As the year 2025 dawns, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is still making its short list of conductors to succeed Music and Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel in 2026. Some names have been tossed into the hat by those who follow such matters, like sports fans tracking the prospects of would-be managers and head coaches.
But I wonder whether another musician whose name I haven’t heard mentioned yet is now a contender.
I’m talking about Robin Ticciati. He’s a 41-year-old British conductor of Italian ancestry, a background he shares with a legendary conductor of the past, John Barbirolli, and the current chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano.
Considering the marvelous response Ticciati received from the LA Phil during their concert together on Sunday, Jan. 5, at Walt Disney Concert Hall, conductor and ensemble obviously connected. You could hear it from the opening notes of Antonín Dvořák’s Prague Waltzes — a rarity, however brief, that the Phil had never played before. There was a unanimous response from the orchestra and a natural, irresistible sweep to the lilting rhythms of this piece, which made for a nice afterthought to those traditional New Year’s concerts dominated by swarms of waltzes.
You could hear that same chemistry in the way Ticciati and the afternoon’s soloist, Georgian-born, Berlin-based violinist Lisa Batiashvili, worked together in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, a probing journey through overplayed territory. Drawing a light, sweet tone from her 1739 Guarneri del Gesù violin, Batiashvili’s characterization was committed to exploring every hill and crevice of the score. There were suspenseful fluctuations in tempo that nonetheless held on to the line and extraordinary control of contrasting dynamics from both soloist and orchestra. One could also appreciate how carefully and sensually Ticciati was molding individual phrases, in the winds in particular. After all of the introspection in the first two movements, the Rondo finale came out of the chute hard, fast, and buoyantly. There was no encore, and none was needed, Beethoven’s concerto being a long, full dinner in itself.
Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8 took off at a zesty tempo, almost as fast as Dudamel takes it with this orchestra but without his overdone brashness. As before, Ticciati secured beautiful wind playing throughout the bucolic slow movement, which, to be sure, is not exactly pastoral in feeling. Ticciati’s sense of triple-meter swing felt a bit unorthodox in the third movement, yet there was enough of a groove to pull the orchestra along in a natural-sounding way. The finale blazed in a good way, never overbearing, with excellent playing overall and some marvelously subtle work from the cellos in particular.
Ticciati is still young in a profession in which longevity is common — though given the LA Phil’s historic propensity for hiring 20-somethings (Zubin Mehta, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Dudamel), he’s something of an oldster. He’s already had prestigious posts: music director of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and chief conductor of the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the latter a position he just left in December. He’s charismatic, with a lean physical profile and mop of curly brown hair, swaying energetically on the podium, occasionally crouching down to emphasize a point. He’s said to be interested in contemporary music, even the rare art of orchestral free improvisation.
We may soon find out if this satisfying concert was merely a welcome guest appearance or a preview of coming attractions.
