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Thomas McDonald for The New York Times
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra has a new music director,
William Boughton.
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THERE comes a point when even the most doting father must push his child out the door toward independence.
That's how the conductor William Boughton explained his departure 18 months ago from the English Symphony Orchestra, the ensemble born from a three-county string ensemble he founded in England's South Midlands nearly 30 years ago.
“It was time to release the baby into the world,” Mr. Boughton said recently, ticking off a list of the orchestra's accomplishments: 60 recordings, many of which ascended Billboard charts; collaborations with artists like Yehudi Menuhin, Radu Lupu, Emanuel Ax and Nigel Kennedy; and a hugely successful Elgar Festival in 2004.
“But like any organization, it needed new blood,” he said. “It was time for the infant to leave its father. It was time for a new lease on life for me as well.”
Instead of whiling away his days as an empty-nester, Mr. Boughton saw an advertisement for a music director of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and applied for the position. He said that after landing the job out of some 290 applicants, he and his wife, the violinist Janet Masters, and their two young children moved “lock, stock and barrel” to Madison.
On Oct. 18, Mr. Boughton will step onto the podium at Yale's Woolsey Hall before the fourth-oldest symphony orchestra in the nation and raise his baton on a new era.
“Subscriptions are increasing, which always happens when there's a new music director,” he said. “There's a newfound enthusiasm and people are fascinated, but it's maintaining that enthusiasm that's vital.”
Much of the 2007-8 season had been planned by the time Mr. Boughton arrived, including the opening concert on Sept. 20, in which Ross Pople will conduct works by Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor with Spencer Myer at the keyboard.
Mr. Boughton will conduct all but two of the remaining concerts, starting with a French program on Oct. 18 of Fauré's “Pelléas et Mélisande” Suite; the premiere of Duruflé's “Sicilienne” and his “Requiem,” with the Yale Camerata; and Poulenc's Organ Concerto, which was given its premiere by Duruflé, and which will be performed by Ron Ebrecht, a New Haven resident and the university organist at Wesleyan, who studied with Duruflé.
The Nov. 15 program will include Richard Strauss's Oboe Concerto, a Romantic work, featuring the ensemble's own Olav van Hezewijk.
The orchestra's new maestro intends to spend his inaugural season fortifying the ensemble's foundation and bolstering his own understanding of his environment.
“At the moment, I'm discovering more about American music and American performers and just getting to know the lay of the land, and it is fascinating,” he said. “The art scene in New Haven, predominantly through Yale, is extremely exciting for a town of its size.”
“It was certainly one of the pluses — proximity to New York and the Yale School of Music as a talent pool — when considering the position,” he added. “I think when one is living in the shadow of such an august institution, you would be foolish not to draw on it.”
Mr. Boughton's mission, he said, is to “create an orchestra that performs the familiar alongside the unfamiliar, the well-known works juxtaposed with contemporary works,” in programs rich with commissions.
“Music is not just a museum piece,” he said. “Whilst Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky are relevant to all of us today, it is vital that performing institutions like the N.H.S.O. also foster and build an understanding of the new.”
The Boughton family may call America home, but England will continue to beckon each summer as Mr. Boughton resumes his role as artistic director of the Wyastone Summer Series, a festival set in a stately home on the River Wye.
Is he missing the old country?
“Not at all. I'm loving it here,” he said.
“I'm looking forward to developing the jewel in the artistic crown of the city,” he added, sounding not a little like an Englishman in a Connecticut Yankee court.
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