Thirty-seven-year-old French conductor Fabien Gabel is the newest music director of Canada's oldest surviving orchestra, the venerable Orchestre symphonique de Québec. Gabel becomes the 11th conductor to occupy this post in the ensemble's 110-year history, succeeding Yoav Talmi, who stepped down in 2011.
CBC Music caught up with Gabel, who is preparing to officially open his first OSQ season this Wednesday in Quebec City, with a program featuring the violin concerto of Brahms.
"The Brahms concerto may well be the most beautiful one in the repertoire," Gabel says with enthusiasm, adding that he'll be happy to have Canadian musician James Ehnes beside him as the guest soloist. Ehnes is "one of the greatest violinists of our era and I’m really looking forward to working with him for the first time."
Gabel has also chosen a couple of his oldest musical friends to join him in Quebec City for the big night: "Strauss and Ravel are two of my favourite composers — I’ve been listening to [their music] ever since I was a child." Performances of La Valse by Ravel and music from Der Rosenkavalier by Strauss will complete the evening's program.
Perhaps the maestro's affection for Ravel comes from his mother, Françoise, who as a harpist must have nurtured some affinity in her son for the harp-rich orchestrations of the great French composer of Daphnis et Chloé.
The Straussian bent, on the other hand, can be traced back to his father, Bernard, who would often take his son with him to work at the Opéra de Paris, where he played trumpet. There, in the orchestra pit, the young Gabel heard an epiphanic performance of Strauss's Elektra ("My first musical revelation … when I was nine years old!") and began to dream about becoming a conductor.
Gabel initially followed in his father's footsteps, becoming an accomplished orchestral trumpet player (and his first engagement, co-incidentally, was playing in a production of Elektra). He never gave up on his childhood dream of conducting, "but after becoming a professional musician and playing in various orchestras," he explains, "I found it was difficult to take the next step."
He revealed his ambitions to James Conlon, at the time the music director of the Opéra de Paris, where Gabel was now playing in the orchestra. Conlon encouraged him to pursue studies with David Zinman at the Aspen Festival in Colorado.
“I really got into it,” he says of his classes at Aspen, "[and] when I went back to Europe, I realized I had to find a way to keep on conducting.” While contemplating his next move, an unsuccessful trumpet audition at the Orchestre national de France provided the perfect opportunity.
“Although I was among the finalists, I didn’t get the position. But [conductor] Kurt Masur was on the audition panel and told me that a competition would be held in a few months to recruit an assistant conductor.” Gabel got the job and worked with Masur and the ONF for the next three years.
“After that, everything came together so fast,” Gabel recalls. He won the 2004 Donatella Flick Conducting Competition, which led to his next major appointment: “two years with the London Symphony Orchestra, where I assisted great conductors like Bernard Haitink and [Sir] Colin Davis, with whom I previously used to perform on trumpet.”
Since then, Gabel has continued to refine his craft and increase his international profile as a guest conductor appearing with major orchestras throughout Europe. He also returns regularly for engagements with both of his "alma maters," the LSO and the ONF (including, with the latter, an award-winning album recorded for the Naïve label: Ne me refuse pas, featuring Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux).
Toward the end of 2011, the news came that Gabel had been appointed the next music director of the OSQ. No longer just a guest (who flies in and right back out again after a concert), he is now a conductor with an orchestra attached to his name.
"First and foremost, it’s an opportunity to build something over the long term," Gabel says. "An opportunity to forge closer ties with the musicians, in human as well as artistic terms."
Fabien Gabel and the OSQ open the 2012-13 season this Wednesday, Sept. 12, at the Grand Théâtre de Québec.
Related links:
Canada's 10 most anticipated orchestral concerts in 2012-13