Robert Spano

Robert Spano is an American conductor and pianist, currently music director of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. He is known for pairing core classical and romantic repertoire with contemporary American works, and for occasionally performing as soloist from the keyboard. Listeners can expect programs that mix familiar symphonic staples with new or lesser-heard scores, plus vocal and chamber-scaled evenings led from the piano.

Spano's programs typically place a well-known classical or romantic symphony alongside a contemporary or unusual companion piece, as seen in his pairing of Mozart's Symphony No. 35 with Steven Stucky's opera "The Classical Style," or Ravel suites alongside a new cello concerto by Christopher Theofanidis, a composer he has championed for years. As a pianist, he turns to intimate, introspective repertoire: late Beethoven sonatas and bagatelles, Schubert's F minor Fantasia, and Haydn keyboard works, suggesting a taste for music of interior reflection over display. On the podium he favors clear, unfussy tempos in Beethoven and Mozart, and idiomatic warmth in Puccini and Respighi. Expect thoughtfully built evenings rather than isolated showpieces, with attention to how pieces from different eras speak to one another.