Leading with emotion

Watching Stephane Deneve conduct a work for orchestra is like observing a foodie devour a great rib-eye. There’s a palpable hunger combined with a deep appreciation. And as it happens, both great music and gastronomy are among this 36-year-old French conductor’s enthusiasms.

Deneve, who is scheduled to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in three concerts starting Thursday, has been exciting music lovers lately in Europe and the U.S. But he’s made an especially strong impression in L.A., where next weekend’s all-French bill at Walt Disney Concert Hall will mark his fifth Philharmonic program since his debut with the orchestra in 2005.

Tall and full-framed, with a mop of frizzy hair, Deneve attracts notice even before he lifts his baton. But once he does, attention focuses on his artistry. His talent stems from an uncommon ability to persuade fellow musicians to think about scores his way and then express that infectious enthusiasm in performance.

“I think he brings tremendous emotional immediacy,” says Nikolaj Znaider, a Danish violin soloist who has shared a stage with the conductor twice since first meeting him 3 1/2 years ago. “The distance between music and emotion is short in him. He doesn’t neglect intellectual depth, but there’s joy in his conducting, and it’s contagious.”

For Deneve, the goal is creating atmosphere. “It’s perfume,” he said recently from his home in Glasgow, Scotland, where he’s lived since becoming music director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in 2005. “One of the greatest things about music is that it allows you to travel in time: You can breathe the air of Beethoven somehow. The main point is how to develop style. I think it’s a danger to stay on the surface. And I hope that everybody -- including the orchestra -- will allow conductors to go further than that.”

Deneve is unafraid to speak of personality -- something of a bugaboo these days after the era of such larger-than-life maestros as Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein. “A lot of conductors have a career because they have a clear beat,” he said. “But I prefer someone less clear and with a bigger personality. The L.A. Philharmonic can play alone. They don’t need someone to make them play together.”

French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet is among Deneve’s most frequent collaborators and also a close friend, having served as best man at the conductor’s wedding in Napa Valley last summer. He lauds Deneve’s ability to infuse a performance with a distinctive sound.

“I still don’t really understand how one person can make an orchestra sound different,” Thibaudet says. “That’s why some conductors are great and some are not so great. Stephane gives orchestras a personal sound. It’s not a standard good-musician, good-technique sound. There’s that, of course, but he’s got a unique sound that is him, and it really works.”

Deneve’s success stems at least partly from his irresistible personal exuberance. In rehearsals, he can hold rapt a typically restless orchestra.

“He’s like the sun,” Thibaudet says, “always laughing, always in a good mood. He has this charisma. And it’s all there when he’s onstage. He knows how to communicate with musicians.”

Deneve was born in Tourcoing, near Lille, close to the Belgian border in northern France. The small city also happens to have been the birthplace of Albert Roussel, whose Symphony No. 3 is scheduled for the Philharmonic program along with Maurice Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin” and “La Valse” and Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos, with soloists Frank Braley and Eric Le Sage.

Though Deneve left Tourcoing for Paris at 18, his hometown was no musical backwater. He learned much at the local conservatory, as well as from performing in amateur orchestras, one of which he founded in his teens.

Early talent

The conductor describes himself as “the E.T. of my family,” meaning the only musical member. “I was extremely blessed,” he said. “My parents were never against it.”

In fact, at a nun’s suggestion, they sent him to the conservatory at 10 to study piano. And when, at 13, Stephane was told he was too young for a conducting class, his mother insisted that the teacher reconsider. Within a year, he led his first piece. A few years later -- even before he went to Paris -- he began seriously considering conducting as a career.

Of the skills he honed in Tourcoing (along with an appreciation of good food and wine), one continues to serve him particularly well. Though he does not generally perform publicly at the piano -- unlike such conductor-virtuosos as Daniel Barenboim, Christoph Eschenbach and Vladimir Ashkenazy -- the instrument is as much a part of his musical routine as the baton. Every score he conducts he plays first at the piano -- even concertos.

“I can reduce full scores quite easily,” Deneve said, noting the talent’s value during his early career in the late 1990s, when he led an unholy number of operas in Dusseldorf, Germany. “It’s a way to breathe with a soloist.”

Such up-close-and-personal time with soloists offers other benefits as well, including allowing Deneve to determine if he and a soloist connect. “Some people can make music with people they don’t like. I cannot,” he said. “I need to respect them on a personal level. Very often I insist on seeing the soloist the day before the rehearsal. Of course, the agencies scoff.”

He cited an encounter in Cincinnati in 2003 with Nikolai Lugansky, a rising Russian pianist. “For my first concert with him, I asked to have a meeting from 2 to 3 in the afternoon,” Deneve remembered. “And at 7:30, the artistic director of the symphony said, ‘We’re closing the hall.’ We didn’t realize we were talking for five hours!”

The challenges associated with this approach mount when a piano concerto is on the program, but that hasn’t stopped Deneve from his attempts at bonding. “I always ask pianists to play the Schubert F-minor Fantasy with me,” he said, referring to a cornerstone of the one-piano-four-hands repertory. “I’ve done it with all of them. It’s a good way to get to know each other.”

But even he draws the line at double piano concertos such as the Poulenc he’s about to lead. “We would obviously need three pianos in a single room!” he pointed out. “And we would make quite an impossible sound with this army.”

The conductor’s natural gregariousness seems to have found an unlikely home in Scotland, where his tenure at the national orchestra, secured through 2011, has been very successful, with both attendance and subscriber rates up sharply since his arrival.

“I sold my flat in Paris and with my wife bought a wonderful Victorian house in Glasgow,” he said. “So we’re adopted Scots, though I don’t wear my kilt every day.”

Time to develop

To demonstrate his commitment, he has taken on such extra-musical chores as giving pre- and post-concert talks, writing program notes and socializing. But genuine success in such matters must be measured in musical terms, and for that to happen, a strong relationship between conductor and orchestra is essential.

“Real partnerships need time,” he said. “A baby needs nine months to be born. If a parent dies, it takes time to heal. There are special relationships that can’t be rushed, and this is one of them. It matures slowly.”

Because of that, Deneve is reluctant to discuss his musical future. “I should take care what I say,” he acknowledged, “but if you really want to commit not just to the orchestra but also to the people, one orchestra is enough. I can’t imagine being director of two.”

Yet it’s hard to believe that he hasn’t been tempted by the prospect -- this season alone has brought promising debuts with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra and the Philharmonia in London, where L.A. Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen is scheduled to assume principal conductor duties next fall.

“Of course, at some point I may accept a position somewhere else,” he said. “But I swear I’m not hungry in that way. I have the same pleasure conducting a committed orchestra whether or not it’s internationally recognized. I’m not a frustrated person. I play with great soloists. Some orchestras that I guest conduct I do want to have a partnership with, but I return every year, so that’s OK.”

The idea of Deneve leading an American orchestra is especially interesting because French conductors have not fared well here -- Pierre Monteux and Charles Munch being notable exceptions, and dead some 40 years.

“I personally think that eventually he will have an orchestra in the States,” Thibaudet says of his friend. “There are very few French conductors who feel comfortable here, but I think it’s probably where he should be.”

Deneve, who conducts six to eight American orchestras annually, doesn’t challenge the assertion. “I love the mentality in America, this mix of childish dreaming and high-standard professionalism,” he said. “I find people very warm and accessible and relaxed, and I love this feeling of greatness you have, this feeling of challenge. I could easily imagine a future in America at some point.”

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Los Angeles Philharmonic

Where: Walt Disney Concert Hall,

111 S. Grand Ave., L.A.

When: 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, 2 p.m. next Sunday

Price: $40 to $142

Contact: (323) 850-2000 or

www.laphil.com