“A 38-year-old native New Yorker — from Staten Island, which is, alas, the only borough to get an indoor chamber concert, on June 17, rather than the full park treatment — Mr. Gaffigan is one of the rising stars of his generation. He is widely believed to be a contender for the bevy of prominent American orchestras now looking for their next conductor, including in Detroit, San Francisco and Atlanta. (The Dallas Symphony Orchestra, which was also said to be considering him, hired Fabio Luisi, 59, last week.)
“I think he is genuinely being considered for all of them,” Deborah Borda, the Philharmonic’s chief executive, said in an interview. “He’s energetic, he’s a very affable presence on and off the podium, and I think he has an ability to give enthusiasm for a wide variety of music.”
His recordings with the Lucerne Symphony, where his contract extends until 2022, are vibrant and beautifully played. (I particularly relish a glowing but fierce account of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 6 and American Suite.) A Philharmonic concert he led in 2015 — featuring the premiere of an Andrew Norman piano concerto, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony and Strauss’s “Till Eulenspiegel” — was a programming model, a study in musical tricksterism through the ages that gave a new work a brilliantly apt context.”
-New York Times, full feature here.
