In this interview, Peter Oundjian, Artistic Director of the Colorado Music Festival, previews the 2025 season at Chautauqua Auditorium. Highlights include performances of Brahms, Beethoven, Mahler, and world premieres by Joan Tower, Michael Abels, and Eric Whitacre. Oundjian emphasizes the festival’s balance of classic and contemporary works, the intimacy of the Chautauqua venue, and the emotional power of live music. He describes programming as a journey designed to spark curiosity and connection, making each concert a unique, transformative experience. The festival runs July 3 to August 3. (Interview: 7/2/25)

Sanford: I’m thrilled to have with us today Peter Oundjian, the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Colorado Music Festival. The CMF is bringing an absolutely spectacular 2025 season to Boulder’s historic Chautauqua Auditorium this July and August, featuring everything from Beethoven’s monumental Ninth Symphony to world premieres by Joan Tower and Michael Ables. Peter, who has led major orchestras around the world and was formerly the Music Director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, is known for his innovative programming and passionate advocacy for both classical masterworks and new music. Peter, welcome to the show.

Peter: Thank you very much, Sanford.

Sanford: Peter, you’re opening the season with Hélène Grimaud performing Brahms’ First Piano Concerto. What does Grimaud bring to this demanding work, and how does this set the tone for your festival?

Peter: Well, many, many answers I could imagine to those beautiful questions. First of all, Hélène is one of the most spiritual musicians, one of those moving musicians that I’ve ever worked with. She’s so sincere and has such emotional power as well as actually physical power, although that always seems sort of effortless in her hands. And the Brahms D minor is a very special piece. He started writing it when he was a young man. We always think of Brahms as being overweight with a great big white beard. In fact, he was this amazingly great-looking, blonde, blue-eyed young man when he started writing this, and he was an extremely good pianist, a little bit wild as a pianist by all accounts. And there’s something about the way Hélène’s personality meshes with this particular piece, and I’ve done it with her several times, that made me feel that this would be just a tremendously exciting way to experience the opening and celebrate the opening of the festival.

And it’s not as if the whole program is heavy like that. I mean, actually, the first piece is a really rarely played piece by Stravinsky, which is very entertaining, very early Stravinsky, so nothing to be afraid of at all. It’s called Fireworks, and it’s about four and a half minutes long and absolutely virtuosic for the orchestra and tremendous fun. And then we have the very wonderful Brahms concerto, and in the second half, we’re celebrating Ravel’s 150th anniversary with the second suite from Daphnis and Chloe, which is probably about 18 minutes long, and again, one of the most entertaining and colorful pieces of music ever written. And then we close the evening with Bolero, because we never play Bolero. Everyone thinks that everyone always plays Bolero, but one doesn’t, and since it’s his 150th birthday, I thought, okay, this is a lovely way to celebrate. So I think it’s a beautiful journey, that opening concert.

Sanford: That sounds fabulous. I love Bolero – who doesn’t?

Peter: It’s haunting. I mean, it’s, of course, it’s very seductive as well in many ways, but it’s just so exciting. And hearing a live performance is really important, because we hear excerpts all the time, but you don’t actually hear that development of these two contrasting themes and how they build from one instrument to the next. And finally, just this outrageous, dramatic entire orchestra playing it with blaring dissonances at times which we don’t even think about, but they add to the excitement.

Sanford: You’re presenting two world premieres this season – Joan Tower’s saxophone concerto ‘Love Returns’ and Michael Ables’ “Amplify.” What drew you to these works, and what do they say about where classical music is heading?

Peter: Well, that’s an interesting subject, of course, because, you know, when I was a young person, let’s say, you know, the last three decades of the 20th century, you couldn’t really write tonal music without being criticized. So if something was sort of what we would call fairly easy to listen to, then it was criticized very strongly. And that has all changed as a result of, I think, three particular composers in America. John Corigliano, John Adams, and Joan Tower. Very similar generation. John Adams is the youngest of them, but they’ve written extraordinary music which had a connection with tonality. So that, you know, if you love music, but you know, you weren’t a great expert in music or in new music, you could go and listen to that music and say, oh, yes, I understand the musical gestures. I understand the atmosphere of this music. So it was not heady music in the sense that maybe the music of Pierre Boulez would be considered quite, you know, you have to be a real intellect to understand that music. And that’s not for everybody.

And I’ve always been somebody who believes we should be, in the end, we are entertainers. We want to pique people’s curiosity. Yes. Do we want to push their imaginations a little further at times? Of course, that’s what people also desire. So Joan Tower, I think, is a very, very important voice. And as many people know, we’ve done quite a lot of her music, actually. And this saxophone concerto is extremely beautiful. It has a wonderful journey to it. And Stephen Banks, one of the greatest saxophone players who’s ever lived. So I think that’s going to be a very exciting one. And the Michael Ables is also a piece, again, which is really accessible. You can experience it for the first time and say, yes, I get that. I can follow the lines. I can follow the gestures. I can follow the drama. And so this seemed to be a good one.

There’s another actual sort of premiere of Eric Whitacre’s as well, actually. The Pacific Has No Memory, I think it’s called. It’s actually, he wrote it after the fires. But it’s for violin and strings. So again, all of these pieces are things that people can come and listen to for the first time. Some people will say, oh, my God, this is my favorite thing of the summer. Some people will say, I could have done without it, but that’s fine. And most people will definitely say, I got something important out of these experiences because they contrast so well with everything else we’re doing. In Joan’s program, for example, we start with a piece of Copland. Beautiful Brahms symphony, the first symphony. So there’s something for everyone to experience.

Sanford: What does the intimate setting of Chautauqua bring out in artists that might be different from larger venues?

Peter: I think that’s true. I mean, you know, the furthest seat from the front of the stage at Chautauqua is only, you know, 25 yards or something like that. I mean, it’s, you know, everybody is pretty close. The soloists also feel that intimacy. And I think that sort of affects the way they connect with the listeners. Certainly, I know Joshua Bell, who’s been several times and loves to play there. And everybody who comes enjoys it. This guitarist you mentioned is absolutely astonishing artist, actually. And it will be debut at the festival, as also with the Korean pianist who’s coming to play Beethoven 3, who’s another great, great artist. So I feel like it’s a place where I can confidently invite friends of mine, and they’re going to have more than just another concert experience. They’re going to witness our beautiful, warm audience, the very generous atmosphere that exists and the beauty of Chautauqua, which we always talk about, but we should never stop talking about it because it’s really a miracle. This place, just built as an auditorium in 1898, happens to have one of the most beautiful acoustics for music, which was never particularly the intent that you can imagine. And so we’re very, very fortunate to have all of these things working for us.

Sanford: I’m fascinated by your programming choices – pairing Webern with Brahms, or Gubaidulina alongside Beethoven and Shostakovich. How do you approach programming?

Peter: Well, you know, that’s kind of what it’s all about, I think. You know, it’s lovely to hear an evening of all Beethoven or all Mozart or maybe all Brahms. But you know, I think of it in various different ways. Part of it is a culinary comparison where, you know, if you’re going to have something heavy, if you’re going to have, you know, lamb or beef or something, you better not start with something similar. You know, we all know how to sort of pace ourselves when it comes to eating, or we try to at least, right?

And I also have always related this idea of programming with the magnet and the iron filings. You know, it’s like if I just program the most popular pieces and all evening, it’s all about, that’s like throwing that magnet right in the middle of the iron filings and they all get stuck to it and you pull them. But you’re not taking anyone anywhere. So I compare programming more with bringing the magnet towards the iron filings and then when there’s a connection, you start to pull people in a certain direction, if you see what I mean. So I know that people are going to want to hear certain kinds of music and that people love the orchestra, people, you know, Shostakovich symphonies are incredibly powerful and dramatic and often very entertaining. But to hear a piece by Gubaidulina, who was one of the great composers of the last 50 years, is just intriguing to me.

So, you know, I think it’s just a question of creating a sort of curiosity for people that say, you know, I will go to that. Now, if I only program Gubaidulina and other composers that people haven’t necessarily heard of, you know, we’d be in big trouble. Right. I mean, a few fanatics would be there, but general music lovers or people who just are curious to hear an orchestral concert deserve to have a mixed experience. And so that’s what I try to create. Even with the Beethoven 9 program, with the Ables premiere on that, and this incredibly beautiful small choral piece called a Legerscher Gesang, which Beethoven wrote about five years before the Ninth Symphony, you know, it’s kind of an intriguing mix of things. And that’s what I want people to, I want people to look at the programs and say, well, that all in all that interests me. I want to experience that.

Sanford: You’re conducting some monumentally challenging works – Shostakovich’s 10th, Mahler 9, Beethoven 9. What draws you to these pieces, and how does the Colorado mountain setting influence your approach?

Peter: Well, I was just going to say, you know, how many people go up and try to climb on the face of the flat irons and stuff. I mean, what on earth are they thinking? You know, why does anyone want to try to climb Everest? You know, I think one feels that challenging oneself is an opportunity in life that not everybody manages to experience, right? So I’ve been very fortunate to have wonderful orchestras to conduct and playing in a wonderful string quartet. You know, why would the Tokyo String Quartet play Beethoven cycles in six days, the entire Beethoven cycle in six days in 10 different cities in two seasons? I mean, you know, why would you do that? That sounds like masochism, but it’s like it’s such an amazing thing. But I mean, one of them we did was in La Scala Opera House. No other string quartet has ever had that privilege. So I think it’s all connected with feeling that I have this privilege. I really believe in these masterful works.

Take Mahler 9, for example, an extraordinarily challenging piece, but an experience that you would never forget. If you come to listen to Mahler 9 on the closing Sunday of the festival, you will never forget that experience because the music is so powerful. It is so full of contrast. And it looks both forwards and back into history and into the future in a way that no other piece does. And it also ends with some of the most staggeringly painful and beautiful music. And then at the end, kind of image almost of the experience of the afterlife, of ostensibly, I think, the beauty of the very end of whatever that is. Mahler was close to the end of his life, and he knew that. So I think that we feel that we owe it to our music lovers to accept these challenges. Is it easier just to conduct Beethoven 7 or Mozart Jupiter and so on? These wonderful pieces. They’re not easy to conduct either, but to conduct Mahler 9 is a massive, massive experience.

I think the world, you know, we always need to hear the greatest creations of our greatest talents in the history of mankind as we need to read the greatest books that have ever been written to try to get inside the mind and the thinking of these geniuses that have preceded us or even live in our times. So it’s a combination of responsibility and passion and daring.

Sanford: After decades of conducting at the highest levels, what still surprises you about the art of conducting?

Peter: I think it’s the same, you know, you can ask that question to almost any performer at any instrument. It’s the unexpected. You think you know what’s going to happen, but you never really do. And I think that’s what makes live performances so exciting. Because that unpredictability and complete spontaneity is very, very different from anything you could ever listen to on a CD or, you know, whatever, Spotify. The immediacy, I mean, I once said this to one of our board members years ago, I said, there’s a risk factor to this. And that person said, wow, I would never know that. It just looks so natural and so like, as if it’s all happening so easily. And you know, that’s what we have to make it look like. And Roger Federer, people always say, well, you make tennis look so easy. Yeah, I mean, you have to be an incredibly great risk taker to get to the point where it looks easy.

So I think it’s that element. It’s the connections that we feel from one musician to the other, from the podium to each musician, from each musician to every member of the audience, and from the podium to the audience. It’s this wonderful circle of energy that happens every time we go on stage. And people have made the effort to get there, they’re sitting with expectation. And they want to experience something that is different from their ordinary life. And it is our job and our privilege to try to make that happen.

Sanford: Peter, thank you for this preview of what promises to be an unforgettable summer. The Colorado Music Festival runs July 3rd through August 3rd at Chautauqua Auditorium. From Joan Tower’s world premiere to Mahler’s Nine, this season feels like a journey through the full spectrum of human emotion. Tickets are available at coloradomusicfestival.org. From all of us at KGNU, we can’t wait to experience these magical evenings under the Colorado sky. Thank you, Peter Oundjian.

Peter: Thank you very much, Sanford.

Sanford:  This is Sanford Baran for KGNU.