The final candidate

Ski poles have none of the subtlety of a conductor's baton, but for Arthur Fagen, it was the former that led to the latter.

Fagen is the final candidate for the position of music director of the Richmond Symphony. When he was in high school, his family went on a ski vacation and happened to stay in the same lodge as Laszlo Halasz, founder and first director of the New York City Opera. The two became acquainted, and Halasz suggested that Fagen expand his musical talents and take conducting lessons with him.

Since that encounter in upstate New York, Fagen and his baton have traveled the world. He has led orchestras in Zurich, Krakow and Bogota, and operas in Atlanta and Portland, Ore., -- and that's just within the past year.

"One reason I've been able to sustain an international career is because I've diversified," Fagen said in a recent telephone interview. For a stretch of time, he specialized in Baroque music. He immersed himself in Mozart for a spell, and for several years he conducted European radio symphony orchestras in more popular music.

"For about seven or eight years, I did only Italian opera," Fagen said with a laugh. "I took the job in Dortmund [Germany] because I wanted to do heavy German repertoire." Fagen served as music director of the Dortmund Philharmonic and the Dortmund Opera from 2002 to 2007.

He also likes to work contemporary music into concerts. Last month in Zurich, he conducted a premiere by Swiss composer Rolf Urs Ringger.

Fagen's musical career could have taken quite a different turn. His family didn't have a piano when he was very young, so his father gave him accordion lessons starting when he was 4. Eventually he did learn to play the piano, as well as the violin, clarinet and French horn.

Fagen, 58, acknowledges that people love to focus on "hotshot" young conductors -- the widely covered appointment of 28-year-old Gustavo Dudamel to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic is a prime example -- but he believes that "becoming a mature musician and conductor is a very long developmental process."

Conductors must internalize vast amounts of music, learn the best ways to relate to orchestra musicians and personnel, and have a fresh enthusiasm, he said.

Fagen said he's ready to concentrate on a long-term relationship with an orchestra, rather than "running around" as he has been. "I have a fairly established career, so I'm not viewing my candidacy in Richmond as a stepping stone per se, because there's something really nice about Richmond."

One of Fagen's children attended the University of Virginia, and he has visited Richmond on numerous occasions. "I like the gentleness of Virginia," he said. "It has a nice mix of cosmopolitan and small-town [characteristics]."

He considers the Richmond Symphony "really well organized" and admires its variety of programs, including its youth orchestra program.

While in Richmond this month, Fagen will conduct a Masterworks program Nov. 14 and 15 that features Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Bright Sheng's Nanking! Nanking! and Franck's Symphony in D minor.

Fagen has known Sheng for many years and conducted his work throughout the world. Nanking! Nanking! is a composition for orchestra and pipa, a Chinese lute. Fagen chose it and the Egmont Overture because the pieces are thematically connected, both relating to political oppression.

Fagen also was to conduct a Metro Collection concert on Friday night, featuring Richmond Symphony clarinetist Ralph Skiano in Weber's Clarinet Concerto No. 2. The program repeats this afternoon at 3 p.m. at Randolph-Macon College.