Cole is the 11th Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, and comes to the BSO from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he has been First Associate Concertmaster since 2011. Prior to this position, he was a member of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony. He grew up in a musical family in Lexington, Kentucky. His parents, both flutists, taught lessons in the home while his grandfather told stories about his years in the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy.
Chamber music has long been an essential part of Cole’s life, and he participated for three summers at the Marlboro Music Festival. He looks forward to leading the Boston Symphony Chamber Players. As an educator, Cole's innovative online programs allow him to work with thousands of players around the globe. A collection of Cole’s articles, videos, and courses can be found on his website, natesviolin.com.
To hear the interview, use the player above, and read the transcript below.
Brian McCreath I'm Brian McCreath from WCRB with Nathan Cole. He's the new Concertmaster, the 11th concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Nathan, thank you so much for some time today. I appreciate it.
Nathan Cole Of course. Thanks for having me.
Brian McCreath You began your career with the BSO last summer at Tanglewood, and you did it in the most concertmaster-ish way possible with a concert that was both Apollon musagète, which has pretty significant violin solos by Stravinsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Can you just recall that experience and tell me what that was like for you?
Nathan Cole Well, as you said, it was a very traditional concertmaster's beginning, and I was very happy to start with both of those pieces, actually, the Stravinsky especially, because I had not played those solos, but I have fond memories of really enjoying the choreography in other productions of that that I've played in, and Scheherazade, especially because I have played it many times. And actually, when I found out that that would be the major piece on my first official program with the BSO, I did some reflecting on the different places I've played it starting in youth orchestra. So I remember being a freshman in high school and our youth orchestra in Kentucky actually played some some good repertoire. And so, yeah, that was my first time trying to get around those solos. And then auditioning with those solos countless times, which is a different kind of preparation. But the experience of taking those auditions, playing those under pressure, was a very helpful preparation for doing it in concert on just the single rehearsal.
Brian McCreath Yeah, a single rehearsal, and at the [Koussevitzky Music] Shed [at Tanglewood]. Had you ever played at the Shed before?
Nathan Cole No, I had been there as an audience member maybe 25 years earlier, just for a single BSO concert one summer. But no, never had been on that stage. And I was really pleasantly surprised by how natural it felt to play there. It didn't feel like an outdoor venue except for seeing all the green.
Brian McCreath [laughs] And feeling the breeze. But say more about that, though, because out of curiosity, playing at an outdoor venue, generically, brings up what in your mind?
Nathan Cole Well, as a member of the L.A. Philharmonic, for more than ten years, for me, it just conjures up visions of the Hollywood Bowl since we played there in L.A. for ten, 11 weeks every summer. And that's very different. That is decidedly not a concert hall. Whereas the Shed felt to me a little bit more like a concert hall. And at the Hollywood Bowl, it's just such a vast vision of the multitudes out there. You can't even see faces past the first 25 rows, and it just goes back and back and back. And each of us in the string section wears a microphone or has a microphone attached to each individual instrument. And not only does that change the way the instrument feels, it adds a certain weight, but you also have to be careful with breath. So, for violins, those microphones are clamped kind of right in your sight line and right in your breath line. So if you're one of those loud exhalers, when you go to start a solo, you hear, broadcast throughout the Bowl is this [whoosh]. So, it felt a lot less cumbersome to play those solos at the Shed. And I should say, too, that, just by a quirk of programing and scheduling, I came out to Tanglewood midweek, basically, and at the very beginning of that week, guess what we were playing at the Hollywood Bowl: Scheherazade.
Brian McCreath And you were doing concertmaster?
Nathan Cole And I happened to be sitting concertmaster for that. So I played those solos on a Tuesday night at the Bowl, flew out here on Wednesday morning and then played them, I suppose it was a Friday.
Brian McCreath Yeah, Friday night. That's great. We won't think of that as using the L.A. Phil to rehearse. We'll just think of that as...
Nathan Cole Exactly.
Brian McCreath No, that's really wonderful. It was a fantastic concert, really exciting concert. And it was wonderful to hear you in that role ...
Nathan Cole Thank you.
Brian McCreath ... after some months of knowing you were coming and on your way from the Los Angeles Philharmonic. We'll come back to the L.A.. Phil. I want to hear more about your experience there, but actually, let's back up further than that. You just mentioned playing in a youth orchestra that apparently had fairly ambitious plans doing Scheherazade and repertoire like that. But one thing that I noticed in your background is your grandfather being a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra. What was his position and how long was he in the orchestra?
Nathan Cole So he was Assistant - I think back then they would often just say assistant flute - but I think really it was Assistant Principal Flute would be the more proper title. And his teacher at the Curtis Institute where he went, William Kincaid, was Principal. And so it was a long association that he had with his teacher and mentor. And, you know, it's funny, growing up, I thought of him as this career orchestral musician, and I had heard so many stories about the Philadelphia Orchestra. As I got older, I realized he really was only in there for 13 seasons. Which is a significant amount of time. But I've already been playing an orchestra almost twice that length of time. So, Eugene Ormandy was the Music Director his entire time there, although Stokowski would still come around occasionally. 1949 to '62 ...
Brian McCreath Yeah. Wow. Fantastic.
Nathan Cole ... were his years there. And I always felt like his stories tended to be more along the edges of the orchestral experience. He wasn't drawn to long soliloquies about the beauties of this piece or that piece, even though I understood that he felt that, but he talked a lot about the tours and the rehearsals and just the people.
Brian McCreath Sure. Yeah. These are the stories musicians basically tell each other. It's about working in an orchestra. But even with that, there's an element of that background that must have made you familiar, prepared to enter into that world.
Nathan Cole Yes. And the other formative experience along those lines was the fact that my father, who studied flute with his father, played for decades at a summer festival in Door County, Wisconsin. That was three weeks every summer, and the whole family would go up. So, for those three weeks I'd go, and as I got older, well, even as a young kid, sometimes they'd need someplace to stick me, so I'd just be in the hall with a coloring book for rehearsals and falling asleep at concerts. And there too, I got to see the mechanics, really, of how concerts are put together and, between my parents and my grandparents then, I really got a sense of what the life would be like. And to me, that really appealed. I loved this idea of spending time with fellow musicians rather than being in a practice room. That I didn't like so much.
Brian McCreath There's a lot of people that can relate to that. Yeah, absolutely. Was it purely coincidental that you then went to Curtis in Philadelphia, or was there a little bit of connection there?
Nathan Cole I would say there was a connection. I mean, even though my parents are musicians, they weren't super hooked into all the conservatories. I wasn't the kind of kid that took lessons with a lot of big name teachers and made a lot of those connections. And so, had my grandfather not gone to Curtis and had my dad not grown up in Philadelphia, I don't know if it would have been as much on our radar, even though, of course, it's one of the most famous conservatories. But yes, we knew that Curtis would be on the list, and it was free, which never hurts.
Brian McCreath Yes, one of those things about Curtis that maybe some people don't even realize is that people don't get charged tuition. It's a total ride for everybody.
Nathan Cole I went there not necessarily with a singular dream of someday playing in an orchestra because there and at most conservatories still, the string training is geared toward solo playing, which, still, I think is as it should be in terms of musical development. I will say we were lucky at Curtis to have a really strong orchestral program, and we got through a lot of repertoire. I got to play in the Lab Orchestra, which was the training orchestra for the conducting students, new music. I did a lot of orchestra, but I think many of my fellow students and my teachers were a bit disappointed when I went right from Curtis to an orchestra.
Brian McCreath Really? Interesting.
Nathan Cole Yeah, disappointed or confused because, really, I loved playing chamber music. So, I think there was in the sort of career hierarchy, if you put a soloist at the very top, and then chamber musician might be right there, and the orchestra musician in the minds of some conservatory types would be bottom ranking. And I could never understand that because I thought, right, I'd heard all those stories from my family, and I thought, this is the best music there is, and you get to make it with 100 other people in these great halls, and you get to have a family, and really live in a city. I thought, well, that's what I want to do. And so, my first audition was in the Academy of Music for the Philadelphia Orchestra. And that was not a success. [laughs] Not even close.
Brian McCreath [laughs]] Well, again, something many, many people can relate to, but that turned around pretty quickly with the second audition.
Nathan Cole Yeah. You know, I was so discouraged from that first audition, I thought, well, I have this all wrong. I'm not cut out to do this. One failure was enough to sort of, temporarily at least, knock me down. "I'm not cut out for this, so I'm not going to take any more auditions for now. I'm going to come back to school for an extra year, a fifth year." And when the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra had an opening for Principal Second Violin, that looked interesting to me because chamber orchestra was this hybrid of symphonic and, so I thought, chamber music playing and the list was quite different from the one I had just prepared for Philadelphia. There was quartet playing as part of the audition and so it felt right. And it was a wonderful first job.
Brian McCreath But then you went pretty quickly on to the Chicago Symphony. So then, right back into that big orchestra, very brawny kind of sound, especially in Chicago. And there is a particular kind of string sound in Chicago, I think, but I'm interested to hear from you whether you perceived that and what it was like to then join a big orchestra like that.
Nathan Cole Yes. And you're right about the, well, every section in that orchestra, every instrument had a distinctive sound, of course, then, as now, famous for the brass tradition and the brass sound there. That, of course, has to be very much influenced by the hall, by the space. Orchestra Hall in Chicago - I suppose it's at Symphony Center, Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center, right?
Brian McCreath Yeah, they renovated it.
Nathan Cole But, it's not in any sense as giving a hall, let's say, as Symphony Hall here in Boston, just in terms of the length of the reverb and the quality of the reverb. It is just completely different. So when you're auditioning on that stage, when a string section is playing on that stage, you just don't get a whole lot back. And what that means is a chord that would hang around and have a golden glow here in Symphony Hall, even if it's played, you know, pretty short length, there, if you play a short note, that's it. It's a short note. And so you have to finish every note. You sustain the sound, you create your own reverb, in effect. And so that influenced everybody's playing. And yeah, it was bigger, it was louder, more sustained playing, which physically felt almost undoable for me in the beginning. I thought, I'm sitting next to these folks and they're really cranking and I don't know how they can do it for a two-and-a-half hour rehearsal or a full length concert. My arm is going to fall off. But I eventually discovered that I didn't need to do that. There are more efficient ways to make sound, and despite my perception as a new member of the orchestra, nobody was putting in 100% effort 100% of the time. You pick your spots, and you make maximum impact. There were times, too, when it would be a really loud moment in a symphony and the Concertmaster or someone else up front might turn around and say, "silent movie." And that just meant, [laughs] just move, look exciting, but don't try it because you won't be heard anyway.
Brian McCreath Yeah, it's all about pacing. I mean, you might have to put in a lot of effort as you're describing. I mean, it's really fascinating to hear you say that, you know, playing through to the finish of a note and creating your own resonance. That's sort of at the heart of what that orchestra is doing. But, it does mean you would have to pace yourself. You can't just do that 100% of the time, can you?
Nathan Cole No, and it was interesting, too, when guest conductors might come in who were not used to the space or were not used to that style or that tradition, and they would encourage something different. And that, too, could work in that space. It would be a nice sort of reprieve from trying to fill every nook and cranny with sound.
Brian McCreath [laughs] Right. So, then when you went to L.A., was your initial job there the one you have now? First Assistant Concertmaster, is that right?
Nathan Cole It's First Associate Concertmaster, which, that has its own long story behind these long titles. But yes. Second chair.
Brian McCreath The sort of next concertmaster in line after Martin Chalifour, who has been there for so many years. And so, when you moved to L.A., I imagine it was because of this more prominent position. You had in mind, well, concertmaster work is actually kind of where I'm going. Is that correct?
Nathan Cole Yes, and that realization only came gradually to me. I did get some advice while I was in school, going back to Curtis and well-meaning folks who would say, if you have to be in an orchestra, at least be concertmaster. You can't sit in the section. When I was in the section in Chicago, I thought, this is great. And all those people, I don't know where their advice was coming from. But, I think what they were getting at was, if you want to be concertmaster, start early because it can be difficult to grow into that or step up to that job, even though that's what folks used to do all the time. Joseph Silverstein [former BSO Concertmaster], for example, had section positions, including in Philadelphia.
Brian McCreath That's right.
Nathan Cole My grandfather remembered him.
Brian McCreath Oh, no kidding. Wow. That's great.
Nathan Cole And, sure enough, after a certain number of years in Chicago, I felt that itch. I didn't regret the way that things had worked out. But I thought, okay, it's going to take some work if I want to make a change. It was a little like that saying about dressing for the job you want. I didn't change what I wore [laughs], but I just started thinking to myself, okay, if I were sitting up there, what decisions would I make? I'm used to having decisions handed down to me and just kind of going along with them. I pride myself on being able to play in any style. But what if I had to choose? Then, what if I was in communication with the conductor? And what if I were playing the solo? And that led to a different kind of practicing at home, led to taking those auditions and really grappling with
Brian McCreath So 11 years in L.A., we could talk all afternoon just about that, I'm sure. But when you heard that the Boston Symphony would be looking for a new concertmaster, was it an immediate sort of, yes, I'm targeting that. I want to see if that can work out for me. Or were you a little bit more circumspect? Was this something that you needed to take some time to get used to the idea of?
Nathan Cole No. For me, it was yeah, certainly an immediate, all right...
Brian McCreath Let's go!
Nathan Cole ... you're looking for a concertmaster. I want to be concertmaster, so...
Brian McCreath Yeah. Good. And you must have played in Symphony Hall on tour at some point.
Nathan Cole Yes. Chicago Symphony had been there on tour. And in addition, there had been a couple of chamber orchestras either related to Curtis or Marlboro that had played on that stage as well. And I had taken at least one audition here very early in my career.
Brian McCreath Okay. Yeah.
Nathan Cole So I knew the smell of the building.
Brian McCreath [laughs] The distinctive atmosphere of Symphony Hall. So, the position of concertmaster, I think many listeners have some sense of it, but there's much more to it than tuning the orchestra or standing while the orchestra tunes and being the first violinist who plays the solos. There are aspects of determining how the violins play, literally, like how things are fingered and bowed. What part of the job do you find the most challenging, generically? I don't want to say necessarily about the BSO, but as a concertmaster, what is the part that you feel the least naturally equipped to do?
Nathan Cole [laughs] Well, I think the skill of managing, in the in the best and most creative sense of the word, managing people and personalities, that that's something that most people have to learn and practice, I would say. And that's why there's a whole cottage industry of management consultants and countless books and courses on that because every human being is different, including the person who is asked to take a role in managing. I keep repeating that word, and really all it is is problem solving, because when you're talking about a group like the BSO, every individual on stage is at the highest level. And so everyone has an opinion on how their instrument should sound, how their instrument should be played, how the music should go, including all of these famous and well-known Beethoven symphonies that all of us have played so many times. And yet everybody has to pull in the same direction for the most effective performances to really get at what the music is saying and to make that immediate impact for everybody who's in the space with us. A lot of that, of course, has to come from the conductor. Without a clear vision, there's not much that any of us on stage can do except for delivering a professional performance. But, with a clear vision from the podium, the job of the concertmaster really is to help and facilitate the immediacy of that message throughout the players on stage. And so, as you said, the mechanics of how to create the sound that the conductor is either asking for or seems to be asking for - bow direction is something that everybody can see up or down - but where we play on the bow, closer to what we would call the frog, closer to our bow hand or the tip and how much bow in the bow speed, and all of that has a very immediate impact on the sound. We were just rehearsing [Beethoven's Symphony No. 3, the] "Eroica" symphony yesterday and had a chance to try out some very different sounds for the first couple of chords.
Brian McCreath It's interesting, though, that that's where your mind first went with this, that it's the relational aspect of the job, that is not mechanical, that is interpersonal. Is there a specific instance you can remember in which there was a communication issue? A conductor wasn't quite getting what he wanted and you found yourself in this position of translation or mediation. How does that look in the operation of an orchestra when there is this sort of disconnect that's got to be lined up by the concertmaster?
Nathan Cole Well, very often it will have to do with the printed music that we are working from, let's say Beethoven's symphonies with the BSO. BSO has played, I think, seven of the nine symphonies already with Andris prior to this festival. And so the materials we're playing from have been vetted basically with the orchestra and with the maestro. So, that works great. But let's say that in the Chicago Symphony, well, in L.A., where I might have sat concertmaster, a guest conductor comes through, and they bring their own materials. And that's usually a good thing because then they're not having to waste a whole bunch of rehearsal time asking us to change this dot and this dash.
Brian McCreath Or the librarians don't have to waste their whole afternoon adjusting all the parts.
Nathan Cole And some conductors really know a lot about string playing and specifically how bowings translate into sound. Others simply don't. And you can only learn so much in a lifetime, I suppose. But the dangerous combination is the conductor who has really specific ideas about what they want the bows of the string players to be doing, and they also have very specific ideas about the sound they want, and those two things don't match up. And so then it falls to the concertmaster to say, "You know, it seems like you want this. We're not getting it. May we change this bowing to do it?" Depends on the conductor, right, and how, let's say, how big the ego is. Some conductors, you don't even need to discuss it. You just say, "We're changing this bowing," even though it's theirs. Other times the conductor will say, "Well, no, I want you to keep this bowing, and I want this sound." And, you can decide whether to make a point of it, or just sort of do your best and move on. But that's managerial, right? Like, what battles are you going to pick and which are you just going to let go?
Brian McCreath That's fascinating. And I think that a lot of people don't understand when they're hearing the orchestra on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night or whatever, that's what's actually happened beforehand, that these kinds of conversations may or may not have taken place. And your job, as you're describing it, I think, is that you're in the position of saying or placing yourself as the advocate for, first of all, the music, and then, secondly, the players in relation to the conductor, that everybody's just trying to get the best out of the situation, and sometimes the different parties need someone like yourself to find the path to the common vision.
Nathan Cole Exactly. And it's partly my job, too, to protect our section. Violins have a lot to do. We play almost all the time. We play a ton of notes. And that also means that there can be a lot of loose ends in a given performance, right? And so when a conductor is demanding... Great conductors demand the impossible, or the nearly impossible sometimes, and often we need to go with that and stretch ourselves and see if, together, we can make that magic. Other times, you know, the concertmaster needs to sort of step in front of the fire and say, "You know what? Let us revisit this tomorrow," or, "We simply don't have enough bow to do what you want," or, "We're trying to get this effect at the dynamic that's really, really on the edge. Can we give ourselves a little bit more margin dynamically to get what you want character-wise, so that everybody knows that someone up there is looking out?"
Brian McCreath Well, we talked earlier about the Chicago Symphony and the very distinctive sound it has. And the BSO has a very distinctive sound to its string section. This is something that, at least it appears, it's sort of entrusted to you. This is something you're a guardian of in a way, that when new players come to the BSO during your tenure, you are going to be one of those people that guides them into the way the BSO creates sound. Is this something that you spent some time thinking about and maybe even doing some extra listening before your audition, before coming here to understand what that sound is? Or from your past experiences and just talks with other musicians, was there a concept you already felt like you were walking in with?
Nathan Cole It's a great question. And while I wanted to walk in with open eyes and open ears, there's only so much you can plan for, whether we're talking about the audition or actually coming in to do the job. I would say really the clearest guide that I had was knowing the playing and, a little bit, the person of Joseph Silverstein.
Brian McCreath Longtime Concertmaster, and actually even Assistant Conductor, of the Boston Symphony for many years. And then also Music Director of Utah for a while.
Nathan Cole Yes. He was on faculty at the Sarasota Music Festival when I was there. He was not yet a faculty member at Curtis when I was in school there, but he came nearly every year, I believe, to teach master classes. I had grown up with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players recordings of... Nearly any chamber piece that I was asked to prepare for a summer festival or for school, if it was at all standard, there was a Chamber Players recording of it. And, finally, I got to take a couple of lessons with Mr. Silverstein, too, and just seeing the way that he went about his preparation, the playing itself, videos that I could see, you know, the string tradition here continues from there with a through line to my immediate predecessor, Malcolm Lowe. And so I feel like whenever I need that sort of guidepost, I can go back to that refinement, the purity of what I remember from Mr. Silverstein's sound. And at a certain point you also have to trust your own self and your sense of the music. I have to believe that, if my sound had been in direct opposition to what this orchestra looked for in string sound, then I wouldn't be sitting here. But the strings here have a wonderful richness, but also a transparency where it's not nearly as thick, as opaque as, for example, what I was part of in Chicago.
Brian McCreath Is there as noticeable an adjustment to the sound that you're experiencing or have been working with here at the BSO as there was when you went to Chicago?
Nathan Cole There is. And part of that, too, is just where I sit. The concertmaster enjoys, although depending on the conductor, it's not always as enjoyable as it might be, but enjoys a seat right by the conductor. Here at the Symphony Hall, it's very enjoyable. And you hear a balance, you hear a sound that's more similar to what the conductor is hearing than you would sitting anywhere else. In Chicago, I might be in the very back corner. I might be backed up right against the flutes. Or, if it were the sort of seating where the Firsts and Seconds were on the opposite sides of the stage, I might be right in front of the trombones. And so, your sense of the group sound will really vary week to week. Sitting concertmaster, you're always in the same place. You're able to hear balances in a similar way to the conductor. And that's by design, of course.
Brian McCreath One aspect of this job is, you mentioned the Chamber Players and the recordings of Mr. Silverstein and his colleagues through the years and even the more recent ones with Malcolm and others. This is now entrusted to you. You're basically the Artistic Director of the Chamber Players. Are there special ideas that you could even talk about right now? Or is it a little too early to get into what you hope for and see in the future of the Chamber Players?
Nathan Cole Well, that's an aspect of the job I'm really excited about, and I don't want to say that it was an afterthought exactly, but more of a double surprise once I was offered the job here and then to realize, "Oh, and I get to do this too," because as I said, my first love really in school was chamber music. And I spent much more time playing and rehearsing chamber music than I did in solo practice while I was in school, sometimes to the detriment of my solo playing. So, I'm very excited about that. And while it probably is too early to have concrete plans, one thing that I know for sure that I would like to see happen is to once again create new pieces here, to work with composers, to create music for this group that we have a direct hand in helping bring into the world.
Brian McCreath Yeah, fits right in with the BSO mission over its history, right?
Nathan Cole Exactly.
Brian McCreath We're in the very beginning as we talk of this Beethoven experience. What is it about this body of music? What does it do for a string section in an orchestra that no other music can do?
Nathan Cole Well, as we talked about sound and character, just as a string quartet playing the complete Beethoven quartet cycle, I've heard it described as a State of the Union, like when a quartet takes that on, they're really saying to each other, "Who are we as a group?" Because this music asks such profound questions and really goes through a whole life cycle, although, I had a cellist colleague in Chicago who always used to say, "You know, early Beethoven didn't know he was writing early Beethoven." [laughs] I do always like to remember that. I do think late Beethoven probably realized he was writing late Beethoven.
Brian McCreath Probably so.
Nathan Cole For us in the strings, since Beethoven was not a professional string player, his writing is often very challenging for us. The sounds that we understand he demands can be physically very tiring. Very often the writing will be in the middle register.
Brian McCreath Which if you're in the middle register, in a way that's a challenge because it doesn't maybe project as much, I'm sort of thinking probably is the case.
Nathan Cole Exactly. Yeah. I had violin teachers that talked about the "two money strings," the lowest and the highest, the G, the E, and you anything that you wanted to have heard, you made sure they were on the money strings. So when you're playing on those middle strings and he's asking you for two fortes, fortissimo, that can be a real challenge. And you have to decide, for example, or as a group, you have to decide, do we want 100% purity of sound, or are we willing to accept some dirt and some grit, to dig in a little bit more? And is that really what Beethoven's calling for? And very often I believe it is.
Brian McCreath It's so interesting to hear you say this, because I think back a couple of summers to Tanglewood when Paul Lewis played all five piano concertos in one weekend. And as we talked about it, the way he put it is that Beethoven would write things for the piano, he said - and Beethoven was a pianist, so in this case, he actually did know his instrument a little bit better - and yet, I just will never forget Paul Lewis's words. He said, "he was just so bloody minded. He didn't care what the instrument was supposed to be able to do or not do. He just wanted this thing." And it sounds like that's kind of how you're describing the string writing. It's like, I don't care about your middle or your high or your low strings. I want this. It's up to you to now figure out how to do it.
Nathan Cole Well, we have a quote from him that comes from the group that premiered so many of his string quartets. The second violinist apparently was complaining to him about a certain lick in the second violin part, a certain section and grousing and maybe they had a history, maybe not. But Beethoven apparently said, "Do you think I care about your lousy fiddle when the spirit speaks to me?" And so what can you say to that?
Brian McCreath [laughs] Exactly. I won't ask you to say what your favorite Beethoven symphony is. That's almost a ridiculous question, but I will ask you, in this series and as you look at the programs, as they're divided up, the [Symphonies] 1, 2, 3; and then 4 and 5; 6 and 7; 8 and 9, is there any singular symphony or is there any one of these programs that you're sort of most eager for because of either a particular part of the symphony or a particular combination of the pieces? What is it that's really firing your imagination in this whole series?
Nathan Cole Well, the way it's laid out chronologically, there is extreme contrast on every one of these programs. And so just looking at the whole cycle, what gets me most excited is that on every program you've got... I mean, the stereotype is that the even [numbered] symphonies are more gentle and the odd ones are... And, to a large extent you can go by that if that is a helpful mnemonic device. But, looking at this first program with [Symphonies Nos.] 1, 2, and 3, and especially the first movement of the Third Symphony approaches the length of many Haydn or Mozart symphonies in total. And it just unfolds on such a grand scale. And when you look at the contrast between 4 and 5, 5 being so compact. For how famous it is, it's over before you know it. 6 and then of course, 7, which was... Hearing Beethoven's Seventh Symphony live for me was one of those formative experiences that made me want to play in an orchestra. I don't think anybody hears that second movement for the first time and gets over it very quickly. Of all the symphonies, 8 may be the one I'm most looking forward to, partly because I don't get to play it often enough. And I do have a happy teenage memory of really rehearsing that one a lot and feeling like I was really getting to know the inner workings of a symphony. And then to have that on the same program with the 9th.
Brian McCreath Yeah. Fantastic. Nathan, it's so good to talk with you, to have this time with you, to talk about all these things. And I hope it's the first of many conversations. I love talking about all this stuff, so thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Nathan Cole Oh, thank you. It's great fun for me.