David Robertson heads home, bringing some St. Louis friends

Homecomings manifest themselves in various ways. For conductor David Robertson, his latest return to the Golden State will be the musical equivalent of a ticker-tape parade.

Born in Malibu, Robertson graduated from Santa Monica High School before a long period of European education and employment. But in 2005 he firmly reoriented his career stateside by assuming the music directorship of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, a battered if venerable ensemble that had known better days and needed his combination of technical skill, musical intelligence and infectious enthusiasm. Although he continues to lead concerts throughout the world — he is also principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony — his dominant activity for the past five seasons has been improving the fortunes of the SLSO.

Now, as part of that effort, he is taking the orchestra on the first tour of his tenure, and it’s no coincidence that it begins, on Wednesday, at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Indeed, in a break with standard practice, all five of the tour’s concerts will take place in California.

“Just on a personal level it’s very nice to show off the orchestra to my home state,” said Robertson, 51, by telephone late last month from New York. “I often feel like recordings are beautiful reproductions of original art, and in classical music original artworks are live performances. So this is like taking the masterworks on tour.”

The tour takes Robertson, his players and violin soloist Gil Shaham to four cities ( Palm Desert, Davis and San Francisco are the others), bringing with them music by Mozart, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Sibelius and two living composers: John Adams and Christopher Rouse.

Robertson’s commitment to new music is well known and deeply rooted — from 1992 to 2000 he led Paris’ famed Ensemble Intercontemporain — and he has made programming new works a priority with St. Louis. Indeed, the Adams work on this tour — “Doctor Atomic Symphony,” based on themes from the composer’s opera “Doctor Atomic” — was co-commissioned by the SLSO, as was Meredith Monk’s “Weave,” which the L.A. Master Chorale just performed on Sunday.

“Different communities have different needs in this regard,” said Robertson. “What I’m doing in St. Louis is really for St. Louis. We are programming premieres and putting them in context with older works, as we did recently with Gustav Holst’s “The Planets” and György Ligeti’s Violin Concerto. Our audience was shocked, amazed and bewildered by the concerto but also fully engaged during its 25 minutes. That’s what classical music is about: the honest exchange between listener and musician. And it’s important for each orchestra to do that in its own way.”

Susan Slaughter, the orchestra’s principal trumpet player since the mid-1970s, speaks warmly of Robertson’s ability to charm concertgoers. “He’s very good when he talks to an audience about a piece,” she said. “And he’s able to take away situations of embarrassment like when a cellphone goes off. He turns around and says, ‘That might be important. Want to get it?’ He doesn’t glare at them.”

That fresh approach is much needed after a decade of Job-like trials for the orchestra. In addition to almost going bankrupt, the ensemble has endured the sudden illness and later death of its previous music director, Hans Vonk; a musicians’ strike; and the sharp decline of its endowment due to the present economic downturn. Even now, with things on a surer footing thanks to Robertson and SLSO President and Executive Director Fred Bronstein, who assumed his role just more than two years ago, the orchestra’s musicians are working only 42 weeks a year. (That number rises to 43 next season but remains a far cry from the 52 before 2002.)

Yet at the heart of this recovery is Robertson’s committed music-making. “The thing about David is he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the repertoire,” said star fiddler Shaham, who is not only a regular collaborator but also Robertson’s brother-in-law. “And the perfectionism he demands, above all from himself, inspires everybody around him.”

For Robertson, the St. Louis Symphony’s appeal lies in its approach. “They’re like an enormous workshop of artists, which comes across in how they play. It’s probably always been part of their tradition, but I work hard to maintain it because it’s my approach as well. There is never is a non-committed performance. And this really special magic could be very fragile, so being able to maintain it — and make it less fragile — is something I’m really proud of.”

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