there are maybe some composers who are closer to my soul: Verdi, Puccini, and Rossini in particular. I’ve had some great times at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and I’m looking forward to doing Barbiere at the Opéra de Paris in September.

I’m the same with symphonic repertoire – my favourite composer is always the one that I’m studying at the moment!  I love Mahler and Strauss with a passion, but when I conduct Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky or French music I feel just as strongly about them.