Often the most interesting nuggets of interviews arrive when questioning dissolves into chatting. “Sorry, that previous answer was a bit wishy-washy,” Robin Ticciati says on reflection: Following the tenor David Butt Philip’s recent Times of London interview, where he advised young UK singers to head abroad for the betterment of their careers post-Brexit, I’d asked Ticciati whether the same applies to budding UK conductors. (He countered that previous routes still apply.) “The reason why I was slightly vague about my answer is due to the fact I was extremely lucky as a young conductor,” he says.
Ticciati’s mentorships with Simon Rattle and Colin Davis, both of whom he met while a violinist in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, do follow the traditional, less formal route of conductor training: getting onside with a maestro or two and seeing what happens. But there can be no doubting Ticciati’s work ethic, which has propelled him to principal positions at Glyndebourne and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. That workaholic energy is a trait that he admits has tipped into overwork; in 2016, a slipped disc in his back put him out of action for months, and genuinely threatened his future in the form.
The four-concert “Music and Healing” festival in Berlin is an intriguing moment then: Ticciati is determined to expand to more than a personal exposition, with searching questions posed constantly. Spread over two weekends in March, it approaches the subject from various angles—in themed concerts and a range of lectures from music psychologists—and a vast array of big repertoire, including “…towards a Pure Land” by Jonathan Harvey, Harrison Birtwistle’s “Panic,” Act III of “Tristan,” “The Rite of Spring,” and Alexander Scriabin’s “Le Poème de l’Extase” all conducted by Ticciati. I spoke with him over the phone from his home in Sussex, England, a few days before the festival.
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