When legendary maestro Claudio Abbado handed Diego Matheuz his baton during a rehearsal of the Orchestra Mozart in Italy, the young violinist was surprised. “I didn’t know he knew I was a conductor; I was just starting to conduct,” he recalled in a recent conversation. “The next day he called me to his dressing room, and he asked me if I wanted to be his assistant.”
That was a turning point in the Venezuelan’s conducting career. He has since held positions at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and Seiji Ozawa’s Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan. He is now principal conductor of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra in Caracas. Matheuz is conducting the New York Philharmonic in his subscription debut (having led Members of the New York Philharmonic in Rubén Blades’s Maestra Vida last spring), October 23–25. “This orchestra is famous for the legendary sound that they have. I have been visualizing the moment of the first three minutes of making music with them.” The works he selected hold significant meaning for him. He grew up playing Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony as a violinist in his home country’s El Sistema program, and has now conducted it many times. “This piece has been part of very important moments of my life and in my career.” He feels that the Korngold Violin Concerto is one of the most beautiful pieces of the repertoire and adds of the soloist, New York Philharmonic Concertmaster Frank Huang, “Everyone, especially violin players, knows him. I’m looking forward to having the pleasure of working with him.”
The composition that opens the program is by Inocente Carreño, a fellow Venezuelan who died in 2016. Matheuz played his colorful Margariteña many times, but these concerts mark the first time the New York Philharmonic has performed any of Carreño’s music. Matheuz says that the piece evokes the feeling of Isla Margarita, the beautiful Caribbean island, and of his interpretation adds: “I want to bring in a bit of Venezuelan flavor, but in my own particular way."
Speaking of another countryman, Matheuz has known Gustavo Dudamel—now the Philharmonic’s Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Music & Artistic Director Designate — since they were children. “We studied in the same conservatory,” he recalls. “We played in the same orchestra. We had a very good group of friends. I remember early days in the conservatory we played soccer a lot. We shared many, many moments both onstage and offstage. I was part of the youth orchestra of Venezuela when he started to conduct. We still are wonderful friends.”
Asked to look back at where his love of music began, Matheuz returns to his childhood. His father was an amateur player of the cuatro (Venezuelan guitar) who loved music. The conductor remembers: “He brought me to the conservatory, because he heard they were doing lessons for free for the kids, and that was El Sistema.” On that first day, the conservatory handed young Mathuez a cello, but he didn’t stick with that instrument for long — for pragmatic reasons. “My father had a small car, and I have two sisters. With the cello … there was no space. One day he stopped the car, went to a store, and bought a Chinese violin for me, saying, ‘This is like the cello, but smaller. Now we will have more space in the car.’ But I was so happy with my new violin. I remember that day like yesterday.”
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