Again Nagano claims two opposite answers to when he started conducting: "Very early or very late!"

I started conducting when I was eight.  I grew up in the Presbyterian Church; there was a very important and active children's choir, so I was called upon occasionally to conduct that children's choir. But that was the end of a brilliant career for many years!

Later on at university a number of composers continually asked me to conduct their pieces as they wanted to be able to hear that they had written.  I just seemed to be the chosen one, so I got quite a bit of experience that way.

But I didn't really consider conducting as a real métier until much later; introduced or guided that way through my years with Laszlo Varga.  One of my first jobs I got, employment wise, was being accepted into the opera company in Boston under Sarah Caldwell: I went there as her formal apprentice (1977 to 1979).  I really did grow up in her opera house, growing up doing everything, working my way up from the very bottom to the top. 

That was quite a defining moment. I had always had a strong love of opera, as well as symphonic music, and I'd always felt that somehow the particularly German tradition of learning the repertoire and métier through an opera house was something that seemed to make a lot of sense to me.  So I followed the same pathway, even though it wasn't in Europe.  I moved to the East Coast in Boston and began the very, very slow process of coming up through the house. 

My first independent employment then came from the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, which I still keep today: it's very remarkable!  It's a long time!  I remember, in my first year there, there were a number of articles saying that I was using the orchestra as a stepping-stone and people wondered how long it would be before I 'stepped on.'  Every year, there have been the same articles!  And now, 26 years later.  Oh gee!

In 1984, while Assistant Conductor at the Boston Symphony, Nagano famously took over a performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony without rehearsal and not having previously known the score.  Within five years he was signed up by Opéra National de Lyon (1989 to 1998) and two years later followed in Sir John Barbirolli's footsteps by taking over Manchester's Hallé Orchestra, where he was Music Director for nine years, to 2000, taking the orchestra from the old Free Trade Hall into the splendid new Bridgewater Hall.