The Sydney Symphony Orchestra chief advocates a “selfish” approach delivering a revealing Stuart Challender talk.

David Roberston took to the Sydney Opera House stage last night to deliver the latest Stuart Challender talk provocatively titled “Why Should You Care About The Arts?” The annual lecture in honour of one of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s finest and most-missed Chief Conductors has been given by such luminaries as Stephen Hough and Edo de Waart. Following on from 2008, this was Robertson’s second Challender talk.

In just over an hour, the SSO Chief Conductor ranged widely and, as pointed out by his colleague SSO CEO Rory Jeffes, gave something of the lie to Steve Martin’s comment that talking about music is like dancing about architecture. Stating upfront his reluctance to define art, Robertson began by drawing a witty parallel with 1964’s Supreme Court attempt to clarify pornography, when Justice Potter Stewart famously said he couldn’t define it, “but I know it when I see it”.

Moving forward, on the one hand, Robertson was keen to praise the power of radio and recordings, and their influence on his own life growing up in California. “For the first time in human experience, music could be heard without any music-making people present,” he reflected, before focusing on a certain “inert” quality inherent in anything as unchanging as a record. Indeed, his point was rather to emphasise the inherent value of the live experience where the conductor is able to play around with the exact timing of a chord or note-change in order to heighten the experience, perhaps by creating the unexpected.

Drawing a parallel with a gallery where a patron has a choice about just how long they spend looking at a particular work of art (a rather gloomy 17 seconds on average according to a recent survey), he went on to contrast that with a concert in which the composer determines exactly how long you will listen, give or take the odd interpretative minute. But in a world where time is deemed precious, few are open to spending it on a mere “potential” experience at a concert. “We want the experience to be a great one that is amazing, wonderful and unique. We want to buy an experience that stays with us forever. Our budget is limited and we don’t have that much time, which is money, to spend,” he observed.

But, he went on, we shouldn’t always only chose the known and the expected. Analysing one of his own recent experiences as an audient, he explained that it might turn out to be specifically the unfamiliar that affects you most deeply. His first answer to his talk’s title therefore would be “because you should be selfish! You are the only one who can have a particular experience of a work of art. You alone bring a privileged combination of your past and your present state of being. The art, of whatever kind, acts as a catalyst in a neurochemical reaction that will not leave you where it found you.”

Not only that, according to Robertson the free associations and shared experience of an audience at a concert combine to heighten the experience, and not just for the listener. Conductors may play certain works many times, but as a result of the kind of fresh programming that the SSO Chief Conductor advocates (and delivers), the man at the helm may himself find something new in the relationships discovered as a result of juxtaposing particular works in a unique way.

Not that he was advocating force feeding anyone anything – “if they have a nut allergy, don’t make them eat the flan,” he quipped – but the bond of trust that forms between musicians and their audience as part of a shared experience is not to be underestimated. And whereas the manipulated voice of a Pentecostal preacher in a piece of early Steve Reich (the haunting It’s Gonna Rain) may have originally been inspired by the Cuban Missile Crisis, to an audience today it may be just as reflective of the Black Lives Matter movement. A case of new and varied free associations developing over time.

In summing up, Robertson quoted Reich explaining how the convention we know as music has been created by humans over time, and it is as humans that we now are able to collectively enjoy the experience. “Art is the thing that allows all of us to join the highest achievements of the human imagination,” he concluded. “With so much evidence of how horrible man can behave, art is the counter balance which restores the soul, uplifts the spirit, inspires us to share what we love, and continues to remind us how lucky we are to be illumined by that light.”

The full text of David Robertson’s speech can be found on the SSO website. He conducts the three Stravinsky ballets from August 4-19.