“Whenever an opening appears for the music directorship of a leading American symphony orchestra, 44-year-old David Robertson is invariably mentioned. It’s a good time to be an American conductor. The cellist Yo-Yo Ma observes that American classical music is at a moment when ‘really interesting leadership’ can make an enormous impact on the way classical is played here. Robertson is a passionate, articulate advocate of both old and new music who doesn’t, as Ma puts it, see ‘culture as a static block’.”