Two ways to the top
Portrait of Petr Popelka

Petr Popelka’s rise to the top of his profession as a conductor has been meteoric. From a position as principal double bass player with the Dresden Staatskapelle, he has risen to become the principal conductor of both the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra in a few short years. In January, the Czech conductor makes his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker. 

Petr Popelka prefers to use a relatively long baton. When he conducts, he gives the impression of exceptional lightness; he holds his baton loosely in his right hand, enclosing it between his fingertips. This makes his gestures are airy and agile, with a hint of weightlessness even in moments of high drama.

This sense of unforced command may also stem from his musical roots. As a double bass player, he grew up with a bow in his right hand. Despite this, he came from a family where little music was played. Instead, his family produced doctors: his grandparents, his parents and his twin brother all studied medicine. But Popelka thinks differently. “I’m the black sheep of the family,” he says, with a twinkle in his eye. Initially music was of little interest to him. “I preferred to play football.” He was about ten when he visited a family friend who was also a doctor, and was astonished to see a grand piano in the living room: “A world of magic was suddenly opened up to me,” he recalls. Since that evening he was keen to learn to play the piano or the violin. But others expressed misgivings: “Some people told me that though I was only ten, I was already too old to learn these instruments. But a double bass might work.”

Music as a shared experience

Petr Popelka initially studied at the Conservatory in his native Prague, and later in Freiburg. “I immersed myself very quickly in the repertoire, and delved deep inside its disparate worlds,” he says. He was nineteen when he found his first permanent appointment with the Prague Radio Orchestra, switching soon afterwards to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and finally to Dresden's Staatskapelle. Even during his time with the Staatskapelle he would regularly keep a copy of the full orchestral score open on his music stand alongside his own double bass part, and would read both simultaneously. “My first full score was Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’, a pocket score that my parents bought in a second-hand bookshop,” he remembers. “My first opera score was Bizet’s Carmen. I was so in love with this music that my father bought me a copy of the full score for Christmas.”

Conducting takes up ever more space in Petr Popelka’s career. “During my time as an orchestral musician, I often found that the players simply had a piece placed on the music stand in front of them, with no preparation. That’s not a good thing.” These earlier experiences led him to formulate his present goals: “I should like to inspire the musicians to work with me,” he says. Even more important, he explains, is that an orchestra should know and feel every single evening why it is performing a particular piece. Each player’s line should be heard and everyone should feel that they are being swept along by the performance. Music must be a shared experience.

“Every bar, every note has a life of its own”

Popelka, who has been composing his own music since his youth, finally gave up his tenured position as a double bass player in Saxony in 2019, and by the following year was already the principal conductor of the Norwegian Radio Orchestra in Oslo. At the start of last season he moved to the Austrian capital, where he holds the same position with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. He will mark the 125th anniversary of its foundation with a number of events this season, including a tour of Europe. The appointment has brought Popelka’s career full circle: “Even as a young man, I often came with my parents from Prague to Vienna to hear some of the world’s greatest orchestras. For me, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra is the embodiment of Vienna as the home of music.” Popelka’s career to date is also reflected in his debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker: Antonín Dvořák represents his Bohemian homeland, Alban Berg is the voice of Vienna in the early modern period, and Robert Schumann is a composer very close to his own heart as a musician.

In Vienna, Petr Popelka has learnt just how much music can resonate. “Every bar, every note has a life of its own,” he says. “These are not simply signs on the printed page.” This kind of “archetypal musicality” can also be sensed in his gestures as a conductor; his movements are both free and controlled.