Nathan Cole’s concertmaster solo at the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s recent performance of Kevin Puts’ “The Brightness of Light” involved him tuning his violin loudly and intentionally amateurishly. While not a show of technical virtuosity like many other concertmaster solos, in some sense this one was particularly apt: Cole, recently selected as the BSO’s concertmaster, is tuning up the orchestra and himself in preparation for his tenure.
Originally from Kentucky, Cole has held a number of orchestral jobs since his time at the Curtis Institute of Music — first with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, then with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and most recently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Though he’s only moving up a chair from his seat in LA where he was first associate concertmaster, this move to Boston joins him to a storied history. In Boston as the fourth concertmaster in 100 years, he is becoming part of, as he says, an “amazing tradition … [and has] got some giants looking over [his] shoulders.” One of these giants, Joseph Silverstein, was a hero of a younger Cole — someone he worked with on occasion. Cole now occupies the seat Silverstein sat in for over 20 years.
For those outside of an orchestra, the position of concertmaster seems reasonably simple: Sitting to the immediate left of the conductor, in the front of the first violin section, the concertmaster helps lead the orchestra and frequently performs solos within orchestral pieces. These solos range from the very virtuosic, for example, in Strauss’ “Ein Heldenleben,” which Cole performed last month with the LA Philharmonic, to the unconventional solos he performed in Puts’ piece. While this role as a sort of soloist establishes the concertmaster as a leader within the section, the concertmaster’s role also depends upon a collaboration with the orchestra and the conductor.
“First,” Cole says, “is just to keep ears open and listen, listen intently. Enjoy the sound of this great orchestra and begin learning how it plays and learning about each of my colleagues on stage, and of course, Maestro [Andris] Nelsons. You don’t come into an orchestra like this with all your own ideas about how you want things to go.”
In this sense, joining an orchestra — even in a principal position — requires a musician to depend on the most basic of musical experiences: listening. For Cole, the nuances of understanding how listening effectively to a piece of music can transform the experience of playing it came during his first orchestral cycle at Curtis, in preparation for a performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4. During rehearsals, Otto-Werner Mueller, a German-born conductor, sought to illustrate the complexity of the musical score — how the chords played off each other and created a harmonic structure throughout.
For Cole, this presented a new way of considering his repertoire: “For someone who was desperately trying to play the right notes and rhythms and fit in, it was an added delight in the concert when I could think to myself, ‘Oh, oh, this is what Mr. Mueller was talking about — here it comes, here’s that chord.’”
Nowadays Cole can discern this larger symphonic picture — depending on “how much chaos there might be going around” — before the final performance, but nonetheless the importance of listening as a tool for developing an understanding of a piece has stuck with him. This focus has translated into his work as a concertmaster. For example, one of a concertmaster’s roles is determining bowings for their section — a crucial task because standardizing the direction of bowings for a violin section helps produce a cohesive image and sound.
Cole’s choices of bowings rely on a nuanced approach to sound production. He notes, for example, that determining an appropriate set of bowings requires a thorough understanding of the concert hall and of the section. “[Bowings] really affect how the group plays and that needs to work with the space too,” he says. Symphony Hall, where the BSO plays, has a remarkably resonant acoustic, particularly for strings; for Cole, this changes how he might consider setting bowings. In Symphony Hall, “you can allow the sound to taper, I would say, more naturally. You don’t have to keep giving and giving to the last moment,” as you might in Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, where Cole used to play. The focus on these nuances of sound contributes to the leadership Cole is poised to offer the BSO.
This leadership extends beyond his professional commitments to include a large online presence, aimed at helping violinists develop better practice skills. “I am now … getting into those practice details you don’t really talk about unless you’re in music school,” Cole says.
This venture combines two of his loves: the violin and computers. For all his life, Cole has tinkered with computers, and until 2020, he coded his own website, natesviolin.com. “I got my first computer the same year I got my first violin — when I was four — and I’ve just been playing with them ever since,” Cole says. Working with computers often provides a welcome break from practicing: “I don’t get so bored practicing,” he says, “because I have these other things I can go and really focus on.”
This capacity for focus and precision is also evident in Cole’s approach to the music he performs: The Puts solo (intentionally) notwithstanding, the accuracy and technical purity with which he performs his solos is striking. More broadly, as well, Cole takes a somewhat mathematical approach to how he views the roles of the orchestra, the conductor and the audience within a performance.
“There are three points to the triangle with any piece of music, right?” Cole says. “There's the composer … the printed score, for lack of a better word; the performers, which include any conductors or soloists; and then the audience because it only exists as a performance if there are people there to hear and experience, and [in live performances] you get all three of those together.”
It is through the effective and thoughtful joining of these three points that a performance can be successful. Cole’s goals for the BSO under his tenure align with this understanding of a performance as a meeting of a score, a group of musicians and an audience. While the BSO “has always stood for the highest quality worldwide,” to continue to develop its artistic reach Cole argues for playing particularly impactful pieces that play to the orchestra’s strengths.
As an analogy, Cole compares the selection of concerts in a season to the exhibitions available at a popular museum: “If I know, hey, there’s a special exhibit of this amazing thing that’s only here … let’s say it was just one week, like at the symphony, and I happen to be in town that week, then I’m going because I know I can’t see that anywhere else,” he says.
These special exhibitions would be the “really cornerstone projects,” which supplement the “permanent collection” of frequently performed and well-loved pieces. This January, for example, the BSO will undertake a Beethoven cycle, during which they’ll play all of Beethoven’s symphonies over a monthlong period. Another example of such a cornerstone project has been a yearslong collaboration between the BSO and Music Director Andris Nelsons to perform all of Shostakovich’s symphonic works. It was during this project, in fact, that Cole got to sit as guest concertmaster — a stage in the audition process for his now-won seat.
“We had immense pleasure collaborating with Nathan last January on Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” and we look forward to embracing his leadership within the orchestra,” Nelsons said of this audition and of Cole’s ultimate appointment.
The permanent collection remains important to continue to grow the artistic vision of the BSO and of course to continue to draw audiences who want to see live performances of those pieces that, as Cole puts it, are like “amazing [movies] that you’ve seen before.” It is through a sensitive combination of this permanent collection and these cornerstone projects that the BSO will be able to continue to grow its audience and its reach.
Cole’s appointment as concertmaster represents a new opportunity for the BSO to further develop this musical vision — an artistic endeavor that will put Cole both in a position of leadership and of collaboration. The cohesion that will come from a section willing and able to listen to how their colleagues approach each week’s music helps to strengthen two of the three sides of Cole’s conceptual triangle: the musicians will be more invested in the performance, and, as a result, the audience will be as well.
“I’m always bummed when I go to a musical performance and I see people obviously not having a good time, whether they’re performing on stage or in the audience,” Cole says. “I never want that to be the case at a performance that I’m part of.”
With his talent and dedication, it won’t be.
