Charles Dutoit is one of the world’s greatest conductors – and most feared. Now he’s been awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society and is still in fighting spirit.
Dutoit feels this slow apprenticeship has stood him in good stead. “Nowadays young musicians have everything under their fingertips, they can learn a new piece just by listening to it on YouTube. They are amazingly well-informed but they have no culture. In my day everything was slow, but it meant that it was rooted,” he says. “You had to seek things out and work on them slowly with the score. That’s why at the beginning I was cautious about accepting big engagements. After I made my conducting debut in Berne I came to the attention of the Vienna State Opera, partly thanks to Karajan, and they made me the most amazing offer. ‘Come and conduct The Marriage of Figaro and then Carmen for us’, they said. No young conductor nowadays would turn down such an offer, but I said I wasn’t ready. They said ‘Well, how about Swan Lake with Nureyev and Fonteyn?, and I said, ‘Yes that I can manage’.” As consolation prizes go, that seems better than most.
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