Conductor Nicholas McGegan was supposed to guest conduct The Sarasota Orchestra in September 2022. But Hurricane Ian came to town instead, on the very same day the concert was scheduled.
McGegan said “touch wood,” he hopes to make it this time.
On Saturday, he’ll be conducting the opener of The Sarasota Orchestra’s Discoveries season with a program called “London Calling.” It takes its name from Haydn’s so-called “London” Symphony, his 104th.
“Which, although it's called the London Symphony, Haydn actually wrote 12 of them in London," McGegan said. "It's just that this one, for some reason has taken over the name for the other 12. It's the last symphony he wrote.”
McGegan was born and educated in England and taught at the Royal College of Music. He’s a specialist in Baroque era music, and served for 34 years as the music director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale. It’s an American orchestra, based in San Francisco and dedicated to “historically informed performance of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music on original instruments.”
He is now music director emeritus of PBO. And has been guest conducting orchestras all over the world.
And if you ask him who his favorite English composer is, he will tell you it’s hard to nail it down.
“I could do it in a different way and say that, certainly for a lot of vocal music, and for the Baroque period, then Purcell gets my vote every time. He’s just wonderful," McGegan said. "In the 19th century, I prefer the composers who don't take themselves too seriously. So, Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan always gets my toes tapping."
And McGegan points out that for The Sarasota Orchestra Discoveries program, while Edward Elgar himself was English, the music which led to his “Introduction and Allegro” came from another country.
“The inspiration for the piece we're doing … is actually Welsh folk music, and Welsh music that Elgar heard on the coast," McGegan said. “He was an inveterate walker. And so, he heard these tunes being played, and he liked them.”
McGegan studied at Oxford and Cambridge, and in college played in an orchestra English composer Benjamin Britten conducted.
“So, he's the one that I have met, and spent time with," McGegan said. "Wonderful music, wonderful musician, very quiet, unassuming sort of person, you wouldn't think that he had all this music bubbling inside him, like Mount Vesuvius. Because he had a very placid, calm, quiet manner.”
McGegan is no stranger to Sarasota audiences. He stepped in to conduct The Sarasota Music Festival when Music Director Jeffrey Kahane was ill and performed a Mozart piano work with his friend Robert Levin, who served as festival music director from 2006-2017. McGegan was also friends with the late Paul Wolfe, who founded the festival in 1965 and served as its music director until 2006.
One thing that’s hard to miss about McGegan is how joyful he is. He attributes that to his work.
“Well, I'm doing what I really love. There's no retirement age," McGegan said. "I can keep doing it. People asked me to do it. And even if I've done it before, and actually the Strauss is a piece I have played, but not done before. I used to play the flute long time ago. So I've played it, but I've never actually conducted it.”
And he’s looking forward to sharing music that he loves with people, some of whom he hasn’t met yet. In his words, “It’s great fun.”
You can get details on his concert with The Sarasota Orchestra here.
