© Marco Borggreve
The Chief Conductor Designate of the Musikkollegium Winterthur on reading an orchestra, Rothko and playing the long game
If, three years ago, you’d asked Roberto González-Monjas what the future had in store, conducting wouldn’t have been top of the list. “It requires such a special set of skills,” he tells me over a grainy video connection. “I just thought I didn’t possess some of them. I thought I didn’t have enough charisma.” That word – charisma – we’ll come back to. But suffice to say, even in pixelised form, the Spaniard has more of it than anybody else I’ve encountered recently, virtually or otherwise.
González-Monjas was Concertmaster of the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from 2014 until this year. He has held the same position at the Musikkollegium Winterthur since 2013, but next season becomes its Chief Conductor, replacing the Austrian incumbent Thomas Zehetmair. He also recently became Chief Conductor of the Dalasinfoniettan in Sweden. Both appointments were made despite González-Monjas’s lack of formal training. So when did he finally accept his future was on the podium?