Page content
After fifteen years in some of the world's great opera houses, Melbourne-born Nicholas Carter is coming home as the MSO's Chief Guest Conductor in 2027.
Nicholas Carter is surrounded by a forest of moving boxes. He's just driven across the border from Switzerland into Stuttgart, his family and their whole life packed into the car. Most of the boxes, he confesses, are books. "My scores take up a huge amount of space."
He's about to become General Music Director of the Staatsoper and Staatsorchester Stuttgart, the first Australian to hold the post at a house with more than 400 years of history behind it. And in 2027, he comes home to us, joining the MSO as Chief Guest Conductor alongside Chief Conductor & Artistic Advisor Jaime Martín and Principal Guest Conductor Ben Northey.
It started with the MSO
At twelve, Carter stood on our stage as part of the National Boys Choir, singing in Mahler's Third Symphony and Carmina Burana.
"The MSO was my first exposure to orchestral music and my first inspiration to become a conductor," he says. He wasn't from a musical family, but his parents nurtured the spark with piano and violin lessons. "Music affected me in a way it didn't seem to affect the other kids; it gave me goosebumps."
Studying in Melbourne in the mid-2000s, he found a city humming with talent and mentors, including a huge influence, the late Richard Gill. "He taught me many things, but one important lesson was that you can't be a fine conductor if you don't understand the context the music was written in."
A career on the rise
From there, Carter became Assistant Conductor at the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy, where he met the two mentors who would shape his European years: Simone Young, who taught him flexibility and fluidity, and Sir Donald Runnicles, who taught him how to sculpt the vast architecture of a Wagner opera. From 2016 - 2019, he was the Principal Conductor of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra before Europe beckoned.
Since then, Carter’s rise in the orchestral world has been swift, with kapellmeister posts in Hamburg and Berlin, chief conductorships in Klagenfurt and Bern; Brett Dean's Hamlet at the Met, in his debut there; Wagner's Ring in Berlin, rave reviews from The New York Times to The Observer.
A conductor’s process
Carter learns music slowly and deliberately, recording his own rehearsals and listening back. "You become quite analytical, like a footballer studying the play."
He also deploys silence spontaneously, picking up on the energy from the pit and the audience. "Out of silence comes music. I like to be attuned to the energy on stage, to know when to extend a silence or make it shorter."
What he's building is narrative and connection, ninety musicians telling one story. "If you let ninety people each do their own thing, it's chaos," he laughs. "As a conductor, you provide the framework, the structure and the narrative."
Climbing Everest
For MSO’s 2027 program, he's chosen Bruckner's Symphony No.8, one of the Everests of the symphonic repertoire, and music he believes speaks directly to our disconnected times.
"In our fragmented, anxious and increasingly digital world, this music offers us a rare opportunity to reconnect with the magnificence of the human mind and spirit. At times meditative, at others terrifying and intensely dramatic, the symphony gives us the time and space simply to be with ourselves, and to focus on what is beautiful, profound and enriching in our lives.”
See Nicholas Carter conduct in 2027
Coming home to friends
The orchestra he returns to is one he calls "one of the top orchestras in the world," full of remarkable talent and blessed with "a beautiful spirit."
He's known Ben Northey for twenty years, ever since Northey steered a nervous 21-year-old through a regional schools tour, and speaks of Jaime Martín's "openness, friendliness and joy in music."
"To come back and make music with friends is so special."
Quickfire Q+A
How do you wind down after a performance?
It depends on the performance. A big bottle of water and bed if I have rehearsal early the next day, or a glass of wine if I don't!
The best thing about living in Europe?
Music, culture and opera are part of the daily bread here.
What are you most looking forward to about being back in Melbourne?
Centre Place and Degraves Street. There are beautiful cafés and little laneways to explore.
Favourite venue in the world?
The Met. Walking into the pit and seeing that arena is breathtaking. The Staatsoper in Munich is very special too, with all its Wagner premieres. And the Berlin Philharmonie. I have a few!
What's on your playlist that isn't classical?
Charles Aznavour, who is best known for 'La Bohème.' And Erroll Garner, one of the great jazz pianists of the 1950s.
Any pre-concert rituals?
I try not to have any - my ritual is that there are no excuses. When my kids were small, it was playing with them beforehand, doing the laundry, changing nappies. I try not to be too precious.