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The celebrated Proms conductor is here on a working holiday, writes Matthew Westwood
TIME was that British conductor Andrew Davis would spend August in London, ensconced at the Royal Albert Hall. As conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, he directed the main house orchestra at the BBC Proms, the international music festival that takes place from July to September. For almost every year of the 1990s, Davis led the pomp and circumstance of the Last Night of the Proms, concluding eight weeks of concerts by many of the world's top orchestras and soloists.
Davis's term at the BBC SO and the Proms ended in 2000, when he became music director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, a change that allows him to take a mid-year holiday. He has just spent three weeks with his son in New Zealand, before coming to Australia for his first concerts with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.
"I have been to Melbourne once before, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on tour," he says jovially. "But this is my debut with an Australian orchestra."
Davis has that winning combination of musical authority and expressive manner of speech. On the Chicago opera company's website, for example, his spoken-word introductions to the 2009-10 season sound like...