“A born leader! » The composer and pianist Michaël Levinas knows Débora Waldman well; she was a student in her analysis class at the National Conservatory of Music in Paris. “He was already a strong personality, very determined and independent”, he points out. In June 2022, it was to Débora Waldman and cellist Henri Demarquette that he entrusted the creation of his cello concerto. A highlight. “Débora is emblematic of the new generation of conductorshe observes. She is a fan of precision, also capable of great expressive flexibility. »
There is something a little shy and fierce about the musician, who will be at the pulpit of the Victoires de la musique Classique, whose thirtieth edition, broadcast live on France 3 and France Musique, will take place on 1is March at the Dijon Auditorium. She has been directing the Dijon Bourgogne Orchestra as associate conductor at the Dijon Opera since September 2022. But the position that propelled her to the front of the stage is none other than that obtained in 2020 with the Orchestra national Avignon-Provence, of which she became, at the age of 43, the first female musical director, already extended until 2026. “It took me a very long time to realize that being a woman could be a hindrance to my careershe concedes. My journey has been much longer than that of my male colleagues. But I thought it might also be me, and was patient. »
Débora Waldman has always been immersed in music. She was born to a guitarist father and a musicologist mother on June 19, 1977, in Sao Paulo (Brazil), where her maternal grandfather, Wolf Waldman, of Polish Jewish origin, took refuge in 1939 to flee Nazism. At 4 years old, the little girl will follow, with her older sister and her younger brother, this mother whom a new love leads to Israel.
She fondly remembers life at Kibbutz Ga’aton, one of the oldest in the country, those happy evenings, those bus rides filled with children and songs. On the one hand, the popular repertoire of immigrants from all over Europe, on the other, classical music and especially Bach that his mother, Bracha, a student at Tel Aviv University, brings home. The little “bee” (meaning Deborah in Hebrew) then begins the piano.
In 1992, a new sentimental turn: Bracha married Miguel, an Argentinian psychiatrist. The whole family reunites in Buenos Aires. “I was 14 and a half. I did not feel well in Argentina. I was lost. I have a structured, very European mentality, and I couldn’t stand the versatility, the lack of seriousness. Music has been a lifeline for me. »
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