Category: Europe Page 3 of 7

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Essay: Music, War, & The Reality Of Cancellation (Part 1)

Chasms in the classical music world are becoming increasingly obvious as a result of the war in Ukraine. The pressures recently placed on artists to make a clear public statement, pressures which are being applied by various cultural organizations, have fomented resentments and created a whirlwind of controversy around the exercise of private and public opinions in relation to art and culture. There has been a heated reignition of the long-standing debate of how far one might (or should) separate the art from the artist. Things are not quite so clear-cut as some involved in the debate would believe, however;  the institutional motivations behind applying that pressure, and the decision to cancel Russian artists and music in some instances, are enmeshed within a tight knot of funding, education, location, history, access, and the effects of two years of pandemic on the arts landscape overall. Audiences are proving slow in their return in many markets; the optics of doing the perceived “right thing” to convince them of the value of return has never been more pronounced.

This essay began life as a series of observations on the current state of music, politics, intercontinental preconceptions, funding models, education cuts, algorithms, public relations, and evolving notions of collective responsibility. Since starting on 3 March, the piece has become longer and broader than what was initially intended, and is now an ever-evolving, super-fussy Hydra. Just when I think one section is complete, along comes… more: another piece of learning; a dire bit of news; the reading of a comment thread; a conversation; the sound of violins playing a folk song. At those times I become curious, and am forced to rethink. In the interests of organization and finitude, I will be publishing this piece in four parts, likely not wholly consecutive but interspersed with artist conversations, this website’s initial raison d’être at its launch in 2017. It has been suggested this current essayistic pursuit is more suited to book form – perhaps? The great paradox of digital publishing is its essential changeability and permanence; everyone remembers when you screw up; everyone knows when you edit. I have no problem standing thusly naked before readers – I just want to make sure I can control the temperature of the water before dropping my robe.

Part 1

It feels reductive to state “war is hell.” It is that, of course, because it makes everything and everyone around it hell, one rife with twisting corridors and uneven floors, crumbling staircases leading to ever more dimly-lit labyrinthine levels. The invasion of Ukraine has uncovered an increasingly rigid cultural exceptionalism across continents, one fast becoming the elephant in the auditorium. It is an element which is proving unhelpful for artists and audiences alike, because its existence is so patently antithetical to the notion that music is a unifying force, this concept which many artists state with urgent sincerity. How can this great oneness have any validity in the real world if a newcomer is constantly made to feel intellectually and creatively small by those holding more formal knowledge and training? The reactionary engineering of social media fosters such hostilities (and related reactivity) whilst simultaneously obscuring the practises of public relations, thus perpetuating a broad ignorance around the roles of finance and education. Such comprehension is not something governments or organizations would wish to be known, but that does not erase the validity of such investigation. One cannot simply shout “They are cancelling Russian artists!” without understanding the true mechanisms which have largely driven such cancellations; I would wager that they are less driven by xenophobia than by economics, and as much related to maintaining public relations as to pleasing donor bases. There is also, importantly, a deep aversion to risk after two years of pandemic; anything that gives off so much as a whiff of risk is duly launched off the boat, with all the expected words and righteous noises – sensitivitycommunitysolidarity. Bravo… ish.

Thus the recent claims of there occurring a giant wave of Russophobia within the classical realm (a victim narrative the Putin regime fosters, incidentally) are not completely accurate; no doubt that does exist, but one must keep context in firm focus. New York’s Metropolitan Opera, for instance, has roughly ten Russian singers, as well as Ukrainian basses Alexander Tsymbalyuk and Dmitri Belosselskiy, on board for this season and next. Such a detail holds significance; to ignore it is to ignore the necessary context which lays the groundwork for meaningful discussion. If we mean what we say, as music lovers and seeming ambassadors, we must be willing to get our hands dirty with various realities, including our own unconsciously-held beliefs and attitudes, as much as negotiating with those held by others. While classical culture prides itself on humanism, growth, and the ever-vital curiosity, I have witnessed few of these qualities in action of late from so many directly and indirectly involved parties; what I have seen is judgement, obfuscation, anger, showboating – reaction. Is there hope for sincerity? The jury is still out. As bass baritone Paul Carey Jones pondered in a recent post, “is the classical music industry all of a sudden truly serious about its desire for politically engaged artists, after a generation of hammering them into monochrome moulds of glossy PR-friendly “Living The Dream” bullshit?” In an attempt to explore pertinent issues within and around the intersections of culture, technology, politics, PR, and presentation, it seems wise to continually turn attention back, and forwards – to read, study, think, repeat, and to keep asking such questions, and expanding on them at every turn.

Such is the privilege of my own situation that I am able to pursue study, in a relatively healthy environment, with food in the refrigerator and heat buzzing on at predictable intervals. It is worth acknowledging this – the thing I ask for more of (education) and the things required to carry that out (time, money, environment) are not necessarily things everyone has access to, or easy access at that. Between hoovering, hay fever, student marking, sighing, cooking and clearing up, my days have filled up with reading, writing, note-taking, chasing people, ideas, and some cogent line of discourse, interspersed with glances at the telly every now and again. Context, as my many media and broadcasting students through the years will attest, is something of an obsession, but it takes continuous amounts of time, energy, money, and a calm atmosphere to grasp and cultivate an appreciation of context – not everyone has those things, or can so easily parcel them out; I acknowledge this (and shake angry fists at the utter failure of education systems, school boards, and arts departments here, but that’s a future essay). Context is often the very quality most often missing in contemporary discourse, and especially in times of war. Its absence, and the overall lack of commitment to its fostering on the part of artists, writers, organizations, educational departments, teachers, writers, publishers (most everyone in or around the system) has created a crater of non-awareness; that crater existed far before the start of war on February 24th but is growing exponentially, caving in on itself – and classical culture is fast becoming its most damaged casualty.

Along with an obsession of context is, as my students well know, a heavy dislike of false equivalency. Its rise not only within media presentation but the seemingly-innocuous realms of quotidian exchange is immensely frustrating for both its intellectual laziness and whataboutism, that debate-stopping, brain-melting tendency with a rather timely history. It is exhausting to wave arms against things which, over the last three weeks, have become so common, and so often go unquestioned. False equivalency hinges on giving equal weight to that which is not at all equal, but it also underscores a galling lack of empathy for which music is (again) meant to (magically, romantically) cure. Over the past week there have been numerous posts from musicians expressing concern at losing opportunities over what seems to be little more than their nationality – but (to be a bit of a broken record here) I’m not convinced that’s the actual reason for the cancellation. We all know perceptions are not reality, but oh, they certainly feel that way, and nowhere more sharply than in times of war. The wording isn’t always the same with these expressions, written in a mix of despair and outrage, but the subtext is shared: fear. Who should speak out? Is it a good idea? How much specificity is expected? As violinist Alexey Igudesman recently posited:

You are a Russian artist who lives in Moscow with a family and a child, or who has family in Russia.
If you give statements against the government, the danger of something happening to you or your family in a regime like Russia is very real.
No-one should be forced to become a martyr and put their family and livelihood in danger. If one does, that has to be the individual’s own choice.

As human rights project OVD Info outlines, such exercise of choice is not done lightly. It begs the question: is it a choice when it isn’t really a choice? Artists living in the West who have spoken out are to be lauded, but such statements are not comparable with those made by others living in the country, or with family living in such an environment. In acknowledging such a reality there is also the need to acknowledge another: “How can one feel bad for Russians when Ukrainians are  being bombed?” – there is no answer to this. There can’t be; there shouldn’t be.

Grappling with suffering means gently if consciously engaging the imagination; even (or especially) if that suffering is not ours. This is which is a key component in making the engine of empathy run. Such exercise sometimes opens the door to understanding – but more often, in this age of quick reactions and retweets, leads to un-feeling, to closing doors, to shutting down engines and kicking them down several sets of stairs. Invariably come the comparisons (of suffering; of victimization), neither side bearing equal weight to the other. (If you don’t think Putin and his gang delight in fomenting such divisions, kindly reconsider; he is arguably the author of the mud-slinging event at contemporary edition of The Suffering Olympics. Such an event merits no winners, and should not attract so many willing recruits, and yet.) Why do people engage in this? False equivalency isn’t related to “seeing all sides” –  such valuation robs us of humanity, and robs us of the ability to exercise the empathy that clearly expresses that humanity.

Alas, such reductions are the currency with which wars are waged and fought; bending too far back is dangerous, but bowing too far forwards is apologism. That doesn’t mean suffering should not be acknowledged, and it doesn’t mean such an acknowledgement negates the need for figures within the classical community to speak with clarity  at a moment when it ought to be least effortful; compassion is either present or it is not. If it is effortful, well, so the person is clearly revealed. Politics, as ever, presents a challenge. The classical community was largely silent over many things, seemingly floating above it all: James Levine, Me Too, BLM, casting couches, COVID19 – the list of issues which classical has faced are lengthy, perceived as inconvenient, viewed as overheated reaction from an over-anxious, social-media fuelled public. It’s a witch hunt! they shout, and alas, the algorithm of social media clicks along; fans obediently seal-clap, defend their heroes, slut-shame accusers, publish breathless articles filled with puffy questions that mysteriously divorce art from life. Such conversations are handy bits of propaganda and certainly make the classical ecosystem (along with non-paying publishers and ad tech) very happy. So what? The fact that war is possibly the classical world’s tipping point for meaningful change is telling; something has to give, but whether something will is a whole other matter. In a recent exchange at Tablet, celebrated refusenik Natan Sharansky offers his thoughts on the war, and remembers his own experiences of being a Jew growing up in Ukraine:

Donetsk was a very international city, it had many nations. It was an industrial center, so for 100 years people had been coming there to look for work from different parts of the Russian empire. There were Ukrainians and Russians in Donetsk, of course, but also Kazakhs and Armenians and Georgians and Tatars. So none of that really mattered. What really mattered was: Are you Jewish or not? […] Jews were the only people who were really discriminated against. There were jokes about every nation, but the real prejudices and the official discrimination were against Jews. Now, I studied in a Russian school where the second language was Ukrainian, and there were many Ukrainian schools where the second language was Russian. As a Jew, I tried to be the best in everything, so I tried to also be the best in Ukrainian literature.

The pressure on a minority group to be the very best has gone from being a shared reality among many young musicians into an uncomfortable requirement. Expectations are high; competition is rampant. Be the best at performing, and now, be the best at performing the mechanics of virtue; such is the pressure now. Any chance for meaningful change is choked in the race to apply the right level of knowledge at the right time, in front of (or with) the right people. Ever has it been thus.

Indeed, growth is uncomfortable (meaningful growth, that is), and authenticity is messy; our heroes won’t be so shiny through some forms of growth, and we may have to end our (over)use of the word “genius.”  The payoff might be more meaningful engagement –with material, audiences, program directors, artists… cultures, experiences, histories, ideas. One can show sensitivity to Ukrainian ticket buyers while simultaneously engaging them in these conversations – one is not (should not be) exclusive of the other. It’s an instinct one would have hoped would have been applied by the Canada Council, the Honens Competition (notably since reversed),Théâtre Orchestre Bienne Soleure, Kartause Ittingen, the Cardiff Philharmonic, and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and the Vancouver Recital Society.

It’s easy to point at these cancellations and scream witch hunt! (Putin would want you to) but far more difficult to examine the position of each, their board members, their audience demographics, the position of unions in some of them, and the ever-significant role of funding, which matters in providing wider music knowledge and related (needed) rehearsals of new material. Perhaps the work of Serge Bortkiewicz, Yevhen Stankovych, and Myroslav Skoryk will be programmed for more than benefits alone; perhaps these works will become, like so many others, part and parcel of regular season programming. Perhaps audiences will want to hear them, and more.

Serious consideration of such possibilities hint at the acknowledgement of a needed structural change and an overdue embrace of its smart application. The grounds must exist for dialogue which is free from angry exceptionalism but open to uncomfortable realities, including anger and disappointment, sometimes with words, sometimes in the form of returned tickets. That’s the reality; some outlets will be skittish in broaching this. Two years of pandemic has meant a wholly risk-averse landscape (the effects of which can clearly be seen in cancellations now), but such initiatives – such bravery – is required. It is in the exercise of these qualities that classical culture will, perhaps, find the kind of 21st century significance many argue it sorely needs. Alongside angrily returned tickets might come, one hopes, something else: curiosity. It is a quality which lays the seeds for… I won’t call it hope (which sounds precious) but… an opening. There needs to exist curiosity – for discussion, education, expansion, uncomfortable ideas, new avenues. “Just look,” says curiosity, “at least look…”

One might stomp off across the concrete, back to the labyrinthine bunker, ignoring the green shoots pushing through that soil, seeing only craters, mud, debris; one might walk away carefully, observing tiny buds, remembering it is spring, after all; one might be grateful to see such possibility. Setting fire to the field is not the answer. It is time to breathe, and to replant, carefully.

Photo: The curtain of the Komische Oper Berlin. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

Essay: On Ukraine – Moving Beyond Performance

What is there to say?

Artists and organizations – some of them – have said plenty; others, very little. Some have chosen their words carefully, like a doe making her way through a field riddled with landmines – any step provokes angry reaction, any bent blade of grass a torrent of judgement. Some have simply not said anything at all. There are arguments in waterfalls of threads online – sometimes they break a dam, mostly they don’t. Walls remain walls. That doesn’t mean hacking at them in a real way, with real tools, isn’t important. Social media has, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, been a fascinating way to observe who uses tools, and how, and why, though these platforms (whose influence, for good and bad, ought not to be dismissed) have also provided reminders of the ease with which many organizations and figures alike can hide, obfuscate, and conceal, or alternately, promote, congratulate, posture. Sometimes though, none of those things happen, but something far deeper, better, more authentic. At present that authenticity isn’t merely nice – it’s necessary.

The Kremerata Baltica Chamber Orchestra, currently on tour, recently engaged in a fascinating series of exchanges on their Facebook page after posting a supportive message and an actionable link (which I publicly thanked them for); the transparency of such efforts and exchanges is what the situation now demands. One hopes more organizations will follow suit, but alas, such direct expression in those other arenas is being blunted by political and economic interests, not humane and conscientious ones. The meaningful change inspired by pandemic which so many had hoped for in the classical world hasn’t totally manifest. (Some may argue with me on this, and really, go ahead; sticking to my guns.) There is a feeling, in looking at the mad race back to a crap old normal that didn’t work well for anyone not at the top, that war has magnified the compassion deficit uncovered by the pandemic a hundred-fold. People are already suffering emotional burnout, and now… now. But I’m not so sure performative hashtags are the answer. Certainly, such gestures satisfy marketing departments and board members who wish to convey concern (#concern); whatever is easiest, least risky, most theatrical, requiring lowest effort but eliciting maximum applause and maintaining the comfortable position of coolness (or victimology narratives), with the requisite grab for sexy influencer clicks, well yes, this. (I get it; take a look at my hashtags, done for clarity and indexing on the internet, but still.) I naively want to believe people are still (somehow) good, that they are not all selfish, that they will take initiative, however big or small, and not for their own sake; how I want to feel there is a willingness to risk comfort and familiarity and position, that humanity will make an effort, move beyond, give a damn – not for themselves, not for bank accounts, not for comfort or the continuance of some pretentious, capital-A form of art or some jewellry-rattling form of #fancy #night #out, but because it is simply the right thing to do. Watching numerous huge protests across the world is encouraging; people care, many of them, but I wonder how much is translating into real action, a contemplation given extra force in examining various responses within the classical world.

It is a community which has, this week, been a hodge-podge of activism, protest, confusion, awkwardness,  silence, diplomacy, and carefully-worded outrage. Some, like Opernhaus Zürich, have been straight-forward: “We strongly condemn the unprecedented war of aggression on Ukraine.” The purposeful inclusion of those words (“condemn” “war” “aggression”) are incredible when seen in contrast to the approach of other houses. Clarity matters; language matters. Russian conductors Kirill Petrenko and Semyon Bychkov, have used similar clarity in their respective statements. Released through the Berlin Philharmonic, Petrenko’s note says that Putin’s “insidious attack” does indeed “violate international law.” The head of one of the world’s most famous (and storied) orchestras writing this, publicly, is noteworthy; for Petrenko (who is Jewish), music is certainly not above, nor separate, from politics. How could it be, though, considering the history and creation of so many pieces? Going further yet is Semyon Bychkov, who has written a series of strongly-worded, thoughtful responses over the past week. In one statement, he pinpoints the importance of recognizing the intersection of history, memory, conflict, and narratives, something which has been the subject of heated online discourse since the start of the war this week:

One of many signs and symbols that the country has returned to pre-Perestroika times is the dissolution of the Memorial Society founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov in 1989. Its mission was to research every single victim of repression and keep the memory of the dead alive. Through the dissolution of the Memorial on 29 December 2021 victims of repression were killed once again. This too is a form of genocide. Not in the Russian-occupied Donbas of Ukraine as Putin claims.

The Russian regime wants to obliterate the memory of its victims. If we forget them we will betray them.

Earlier this week, Bychkov announced the cancellation of a planned series of concerts leading the Russian National Youth Orchestra. Rather than sticking head in the sand and stating “culture continues” he makes real the very real idea that choices during war matter; actions result in things people will, or won’t, experience directly – and this is what creates impact in a real way, an impact which morally dominates any ostrich-like, romanticized notion of what culture (specifically classical music) can or should be. Bychkov’s cancellation is not about punishment, as the St. Petersburg-born maestro explains:

I want the spirit of this decision to be unmistakably clear: it is in no way directed at the orchestra or its public. The emotional suffering of ordinary Russian people at this time, the feeling of shame and economic losses they experience are real. So is a sense of helplessness in face of repression inflicted by the regime. Those individuals who dare to oppose this war put their own life in danger. They need us who are free to take a stand and say: ‘The guns must fall silent, so that we can celebrate life over death’.

He writes something incredibly important just before this, that performing “under the present circumstances would be an unconscionable act of acquiescence.

This is not, it is worth nothing, an act meant to sow division; it is an act of solidarity that fully and openly acknowledges the central role of economics within the classical world, one rarely discussed but wholly vital, especially the impact the pandemic has had on culture. The money-meets-government factor is an element which certainly deserves scrutiny, and indeed it’s one many Russian artists have now dared to question. A strongly-worded open letter from Russian arts workers reads, in part, “Everything that has been done culturally over the past 30 years is now at risk: all international ties will be severed, cultural private or state institutions will be mothballed, partnerships with other countries will be suspended. All this will destroy the already fragile economy of Russian culture and significantly reduce its significance both for Russian society and for the international community as a whole.” So far the petition has more than 2100 signatories. I can only guess how many of those who signed are, or have been, on the streets to protest – there have been several across Russia, and thousands of people (including composer/musician Alexander Manotskov) have been detained . Several Russian cultural figures (including, rather notably, Vladimir Urin and Vladimir Spivakov) have signed an anti-war petition in which they recognize that “in each of us lives the genetic memory of war. We do not want a new war, we do not want people to lose their lives.” It may seem milquetoast in its wording, but as Meduza editor Kevin Rothrock pointed out, “many people are risking their livelihoods with this. It’s not your throwaway virtue signalling.” If art is about connection, as some have recently claimed, then the most important points in that line of connection must be financial; to disinclude them is to engage in a privileged form of willful blindness. Who can afford such a luxury now?

Moscow-based art museum Garage has released a public announcement in which they announce they are halting all of their exhibitions “until the human and political tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine has ceased. We cannot support the illusion of normality when such events are taking place.” A group of public figures, including author Vladimir Sorokin and actress Chulpan Khamatova, composer/pianist Anton Batagov, and Nobel-Prize-winning journalist Dmitry Muratov, have added their names to another petition, which reads (in translation):

The war Russia has launched against Ukraine is a disgrace. It is OUR shame, but unfortunately, our children, the generation of very young and unborn Russians, will also have to bear responsibility for it. We do not want our children to live in an aggressor country, to feel ashamed that their army has attacked a neighbouring independent state. We call on all citizens of Russia to say NO to this war. 

We do not believe that an independent Ukraine poses a threat to Russia or any other state. We do not believe Vladimir Putin’s statements that the Ukrainian people are under the rule of the “Nazis” and need to be “liberated”. We demand an end to this war!

The outrage – its reality, its clarity in expression, the risk inherent to its expression – are all very real, and witnessing it across the spectrum, in real time, has been harrowing. To be blunt: I never expected Russian artists to publicly take a stand, to venture, to risk, but when they did, I am struck (mostly) by the humanity, and the specificity of language in conveying that humanity (something I think Bychkov is especially good at capturing). That doesn’t mean there hasn’t been disagreement, defensiveness, an appalling lack of compassion. False equivalency, that pungent symbol of 21st century socio-political exchange, has been expressed by some – it reads as little more than self-interested apologism; the “what aboutisms” that come with such reactions beat on the intellect and the soul equally. Such responses were taken to task by Moldovan violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who shared specific and personal details of her family history, one which is, like so many of us Eastern Europeans, threaded through with tragedy:

My already very old grand-grand-parents were deported by the Russians to Siberia during the second world war. One grand-grandfather was shot. My grandparents were robbed by Russian soldiers of home and everything. Not even being allowed to keep the shoes of their small children they had to live on the street. These are facts, not opinions.

Equally clear has been the position of music publisher Bärenreiter: “We vehemently oppose violence as well as the unfounded and unjustified aggression of one state against another, for which there is absolutely no place in cultural Europe.” They added the call to “let us all think about how we can actively support the Ukrainian people who are paying the highest price just for expressing their will to live just like us.”

Herewith are two links, ones I shared with Bärenreiter, which I am sharing here – not to seem saintly, not to prove anything, but merely because of a feeling of utter helplessness; I don’t know what else can be done, but to provide something which might have a real impact past numerous other tepid words and performative gestures. Perhaps my history working for Amnesty International many years ago in Dublin is making itself known; those busy days working alongside journalists covering a variety of human rights stories left its own indelible mark. These links (to accredited charities) were shared with me by Ukrainian contacts, who have been pleading with their well-meaning, non-Slavic counterparts to please fucking do something! They contain real, actionable suggestions to real organizations, many of them working at ground level in Ukraine. 

I don’t want to offer any grand philosophical statement about how culture “erases” borders – those borders and identities matter to people. People are fleeing across them right now; the fact they’re from a certain place matters a great deal, to them and to others. People right now are arguing about those identities, warring over them, with words and weapons equally. Culture doesn’t melt anything; music doesn’t mend anything – if anything, music has the power to rip hearts wide open, to inflame passions, to provoke strong feelings and thoughts; sometimes it should. Music isn’t always some mystical prescriptive bandage meant to heal the world – history has repeatedly taught us (or tried to teach us) that such reductive understanding doesn’t exactly work, for performers or audiences. Of course, history is largely labyrinthine; right action and its effects are not. We all experience life, and its sounds, differently – anthems, marches, symphonies, operas – births, deaths, sex, love. We all come from somewhere; sometimes we leave those places, but our hearts stay. How could they not? Sing, proclaim, protest; have a voice. Your voice matters, and will in time, I think, be less a part of the labyrinth of history than a ragged, colorful thread in a vast quilt, a piece of which we take back to our homes, someday, somehow – against our skin, hidden, but close to our hearts.

(Artwork: Tetyana Yablonska, “Life Goes On”. Oil on canvas, 1970. The National Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv.)
Bernard Haitink, conductor, orchestra, symphony, classical, performance, maestro

Remembering Bernard Haitink: Conductor, Vessel, Teacher, True Gentleman

More than a week has gone by since news came of the passing of Bernard Haitink. Tributes, fond remembrances, recollections, and analyses have poured from a number of sources across the classical world, notably from the organizations he was part of, including the Royal Opera (Music Director, 1987-2002), London Philharmonic (Principal Conductor, 1967-1979), Concertgebouw Orchestra (Chief Conductor, 1961-1988), and Glyndebourne (Music Director, 1978-1988) as well as others (including the London Symphony Orchestra) where he was a regular and beloved guest. BBC Music Magazine’s Michael Beek called Haitink “one of the most revered conductors of the last 65 years” and indeed, pondering the range of his influence, across  institutions, orchestras, conductors, even (or especially) listening, is a task which requests the very things one feels are lacking, especially in this, our pandemic era: attention, patience, time. They are things Haitink very often insisted on, with quiet confidence, through his recordings and performances across six decades.

The conductor, who grew up in Nazi-occupied Holland and hailed from a non-musical household, possessed a humble grace which was reflected in whatever he directed his own considerable attention toward – though, as The Guardian‘s Nicholas Wroe rightly noted in a (wonderful) 2000 profile, “his reputation as a taciturn and somewhat introvert figure is slightly overplayed.” Haitink’s greatness came not from his being so different from other conductors of his generation in his economy of gesture so much as being his very own self through such expression. He said a lot by saying very little, and in so doing, touched the lives of a great many. In reading through numerous tributes of late, I have found it increasingly difficult to put into precise words the ways in which Haitink’s legacy has influenced my own listening and appreciation. Much of my experience of his work relates to the alteration (or rather, evolution) of long-held perceptions around my own capabilities; he led music which, for various reasons, I believed was too complex, too intellectual, too … deep, too dense, too detailed, simply too much for a plain-Jane, non-Conservatory-schooled person who grew up in suburban Canada. Despite my years of piano playing, there was an innate feeling that certain composers, and certain works, were simply beyond my comprehension or appreciation. Haitink’s recordings showed me otherwise. His recordings, of those supposedly “dense” works (by Bruckner, Mahler, and Shostakovich), as well as symphonies I thought I knew well (Brahms) imbued a quiet confidence in my own abilities, as a listener, music lover, eventual writer and interviewer; such careful listening, and concomitant trusting, re-examining, and pondering, together with study, conversation, and engagement, are pursuits I credit Haitink with developing. He trusted the music, and he trusted the listener’s ability to experience that music. No daunting grand idea, statement, credo, or personality superimposed on top; there was, and is, only sound, something anyone can understand.

Lately I wonder about the context in which such artistry arose and was cultivated, especially now, in an age where image is so often conflated with impact. Listening to the recording he made of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, (captured live at Covent Garden in 1997; released via Opus Arte), one’s thoughts turn to that last quality, mentioned above: time. It is a long work, but oh, how the time stops, and simultaneously runs by so quickly. “There is no force more powerful,” writes Mark Wigglesworth in The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters (Faber & Faber, 2018):

We cannot control it. We cannot influence it. […] Through music we can experience an hour as if it were a minute or a minute as if it were an hour. Music gives us the power to live in the present […] releases the present from the weight of its past and the expectations of its future. […] (Conductors) seek to organize music within time while simultaneously releasing it from the restrictions time imposes. We work within the boundaries of this paradox, managing the ebb and flow of music to defy a ticking clock and inspire a pulsing heart.

How might Wagner’s work have sounded, I wonder, had Haitink been a few decades younger? Or older? And how might I have received it in my younger days? 1997 found me chasing rock bands, reading the work of William Burroughs, listening to trip-hop; none of these pursuits seem reduced by my appreciating the work of Haitink (and indeed Wagner) now, but of course opera asks something different, something one may or may not be prepared to allow and to cultivate. As noted in the contributions below, the Haitink of older years was not precisely the Haitink of younger years. The conductor’s magic, then, was a most human one: he allowed time, and life, to change him, and he allowed us to experience that with him.

From Holland to the UK (to Chicago, to Vienna, and beyond), with heart surgery in 1998 and a hectic schedule of performances and recordings leading to a final performance in 2019 (at the Lucerne Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic), Haitink’s feeling for life, and the living of it, is expressed in sound as much as in the silence between those sounds.”There is no excuse for arrogance,” continues Wigglesworth, “and I actually don’t think you can be a good conductor without feeling humility toward the music and empathy with the players.” To exercise such empathy is a choice, a simultaneously brave and vulnerable one; music very often asks, nay demands, its cultivation, if not its outright expression. Empathy in concert with time, can have particularly bittersweet effect when experienced through this, our pandemic era. Through the loss of so many people whose work has had a personal effect, people who I admired and with whom I so wanted to speak (Graham Vick, Christa Ludwig, Edita Gruberova, Alexander Vustin, Dmitri Smirnov, and Alexander Vedernikov among them), Haitink’s passing in particular feels like something of a ‘last straw’ in grief. In her 2005 book The Year Of Magical Thinking (pub. Alfred A. Knopf), Joan Didion writes that “we are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.” Facing Haitink’s death has proven a reckoning on a number of levels, inner and outer, and I continue to try to calculate these losses – of people I don’t know and will never get to speak with; artists whose work so touched my life and shaped so many of its winding nooks and cranies. I continue attempts, however futile, to integrate the work of such figures with the loss of a mother whose passion for music, and inherent mistrust of being educated in it, led me into this world. Haitink helped me feel a bit more welcome, and I never got to thank him.

There are, of course, plenty who did, in a great many ways. “A good conductor gives musicians the feeling that even though they’re doing things his way, they would have chosen that way for themselves,” writes Christopher Seaman in his 2013 book Inside Conducting (University of Rochester). “This talent for persuasion is something you’re born with; nobody can teach it.” Such sentiments are echoed in the contributions below, from a range of inspiring conductors across the classical world. Also included are the thoughts of two music writers whose experiences of Haitink, on record and live, offer further insight. Some of these contributors are people I have interviewed in the past; others are new, but all, I feel, offer unique and moving perspectives. I am deeply grateful to all of them for sharing their thoughts here.

Bernard Haitink, conductor, orchestra, symphony, classical, performance, maestro

Bernard Haitink leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in October 2013. Photo © Todd Rosenberg Photography 2013

Sir Antonio Pappano

Music Director, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Music Director, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
Chief Conductor, London Symphony Orchestra from 2024-2025 (Designate from 2023-2024)

As the handover (of the Royal Opera) was happening in London, when he was leaving and I was taking over, he was very, very gracious – in fact, he invited my wife and I to dinner, and although he was not a man of many words, he made me understand how much he cared for the institution. I was very much aware of what he did, to keep the whole structure afloat. I’m talking about chorus and orchestra now, as a whole, because it was really in peril then, and there were so many political forces, trying to bring the place down, somehow, and he would have none of it. He was just firm, he didn’t go screaming and shouting – there was an inner conviction – and he continued to do concerts – the orchestra was performing outside the opera house; it was a wonderful defense of the livelihoods of so many musicians, and also how important the building was, I mean it was a crown jewel in British artistic life, so … you know, he will be beloved forever there. It was very, very important for me to understand what I had to live up to – I’m a completely different musician from him in the sense that I grew up in the theatre and all that, but I understood the esteem in which he was held. There was a firm foundation in the orchestra that I had to work with; he had his hands all of it, and I consider myself very lucky indeed.

I think everybody will say this about Bernard’s podium manner and his way of conducting, that “he let the music speak for itself” – well, what does that mean? What it means is that basically, he’s not getting in the way of the flow of the music, but he is guiding it; it’s not that he just lets it happen, no, he’s very much guiding it, and that creates a feeling of well-being in the players, and in the sound… the sound starts to glow because everybody is happy in the way the music is being shaped and the way they’re being guided. And this is something that you can’t really learn. It was just his presence. He had a way, a warmth, and a security … in himself, and the knowledge that the music, with just a firm guidance, would meld together, and that it would happen in his performances – that somehow, the intensity of the listening, and the well-being of the orchestra, created this sound. And it was a beautiful thing. My approach is completely different, and others’ approach is completely different, but this was really his, and it was a sort of trademark, a beautiful signature.

Amsterdam has a very rich Mahlerian history, which Bernard continued, and continued over time to refine and to deepen. It was an ideal hall also for the music of Bruckner – the Concertgebouw I’m talking about – because the resonance of that hall, and the way the instruments blend, it almost sounds like an organ, which is how one must approach Bruckner’s music, in some manner or form, and I think this music became a part of him, over time. But very interestingly, he conducted beautiful Debussy also, and wonderful Vaughan-Williams, he was much more than just Mahler-Bruckner… that which required beauty of sound, poise, and very strong foundations, like Brahms of course, that was, I think, very fertile ground for his way of making music.

Bernard came up during the recording era, so there are many documents of his work, but how does one describe “egoless,” you know, or “absolutely faithful to the composer”? We say that because it’s an exterior manifestation. We see it from the outside. His podium manner was not flashy, yet he could whip up the orchestras to a frenzy if he wanted to. He was very measured in dosing out intensity. One of the most difficult lessons to learn, and I can tell you I am still learning it, is, how, if you have a passion that is extraordinary, how do you dose that out? Because if you pour all that passion into every single bar in the same manner, it… basically it’s like you are ruining food with a sauce that is just too overpowering. That’s not the most elegant of comparisons, but you get the idea. I think he knew how to dose out, and how to measure, how to weight – he was a patient musician, and he knew the moment, and when the real moment was coming, and that is a life lesson for conductors.

Vladimir Jurowski

General Music Director, Bayerische Staatsoper
Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin
Honorary Conductor, State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia (“Evgeny Svetlanov”)

The first time I saw Haitink conduct must have been autumn 1990, or winter 1991; I was just starting my conducting studies in Dresden and was trying to absorb as many musical impressions in concerts and opera performances as possible.

Luckily, Dresden was then one of those magical places in Germany which attracted world-class conductors, much in the same way a flower meadow attracts butterflies and bees… and the main point of attraction for all those great conductors was, of course, the Staatskapelle Dresden. Bernard Haitink was one of those musicians who chose to travel across DDR borders to work with the Staatskapelle. I remember very well the first ever concert of his I ever heard at the Kulturpalast (obviously this was long before it got refurbished, so the acoustics were still generally appalling and needed a real master to make the sound of an orchestra work in there), with Mozart’s “Haffner-Symphony” in the first half, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony in the second half. His Mozart was absolutely revelatory: so lean and fresh and completely fat-free! I could not believe I heard the same Staatskapelle who played a Beethoven Symphony under another famous conductor only a week before and (on that occasion) Beethoven sounded like Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance”… ! BH’s completely unaffected but affectionate way to care about a piece of music made the orchestra play on an edge of their seats for him.

I have seen Haitink conduct countless times since, mainly at the helm of the Berlin or Vienna Philharmonics, and they absolute moments of musical happiness for me: Mahler’s Third, Bruckner’s Eighth… this man had a gift to make other people suspend their egos for the time being and become one with the music they were performing.

I met him only a handful of times and I particularly cherish the memory of our first encounter. I believe it was in 1999 or in 2001 when he came to Paris with the LSO to perform Britten’s War Requiem at the Theatre de Chatelet. I was conducting Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades at the Opera Bastille around this time and rushed to the Chatelet on my free evening to hear the War Requiem. After the performance – which seemed perfection itself – I went backstage, introduced myself, and tried to express my gratitude for the incredibly loving performance which I had just witnessed. To my surprise, Haitink interrupted me and started praising… my performance of Queen of Spades which he saw the night before! He was apparently preparing this opera himself for a ROH production and went to see the piece on his free night. I shall never forget what he told me: “What I particularly liked about your performance was that it started right from the first note! Every performance should do it but not every performance succeeds at starting right from the first note…”

Our last two encounters were both due to mournful occasions – the death of Sir George Christie and Sir Peter Hall. But at the same time. Sir George Christie’s memorial concert in December 2014 was an unforgettable and most happy experience for me: to be conducting the same orchestra, sharing the podium with the great Bernard Haitink, and to also be witnessing him returning to “his” LPO!.. He chose to conduct the B-flat major Entr’acte from Schubert “Rosamunde” and there was barely any rehearsal (some 10-15 minutes beforehand, in an icy-cold church on an icy-cold London December morning) but what he conjured up from the LPO players for the memorial was of such noble and moving simplicity that tears came to my eyes. When he stepped from the podium and, after a moment of silence (there was no applause in that concert I seem to remember), sat down on the chair next to mine, leaned over, and whispered “You’ve got a very good orchestra, Vladimir” to which I answered, “Thank you Bernard. but it was you who shaped them!”

I feel privileged having met this great man and having inherited two artistic institutions of the highest calibre from him: Glyndebourne Opera Festival and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. His humility, modesty and conditionless love and servitude of music remain a model for all of us – and what a dignified way to leave the stage that he chose, entirely in keeping with his personality, and his approach to his art.

Paul Watkins

Artistic Director, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival
Cellist, Emerson String Quartet
Visiting Professor of Cello at Yale School of Music

I was a kid in the European Youth Orchestra, or the European Community Orchestra as it was called then, around 1988-1989, on a tour where Haitink led Bruckner 7 and also the Mendelssohn violin concerto. I knew about him, of course, because he conducted some of my favorite recordings ever, particularly the amazing recording of the Brahms Double Concerto with Perlman and Rostropovich (Warner Classics, 1980). The orchestral playing was just as engaging as the solo playing in that, and I wore that record out listening to it. I loved his Mozart too.

So I knew his work as a kid, then with the EUYO, and then when I started my job with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the early 1990s. He would come in now and again, and just rejuvenate the orchestra every single time he was there. When I left the BBC Orchestra and joined the Nash Ensemble, he came in to conduct us there; we did a program at Wigmore Hall with Felicity Lott, he led a chamber version of the Four Last Songs and the closing scene from Capriccio. In that scene there’s this wonderful horn solo at the start, and Richard Watkins, the horn player at the Ensemble (he’s not related to me!) who I don’t think had played with Haitink before, played this solo so magnificently in rehearsal. I looked at Bernard and he looked at me, and gave me this kind of smile and wink, of, “Oh my goodness… “ – and at the end he stopped, put the baton down, and said, “Bravo”, this heartfelt expression to this horn player he’d not crossed paths with before! That was so special to hear. The last thing I did with him was to play as a soloist in the Haydn Sinfonia Concertante on a tour with the EUYO in 2016. It was wonderful to work with him as a soloist.

I’ve seen a lot of obituaries in the last week or so saying Haitink was the “anti-glamour” conductor, and I think that misses the point: Haitink was actually a braver musician than people who would be characterized as “glamorous conductors”, the starry, charismatic maestri. Haitink had the most charisma of any artist I ever met – he let it come through the music; he became a vessel for the piece, a helper for the musicians, he was one of them. That’s not to say he wasn’t extraordinarily in control of the music – he’d studied the scores, absorbed them deeply, but he was also able to let go, and relinquish that control, and I think that’s why he got some deep, and warm, and human performances, That’s why people remember him. And he remembered everybody – he knew me, after only working with him those few times. I felt emboldened to get in touch with him then, and a lot of this was through his wife Patricia, who was so generous to me. Bernard would allow me to come to rehearsals; at that time, I had left the BBC Orchestra and was with Nash, and he was working with the London Symphony Orchestra. I would be allowed to attend those LSO rehearsals and would sit in the back of the hall with a score, and just watch and listen. That gave me an enormous education as a fledgling conductor myself. The way he was so patient, so quiet, but so intense at the same time – that quiet intensity is what I learned from him.

There are a lot of conductors very much in the public eye and known for being extremely flamboyant, but in the end the ones who have the deepest musicianship come back to that kind of stillness. It’s partly to do with being just getting older, and finding more economical ways to express what you have to express. I’m thinking back to pictures of Haitink as a younger man, and there was no shortage of fireworks from the guy then! It’s not like he didn’t have all this ability, he just found different ways to express it. He is really in the top five conductors of the 20th century. I’m not sure we’ll see that many like him in the near future, but give it ten or fifteen years – those characteristics and values will come back. He’s too great an artist not to have a far-reaching influence.

Bernard Haitink, conductor, orchestra, symphony, classical, performance, maestro, Ben Palmer, rehearsal, 2014

Photo: Ben Palmer. June 2014, taken immediately after Haitink’s first Mahler 7 rehearsal at the Royal College of Music.

Ben Palmer

Chief Conductor, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck
Founder and Artistic Director, Covent Garden Sinfonia

In 2014 I was invited by the Royal College of Music to prepare its Symphony Orchestra for Bernard Haitink’s performance of Mahler 7. As well as bringing the players together into a cohesive ensemble – the orchestra is assembled afresh for each project; I tried to rehearse in as much of Haitink’s own interpretation as I could, having done some intensive study of his most recent recordings. As a then-32-year-old, it was my first time conducting the symphony, and it was fascinating to learn it through someone else’s eyes, to try and make sense of their decisions and ideas. After a few days of intense work, I came into College to watch Bernard’s first rehearsal. Unsurprisingly, he was treated like royalty at the RCM: a welcome party of senior staff waited on the steps; the orchestra tuned and ready on the stage. There was complete silence as he stepped onto the podium. After a handshake with the leader, he said in a quiet voice, “We have a mountain to climb, so let’s start climbing.”

I almost had a heart attack when he began conducting in eight – I had rehearsed in four – but, of course, like every gesture of his, it was unmistakable. Much to my relief, he did all his tempi and rubato as we had prepared, and the first run-through of the first movement went extremely well. In those delicious moments of silence after it finished, he turned round, found me in the hall, did a little bow, and said “Bravo.” It still sends shivers up my spine thinking about it. Of course, in that rehearsal of his, I learnt more about the symphony than I had in all the weeks I’d spent preparing it. Passages that had been awkward or difficult for me, he navigated with a mere flick of the wrist; moments that left me sweaty he would conjure with a lightly clenched fist.

In 2017, the RCM asked me to prepare Daphnis et Chloé for him. The day before I was due to have my last two sessions with the full orchestra, the message came that Mr Haitink felt he might need an extra rehearsal, so my last one would be taken by him. I didn’t expect him to remember who I was, but when he arrived he walked straight up to me, shook my hand, greeted me by name, and apologised for “stealing one of your rehearsals.”

That he was so kind, encouraging and generous to me personally only proves what everyone says: he was a true gentleman. He was also, quite simply, my favourite conductor.

Kenneth Woods

Principal Conductor, English Symphony Orchestra
Artistic Director, Colorado MahlerFest
Artistic Director, Elgar Festival

The sorrow that came from hearing the news of the passing of conductor Bernard Haitink last week was, for me at least, made even deeper at the nagging thought that, widely as Haitink is already missed, we now live in a musical world that doesn’t share the unique qualities which made him such a remarkable figure.

Haitink was an exemplar of everything a conductor should be – and the antithesis of what most people assume a conductor is likely to be; he was a musician of real depth. In a climate where interpretive choices can sometimes be driven by fads and dogma, Haitink’s music-making was deeply intuitive, grounded in a deep knowledge of the scores he conducted, his artistry made all the more special through his famously collegial and collaborative approach.

For the last third of his career, Haitink stood out as a seasoned master in a craft which, more and more often, treats such experience with disdain. This is ironic because Haitink was something of a boy wonder, ascending to the position of Principal Conductor of the Concertgebouw Orchestra at such a young age – just thirty years old then! But, while some young talents seem to stop evolving the moment they achieve a first taste of success, Haitink never stopped growing. His life’s work is, if nothing else, a testament to the results of a lifelong commitment to learning and self-improvement. Haitink was absolutely allergic to empty display and conducted without a hint of vanity on the podium, yet he had possibly the most expressive, effective, and dare I say, beautiful conducting technique of anyone who ever waved a baton. He had a gift for drawing the most beautiful sound from any orchestra, but he also had a steely core and a plenty of fire within. His music-making could take the listener straight into the abyss when called for.

In an age that prizes first impressions above all else, Haitink’s performances offered more than a single listen could reveal. A wise teacher understands that even a fine student may not fully absorb a lesson for many years, but, nevertheless, shares their insights without impatience or condescension. Haitink was one of the last interpreters I can think of who made music in much the same way, serene in the knowledge that, as one grows as a listener, they will find more and more inspiration, more enjoyment, and more enlightenment in the scores he loved. I am grateful that I can continue to learn from his work.

Haitink, Shostakovich, recordings, compact discs, CDs, collection, music, Bernard Haitink, classical

Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

Alan Mercer

Director, GBF Media
Editor, The DSCH Journal

Haitink was no “hero” of Shostakovich’s music, no showman, no denier or decrier of the endless controversies that the West loved to drag along in the composer’s wake. “Loyal Son”, “Closet Dissident” were of no significance to Bernard Haitink, or at least to the manner in which he approached Shostakovich’s symphonic oeuvre. What did matter to the Dutchman, and indeed what ultimately made his interpretations of many of the great composers of our age so moving, was his ability to embody a sense of humanity through his art, to convey the composer’s inner mind to the audience. During recording sessions for his Decca recording of Shostakovich’s Fifth, Haitink is quoted as saying “You must read ‘Testimony.’ [Solomon Volkov’s controversial ‘Memoirs’] It’s tragedy, black tragedy – Shostakovich was an “unhappy man.” And I defy anyone not to be stirred by the 3rd movement Largo, in the recording of the Fifth with the Concertgebouw.

Few people imagine that the two men might have met, crossed paths and even exchanged a few words. Yet they did meet, in 1975, in Moscow, Haitink describing the sick and weary composer as “A nervous man, very wary.” Shostakovich told Haitink that he had been moved by his performance with the Concertgebouw that day, an account that the conductor related with evident melancholic pride.

It was at the London Proms in 2008 that I truly comprehended how a genius such as Haitink could communicate to an audience such extremes of angst, ferocity and desperation that a work such as Shostakovich‘s Fourth Symphony embodies. The orchestra – the Chicago Symphony was of course no stranger to this repertoire, given Gennadi Rozhdestvensky’s previous tenure – but if the Russian conductor drew out of the music its unmistakable Mahlerian influences, in Haitink’s hands the Fourth truly did, as one critic wrote “Appear from the depths of Stalin’s terror – as Shostakovich’s requiem.” Haitink’s control was subtle but absolute. The impulsiveness and orchestral volatility of the Fourth (which Haitink stated was his favourite of the cycle, along with the Fifteenth) can, in some performances err on the incoherent (no names shall be named): here the Royal Albert Hall shook with the intensity of the creeping violence of the 1930s, intertwining deafening expletives and hushed, fearful whisperings. After the final bars: silence. Sweat poured from the maestro’s brow, it seemed, onto the pages of the score. Silence. An unearthly peace had settled like the ashes of an existence.

Jari Kallio

Teacher
Music Writer

All my musical life, Bernard Haitink was there. My first encounter with Mahler 5 happened with his Concertgebouw recording on a 1970s Philips vinyl set. Picking up the Amsterdam tradition in the sixties, Haitink conducted Mahler way before it was cool. As years mounted, his recorded cycles of Mahler and Bruckner became paramount – and deservedly so. Alongside Austro-German repertoire, Haitink’s performances of Debussy and Ravel were equally indispensable, as a budget-priced re-release of the latter’s orchestral works, bought with my limited student money at the time, resoundingly demonstrated. As for Debussy, he was the one who first introduced me to the discarded fanfare in the last movement of La Mer; a discovery that ignited my inextinguishable fascination in the earlier versions of the well-known works in the repertory, and the musical processes concealed within the minds of composers.

My last two memories of seeing the man himself are both from London, one of his musical capitols. In May 2017, I had the privilege to join the Barbican audience for his Bruckner double-bill with the LSO, an orchestra he worked with in close association over the last two decades of his conducting career. While volumes could be written about the wonderful performances of Te Deum and Symphony IX, the fact that the London Symphony Chorus remained onstage after the intermission to hear Haitink conduct Bruckner’s last symphony, speaks more than any words I could come up with. A couple of months later, I saw him once more, engaged in post-concert discussion with Sir Simon Rattle, whose era as the Music Director of the LSO had just been augured in the hall below, with a marvellous contemporary programme. Though his name is mostly associated with the big works in the repertoire, Haitink did his share with contemporary music too, resulting in dedicated premieres, such as the terrific first outing of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Chicago Remains in with the CSO in October 2007.

A Haitink performance was always about the music – no more, no less. His readings did not draw attention to the act of conducting; rather, they evoked the sense of rediscovery of the musical works and the notion of the extraordinary quality of orchestral playing, and when it came to performing concertos, Haitink was the most generous accompanist. In terms of architecture, he made Brahms interesting – unlike many of his esteemed colleagues. On the podium, he inspired and helped, without getting in the way.

Bernard Haitink, conductor, maestro, Haitink

Photo: Clive Barda

Top Photo: Bernard Haitink leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in October 2013. Photo © Todd Rosenberg Photography 2013
sunset, sky, color, Romanian Athenaeum, Bucharest, scene, perspective

Essay: Reflecting On A Romanian Festival’s Past, Present, & Possible Future

This year’s edition of the Enescu Festival came to a close with a sharp contrast of good news and bad news. The good news is that Romanian conductor Cristian Măcelaru, currently Music Director of the Orchestre National de France in Paris and Chief Conductor of the Orchestre National de France, will be entering the role of Artistic Director of the Festival, taking over from Vladimir Jurowski, who this autumn has begun his tenure as Music Director of Bayerische Staatsoper, in addition to his duties as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin. Along with duties in France and Germany, Măcelaru is also Music Director of the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California, and Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Interlochen Arts Center in Michigan. He won a Grammy Award in 2020 for conducting Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto with Nicola Benedetti and the Philadelphia Orchestra (Decca Classics). Timișoara is his hometown, which is where the next Enescu Festival is set to take place, in 2023. With such intercontinental experience, particularly within the realm of administration and festivals, Măcelaru may very well be the right man for the right job, coming in at just the right time, but just how much of that precious time he’ll be spending in Romania as a whole, especially in the coming months, remains, like much of the festival, an ever-shifting question mark. Classical, as a whole, has largely gone back to a sort of normal (ish), with an added frenzy provided by playing a massive, years-long game of catch-up, following months (sometimes years) of non-activity. Măcelaru’s responsibilities, like those of many other conductors right now, are mounting, outside of whatever tentative plans may already exist for 2023.

The bad news for the Romanian festival is that it’s losing its longtime General Director. Mihai Constantinescu is stepping down from what has been, one may safely assume, a hectic quarter-century of service. Very much a force behind the biennial fest, Constantinescu was also a continual presence who could be seen at any number of live presentations, backstage and in the audience, always talking to numerous people in-person or on the phone, via email, in messages. Along with arranging for artists (this year’s edition hosted 3500 of them according to the festival website), Constantinescu regularly liaised with branches of government, major sponsors, and all manner of management, marketing, publicity and touring teams to produce a busy, buzzy fest spread over several venues in Bucharest proper, as well as towns across the country. To see him at any point during the festival was to see the contemporary concept of “hustling” well and truly manifest. And no wonder: this year’s festival, its 25th, hosted a total of 78 concerts in Bucharest, and 13 events in other cities. That’s a scaleback given its usual size and sprawl, and one wonders how that sprawl might translate from Bucharest (population 1.83 million) to the smaller city of Timișoara (population roughly 306,000). Geographically the city is closer to the Hungarian town of Szeged than to Bucharest; having a more westerly locale may give the festival a more immediate presence (and easier, driveable access) through central and Western Europe, which may well benefit those visiting organizations, but proximity aside, the city has another reason for being an interesting choice for the future. Timișoara was the site of government demonstrations in 1989 that spread nationwide, ones that led to the execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) and his wife on Christmas Day of that year; whether or not these events enter into or influence the shape of the festival is a huge question mark. The festival, for all its ambition, could certainly do with a more specific vision. It will be interesting to see, over the coming weeks and months, the extent to which Constantinescu’s exit, Măcelaru’s entrance, the roles of history, memory, and geography might play. The question, as ever, remains: will audiences follow, go, support – locals included, or perhaps especially?

The Enescu Festival is one of the world’s Top 5 classical festivals, as its website proudly notes. This year’s fest featured continual enforcement of health codes, ones that become more stringent toward the closing in late September. Masks backstage became not optional, but de rigeur, for artists and visitors alike. What with an alarming pandemic situation (one which has steadily worsened in the weeks since the final note sounded), conductor and former Festival Artistic Director Lawrence Foster made an impassioned plea for vaccinations from the stage of the ornate Romanian Athenaeum, a landmark in the city opened in 1888. Before a small if attentive audience, Foster was leading an in-concert performance of Berg’s Lulu with the Transylvania Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra of Cluj-Napoca, in a reduced orchestration by German conductor/composer Eberhard Kloke and featuring young German soprano Annika Gerhards in the title role. During his speech, Foster (who revealed he’d had COVID 19 himself) also saluted the work of Constantinescu and shared his own personal memories of working with the outgoing General Director. One had the impression everyone, onstage and off, was simply grateful to be there, in this, of all years. Yet the fact the festival (which Yehudi Menuhin supported in its earliest iterations) exists into the 21st century is a noteworthy thing. Since its inception in 1958,  it has hosted a good number of big names, sometimes more than once (Joyce Di Donato, Valery Gergiev, Yuja Wang, Gautier Capuçon) with concerts through most of September presented every other year, alternating with the Enescu Competition for young musicians. Local audiences are given numerous opportunities to experience the work of artists and orchestras who don’t normally appear otherwise, and to experience live work that isn’t normally played or programmed across much of the country. Those benefits extend to tourists; tickets (and indeed, hotels, food, attractions) can be had for a fraction of the cost of going to Vienna, Paris, or Munich. The savings are concomitant with difficult historical and political details in a place that still struggles to fit a terribly difficult past with a very fraught future, and some Romanian musicians have quietly complained that the Enescu Festival gets the lion’s share of funding (it being a big glamorous event that attracts foreign talent and visitors), while local companies are left to wither. While the festival features numerous Romanian musicians, artists, and orchestras, at my visit to the country in 2019, I kept hearing, repeatedly, sentiments that “the system isn’t fair” and “we feel ignored.” Such criticism isn’t new but is indeed valid, and worth heeding; there is a sharp and visibly distressing disparity between Western and Eastern EU countries.

The country has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor in the EU, and according to political scientist Iulian Chifu, who was an adviser to Romania’s president between 2011 and 2014, “corruption is the new communism.” Romania, with its painful past and seemingly-inert present, with a lack of socio-political willpower enmeshed with widespread (and again, distressing) corruption, horrific rising COVID rates (roughly 15,000 a day), government officials at odds with health officials, immense church influence across swaths of society, and a rapidly rising tide of right-wing political populism, such criticism feels both spiky on the surface and sharp around the edges; such realities have the very real potential to take a big bite (or two, or more) out of the country’s biggest and arguably most famous festival. The sentiment of many in Bucharest (and the wider country) of feeling ignored, of having their concerns be ignored, still strongly influences my memories of the city three years on, recalling the many sites that confirm the country’s painful past whilst at the same time trying, desperately, to paper it over. The immense Palace of the Parliament, built in 1977 by dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu , stands like a stern monolith in the middle of Bucharest, and its ghosts, even in the day, seem eerily intact; passing by after dark is shudder-inducing. It was surreal to visit the truly excellent National Museum of Contemporary Museum (MNAC), which is housed in one of the palace’s wings; even with its modern renovations and inspiring collection of abstract works, the building renders the presence of its creator a little too present, with its windows that look down menacingly upon various passers-by. A disparate group of elements always seems to be living next to each other in Bucharest, and no single can be discerned, let alone resolved; history, art, money, power, corruption, poverty, inequality, stagnation, and some form of glamour (which the festival has certainly celebrated and promoted) are neighbours in this post-communist society. The delicate layers of sonic magic from a concert just experienced seemed to wilt like petals with every evil glint from those palace windows, and the choice to run across the street, as it turns out, was obvious, and not only owing to impatient traffic lights and the aggressive drivers who seem to dominate the city’s roads.

Stavropoleos, Bucharest, garden, architecture, light, beam, green, arches, Orthodox, church, monastery, history

One side of the garden of the Stavropoleos Church and Monastery in Bucharest. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

Several ideas for repurposing the palace were tossed around after the 1989 revolution; possibilities included a casino, a mall, a Dracula theme park (!) before the decision came to maintain it, and to house Romania’s government within. For all its grim history and overblown pretentiousness, the structure gives a shred of order to what is a mostly chaotic urban layout. Wherever I wandered; I always managed to reorient myself in relation to its sprawling centrality. As Shaun Walker noted of Bucharest in The Guardian in 2019, “Decaying art nouveau mansions mingle with brutalist communist architecture. The city sprawls over a huge area and traffic is appalling. Masterplans for urban renewal have been written and ignored. The quarter around the Palace of the Parliament is perhaps the only area with orderly streets and layout, but has a soulless feel. “The whole ensemble makes no sense in relation to the rest of the city, and does not fit on the city’s main transport axises,” said Andrei Popescu, an urban planner and tour guide.” That delicate – some might say dysfunctional – infrastructure comes to light in ways one wishes weren’t so intermingled with the festival’s functioning, but geography, politics, the simple reality of Eastern Europe and the EU in the 21st century all make that impossible. Zig-zags of streets, punctuated by wide avenues pregnant with a seemingly endless zipper of roaring cars are, together with sidewalks, cracked, uneven, poorly lit, crumbling. They extend well past the immediate festival area into the touristy Old Town (surely a tip-off of a title), where the tiny if utterly delightful Stavropoleos Church and Monastery sits, a quietly elegant Orthodox jewel. Forget the giant Orthodox cathedral-monoliths dotting the city (including the one beside the palace itself); small is definitely beautiful, as the Stavropoleos so quietly, beautifully proves. A visit there, and a silent sit in the adjacent gardens, is good, and needed, medicine for the soul.

Close by is the bustling Romanian restaurant Caru’ cu Bere. Stained glass and wood panelling inside, with an expansive patio at the front, it (like the fest favorite, Romanian restaurant La Mama) features a distinctly Eastern European mix of offhand service, huge portions, reasonable price tags, rich, garlicky flavours and spicing that simultaneously embrace tradition and cross continents, their rich tastes intermingling with cigarette smells and loud laughs. Don’t go to such places if you’re alone, or rather, do go, but solo diners should be fully prepared to be largely ignored and exposed to numerous many happy young faces enjoying an extended summer. Many of them belong to visiting musicians in orchestras from everywhere; I heard Finnish, Russian, Italian, English, Norwegian, German, and French the times I visited these establishments, and others like them, through the afternoons and evenings between and around concerts. It was fascinating to see an assortment of musicians there, sometimes hours after a performance (or before), a concert in which they’d been more dressed, less free, but oh, young, beautiful, eyeballing every move of maestro, as if on some kind of shabby-chic safari. Oh, to be a young musician in Bucharest on a sunny day or starry evening during the festival, sipping beer in a garden with fellow minstrels, gossiping about the soloist, fidgeting with hair, smirking at the Sala’s notoriously poor acoustics, as the (male) musicians, spread around pushed-together tables, smile and nod silently, staring at bare shoulders and pert bosoms, holding up empties at the frowning, perspiring servers who would invariably scurry back with a full tray, plates of little sausages, fried potatoes, glinting shards of vinegar-dressed cucumber. Clouds of smoke would hang in the humid evening air like thought bubbles containing that word so present on everyone’s lips and minds: freedom.

Some way or another, the lot of them realized that concept, with varying degrees of success, at (perhaps ironically) the Sala Palatului, an acoustically dire hall built under the country’s Communist regime in 1959-1960, with its shabby velvet seats and worn floors and thick walls, amidst air so still and sweltering one could carve it with that little sausage knife. Modern sounds, amidst old Communist history; contradiction as balance. It would be the jolt the festival (country) needs, but oh the sound was (is) so bad. Whether or not Culture Minister Bogdan Gheorghiu will give a green light to that long-needed, much-requested new facility is an open question. With a background in theatre and television, Gheorghiu was, at the time of his appointment in May 2019, the fourth person to hold the position since 2015. Worth noting here is the Arena Națională, the largest sports arena in Romania, was opened in 2011, and cost €234 million. Earlier this year it hosted the UEFA European qualifying matches. Without going into tiresome false equivalency arguments around sports and arts, and populism and culture, what is notable is the just how quickly the government gears will turn, when, why, and for whom; it is a truth universally acknowledged that a small country in possession of a smaller budget must be in want of a big audience, with bigger wallets. “Every government from 2003 wanted to build a new hall, but every government refused to do it,” Constantinescu told me in 2019, “they told us in the beginning,”We’ll do it” but when the moment came, said, “We don’t have money or time” and “Oh, you need a different (location) for this hall.” It’s stupid, this is the best situated place in Bucharest – the hotels are here, the underground, buses – why move it? Bucharest doesn’t have so many places where you can situate a big hall.”

Sala Palatului, Bucharest, Romania, performance, venue, culture, Enescu Festival, immense, acoustics, architecture

Inside the Sala Palatului in Bucharest. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

When Jurowski presented an in-concert version of Enescu’s 1931 opera Œdipe at the Sala in 2017, Bachtrack writer Aksel Tollåli noted that “the loudness of the magnificently played orchestral climaxes was swamped, reducing what could and should have been a tidal wave of sound into a trickle.” At the close of this year’s festival Jurowski commented that “I think what it most needs is a concert hall. It has been promised to us by so many ministers of culture, I have seen three or four who have come and gone; they all made this promise, which remains unfulfilled to this day.” Any given performance at the venue at least during festival time, requires spending money on a seat near the front, or else much will be lost sonically; I did this, more than once, and found a better if no less troubling acoustical experience. Sitting further back one will observe audience members shaking fans and programs back and forth, dabbing foreheads with embroidered hankies, anxiously awaiting the appearance of a nattily-dressed soloist playing that popular violin or piano or cello piece, then exiting at  intermission or more notably during any not-mainstream work that might come after, Enescu symphonies included. They want what they know; sometimes, usually, the festival obliges.

“I’ve always observed it’s a vicious circle,” Jurowski said at a press conference just prior to the start of his tenure in 2017, “(that) conductors and orchestras come, visiting the festival, and all they usually put on their programs is hits.” Audiences, as anyone who’s been to the fest will attest, eat it up. Why shouldn’t they? Having performed Brahms’ famous Violin Concerto in D Major at the fest in 2019, violinist Julia Fischer (performing with the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, led by Jurowski) was greeted with such sustained, loud, and enthusiastic applause, it seemed impossible to oblige with anything less than an intensely-delivered encore. (Attendees certainly would’ve liked more, something violinist Ray Chen did provide thereafter, following a performance with the ​​State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia Evgeny Svetlanov and conductor Gabriel Bebeșelea.) Similarly, Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A minor, performed in 2019 by Leif Ove Andsnes and the Oslo Philharmonic and led by conductor Vasily Petrenko, was wildly received. Petrenko, an affable presence and meticulous conductor, indulged the packed Sala, following a sweeping performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, with warm smiles to the audience and directions to clap along. He was met with cheers, whistles, numerous camera-phones held aloft before-during-after. In a small room set aside for media interviews at the hall the day before, Petrenko said he felt it was a “duty” for him to perform contemporary works alongside the so-called hits; on the program for one of his concerts with the Oslo Phil was Morgon i skogen (Forest Morning) by Norwegian composer Øyvind Torvund (b. 1976.) Neither the instinct nor the inherent risk to pair the new, and mostly strange, with the known, and mostly beloved, is confined strictly to Western orchestras, many wringing their hands over how to strike the right balance while attracting their own set of new and old audiences. “I think classical music should be alive,” Petrenko said, his blue eyes shining, “it should not be a museum, and the only way to have it alive is to perform new pieces. And I think it is the duty of every conductor and orchestra to perform music of local composers – if a piece is not played, it does not have a chance; we have to give a chance for them. If we don’t, who will?”

Indeed, Enescu himself, whose 140th birthday was marked this year, is among those “local composers” to whom Petrenko was referring, and his work has been a mainstay of the festival. This year, he took the opportunity, in his new capacity as Music Director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, to lead a series of works over two nights that prominently featured the work of Enescu. The composer’s Strigoii, which started out as a piano sketch for an oratorio in 1916 and was “assembled” in the 1970s by Romanian composer Cornel Țăranu (with orchestration by conductor/composer Sabin Pautza) was presented in Romania for the very first time this year, by the George Enescu Philharmonic under the direction of conductor Gabriel Bebeşelea (who has become something of a champion for the work, recording it in 2018 with Capriccio Records and the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin). Cristian Măcelaru led the Orchestre National de France in a pair of concerts over two consecutive nights featuring the music of Shostakovich, Ravel, Dutilleux, Messiaen, Grieg, as well as Enescu, the latter featuring multimedia visual accompaniment by Romanian theatre director Nona Ciobanu and Slovenian artist Peter Kosir, part of the festival’s ambitious integration of various art forms through the medium of music.

Claims that the festival may have had some hand in the ascension of Enescu’s opera Œdipe, first presented in Paris in 1936, and being presented this season at both Komische Oper Berlin and Opera de Paris, speak to a certain optimism of influence, but such claims are not entirely accurate, especially if one considers the number of years opera houses plan in advance (at minimum four; usually more) and the demands being placed on the industry for new – but not too new – material. Wiener Staatsoper presented the opera as far back as 1997; La Monnaie/De Munt produced a staging (a co-production with Gran Teatre del Liceu and Teatro Colon) in 2010, one that was later produced (and revived) at Dutch National Opera. The Royal Opera Covent Garden staged Œdipe in 2016; the Salzburg Festival in 2018. It was also staged in Romania, by the Opera Națională București, in 2015 and again in 2019. Certain houses, under pressure to present newer material and to expand the so-called ‘canon’ of core repertoire (Verdi, Wagner, Puccini) might wish to embrace the sole opera of a Romanian conductor/composer/violinist, famous for his widely (some might argue overly) programmed Romanian Rhapsodies, inviting their respective audiences to experience a work that, while new, isn’t so far afield sonically; the work clearly references the music of Strauss, Debussy, and Ravel, thus retaining a perceived “safety” in having European roots. (It’s worth noting the opera is usually marketed sans the tiresome cliched Eastern exoticism that usually tends to otherwise characterize many Western initiatives involving the work of composers from Romania and much of the former Eastern bloc.) The opera has as its basis a widely-known story taken from Greek mythology, giving directors a wide palate of opportunities for creative presentation. Programming Œdipe is an expansion of the canon, those in charge might say, one that comes with risk – just the right amount of risk. Being just that much outside the known canon will mean, of course, finding the right artists for its realization, but listing a performance/production on a CV is an assured feather in the cap for any singer, one that can open potential doors to future parts, conductors, recordings, houses. The vocal writing is, in places, fiendishly difficult, with the lead baritone role required to maintain an immense energy and vocal flexibility throughout the opera’s nearly three-hour running time. Yes, the opera itself is a thing of immense beauty, but featuring the work as part of a season in Europe (or further afield) seems less a symbol of the Enescu Festival’s reach than a considered business decision for houses in what is, more than ever, a tenuous time for the industry, with repeated pushes and pulls to expand, explore, include, exemplify, examine, exhume, and execute as warranted. Between those demands, and threats to funding, drops in audience attendance, ever-changing quilts of venue entry and visitor restrictions (not enforced in some places and roundly criticized for enforcement in others), well… what’s an opera company to do? The sight of baritone Christopher Maltman stalking around the Opera Bastille stage recently (in Wajdi Mouawad’s thoughtful, beautiful production), his eyes covered by a patchwork of tiny, mirrored squares, seemed more relevant than ever. Reflect; refract; rethink. Revive, over and over.

Constantinescu admitted over the course of a lengthy and involved conversation (part of a feature eventually published in the Winter edition of Opera Canada magazine that also featured the thoughts of Petrenko) that he agreed with Petrenko’s sentiments around avoiding a sort of musical ossification. “We need to present the work of people who are alive,” he told me, but he added a vital detail: Romanian audiences have not had the privilege of hearing many works by Western composers, the very works other audiences may know and take for granted, since they live in places where the funding, education, and public support for such things exists and is regularly cultivated. “Vivaldi, Gluck, Handel and Couperin are names that are not often performed in (regular) season concerts in Bucharest,” he said, his eyes widening behind his owl-like glasses. “This is the goal of the festival: to educate people.” Such didactic instinct was realized in many offerings, particularly over the past four years, in drims and drams. The 2019 program saw the Romanian premiers of Strauss’ Die Frau Ohne Schatten (presented by Jurowski and the RSB), Britten’s Peter Grimes (performed by the Romanian National Radio Orchestra and Radio Academy Choir, led by Paul Daniel) and Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron (conducted by Lothar Zagrosek and performed by the Orchestra and Choir of the George Enescu Philharmonic together with Vocal Consort Berlin). Composer/conductor Lera Auerbach presented a number of her own works at the Radio Sala; Mark-Anthony Turnage premiered his new song cycle with tenor Allan Clayton and the Britten Sinfonia.

At the 2021 edition, Jurowski presented a series of works recognizing the 50th anniversary of the passing of composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), leading eclectic and demanding works (Les Noces, Renard, The Flood) which had never been performed live before in Romania; included in the first evening of his and the RSB’s two consecutive concert evenings was the work of Romanian composer Anatol Vieru (1926-1998). Czech composer Ondřej Adámek (b. 1979) enjoyed the premiere of his new work, “Where are you?”, written especially for Magdalena Kožená & Sir Simon Rattle, by the musical couple together with the London Symphony Orchestra. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, led by concertmaster Matthew Truscott and featuring soloist Yuja Wang, featured works by Haydn, Janáček, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich; members of the Berlin Philharmonic (including Noah Bendix-Balgley and Stephan Koncz) presented Enescu’s Piano Trio and Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 (both pieces, rather interestingly, in G minor), while the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra closed the festival with two concerts, the first featuring Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini paired with the music of Carl Nielsen (led by Alan Gilbert) and the second comprised of Enescu’s Pastorale-Fantaisie, Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture, and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 (led by Daniel Harding). The sheer scale and ambition of the festival, particularly amidst the realities of this year’s pandemic, cannot be underestimated – nor can the realities of such future ambitions be ignored; while such realizations are certainly worth applauding, their direct experience can be, for want of a better word, totally exhausting, with little to any space given, in practical or theoretical terms, for contemplation of them in isolation, or more especially, broader relation to one another. Is there a connection? Should one attempt to be found? Whither the events of 1989? Themes given to the festival by its own team (this year’s was “The Sound Of Love”; in 2019, “The World In Harmony”) feel, somehow, too ephemeral, too vague. Together with data, such elements reveal and conceal simultaneously in a strange, Soviet-style bit of politicking. One would ask for something – not bigger and more impressive and more wow, but more substantial, meatier, more solid, and not from its foreign attendees from from its extant (make that shifting) leadership. The figures trumpeted on the Enescu Festival website are impressive, but obvious. Indeed it was “the world’s largest classical music festival of 2021” (bien sur) far more telling is the number of locals who attended in lieu of foreigners scared off or stuck by travel restrictions. I found myself happy to read this, but equally curious to know if these indoor attendees comprised the same audience who’d attended free presentations across the street in years past, at the giant outdoor screens which had been set up with rows of folding chairs, spaces which were half-occupied most daytimes, with mothers and prams and older people, stopping, sitting briefly, cocking heads and enjoying ice cream cones, before moving along, cloth shopping bags in hand. Perhaps this is just the sort of social milieu that might play into the 2023 edition and somehow (one hopes) shape future programming choices. Rethink, reframe, revive; se poate spera.

Sala Palatului, Bucharest, Romania, instruments, cello, classical, display, exhibition, music

Inside the Sala Palatului. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

A part of the infrastructure to which Walker alludes in his Guardian piece has an influence in shaping the perception of the music experienced live, in content as in performance. Works with noticeably little to no energy live, or delivered in a sort of rote manner, are suddenly, owing to the shared frenetic pace of Strada Știrbei Vodă and Calea Victoriei outside, infused with a manic quality. The effect also works in reflection, acting as a nifty sort of mirror to those concerts in which joy and good humour arise naturally, and there are plenty of those performances as well. The streets outside are bustling, sizeable thoroughfares; renamed after the 1989 revolution, they act as sharp lines of demarcation between festival venues (the Sala, together with the smaller Sala Radio and the Athenaeum, located opposite/behind-ish) and bars, restaurants, cultural attractions, as well as the many hotels used by artists and guests alike. How busy, how rushed, how intense it all felt being in the midst of it all. The festival itself, with its team of kind and ever-patient publicists, assistants, and other personnel, works hard, and is determined to shape a specific impression – Very Impressive, Very Big, Very Wow; like a happier, better version of that giant palace, perhaps. But it can all be too impressive, too big, too wow; the pace and sheer variety can be overwhelming, frenzied, mentally/emotionally/creatively/spiritually exhausting. (I can only imagine what it must be like for visiting artists.) Visits to the Stavropoleos: regular, and required – that, or after a concert, sheer solitude and silence. Following a beautiful performance (usually of a work I hadn’t heard live before) in a hot, stilted venue, the last thing I wanted to do was to rush off to yet another presentation – usually a midnight presentation of an opera. Nu, mulțumesc. I wanted to sit and simply be with the rather miraculous sounds I’d heard sitting in a hot hall in high heels and slowly-dampening hair over the past how-many hours. There was no respite at any bar or restaurant or street, large or small; the winding paths to my own hotel weren’t poetic, they were decrepit, depressing, scary to navigate even in flat sandals. (But oh, I was so grateful for the large bathtub, a rarity in Romanian hotels, or so I was told; I may well have had the biggest one in the city.) The race of footsteps along dim, cracked yellow-lit pathways shadowed by low-hanging branches and peppered with cars, the giggles and glass-clinks like staccato shots in the open-air gardens, the echoes in the long, goldfish-bowl-like, quasi-chic bars of hotels – the quiet contemplation of such creative experience one wished for, in conversation or alone, was simply impossible.

sign, Bucharest, Romania, city, Enescu, music, geography, architecture

In downtown Bucharest. Photo: mine. Please do not reproduce without express written permission.

Still, it’s tough to look at the festival in any careful way without being perceived as mean or peevish. It’s Eastern Europe, goes the (mostly Western) thinking, what did you expect? Well. I am not sure who is served by fluffy travelogues that ignore on-the-ground realities; certainly such reports fall into the “favourable content” category so favoured by online publishers (and marketers), but I’m not sure they do the artists, the administration, the organizations (visiting and local), or the country as a whole any favours. The city, once described to me as a sort of “shabby-chic Paris” by a previous visitor, is, as Walker noted, a hard-scrabble hodge-podge of new and old, have and have-not, blazingly modern in some sections, achingly dilapidated in others, a terrible if terribly real reflection of the country’s widening social divides. The Enescu Museum, a short walk from the festival locale proper, and with no real connection to the festival itself beyond the composer’s name (bizarrely), is in a horrendous state of disrepair. Perhaps there is a charm in the cracks, the discoloration, the water marks on the ceiling, the curling edges of paper and the worn velvet surfaces, but it’s one that can be experienced, or understood, as a visitor without romanticizing its actual, lived realities for so many; such romanticizing only serves to reduce the direct experience of its people, particularly the many young people I noted working in service positions across the city. They don’t want pity; they want to leave.

My mornings during my visit were largely were spent in a tiny cafe located with small wire chairs and shaky tables set out on a slanted, cracked sidewalk framed by yawning old trees and lining a narrow, similarly-cracked street hosting fast-moving cars. The servers at the cafe were all young, multilingual, polite; most were students, all of them hoped to leave Bucharest, in the near future, most probably for good. One server warmed up to conversation after consecutive days of my asking for extra milk for my coffee, and asked, with a cheeky grin, if I wanted a whole cow set on the pavement tomorrow. He wasn’t planning on staying in his country of birth much longer.

“There’s nothing here for us,” he said, “unless you are willing to work in a corrupt way, and then you can only go so far.” Where would he like to go?

Maybe Germany, although he didn’t think his German was good enough. Possibly France, probably Spain. Had he been? “Yes, Madrid is fantastic!” A broad smile, as he collected my empty mug. “Better coffee than here.” Had he been to any Enescu Festival concerts? “Only one, but that hall is so hot and awful. We go for other things here, you know, big musicals.” Did I know about them? Yes, I’d seen the posters outside the venue. “Sometimes I’ll go for those, but I don’t want to sit there sweating to music I didn’t know. And the tickets for the festival…” he said, waving at a persistent fly with his free hand, his brown eyes rolling up, “pfffft, I’d rather spend my money on other things. Maybe I’m a bad patriot, but… I don’t care, really. I’m too busy trying to survive, you know?”

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Nicky Spence, opera, tenor, singer, vocal, voice, music, Royal Opera, Scottish

Nicky Spence: Opera is “About How People Correspond With One Another”

London audiences will finally get to see a new Jenůfa. Restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic halted the Claus Guth-directed production in March 2020, but the show, as they say, must go on, and indeed it will; the opera is set to open at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden on September 28th. The artistic team remains somewhat intact from its first iteration, with originals Asmik Grigorian in the lead (a role debut), and Karita Mattila as Kostelnička Buryjovka (reprising a role for which she has won much acclaim); new cast members include tenors Saimir Pirgu as Števa Buryja and Nicky Spence as Laca Klemeň; they’ll all be under the baton of conductor Henrik Nánási. That the Scottish-born Spence is making a role debut in an opera he knows well and has frequently appeared in in the past (as Števa) is a point not lost on the tenor, who was chatty and excited when we spoke recently, just between Jenůfa rehearsals and on the cusp of fresh ones for English National Opera (ENO)’s The Valkyrie, in which he’ll be making another role debut, as Siegmund, in Richard Jones’ new production of the Wagner Ring work, set to grace the stage of The Met in 2025.

There are many tales of many artists coming from small communities and making it big in the big opera centres of London, New York, Berlin, Vienna, Paris and Moscow. Those tales tend to follow a predictable path, and indeed Spence’s tale falls into this mould: all-night buses and anxious auditions and moving from hard-scrabble Dumfries youth to London music school, and onwards, of helping relatives and settling into a house with partner and dog when success did arrive. It’s the stuff of cliché, but sometimes the cliché is simply too correct to dismiss, and besides, the brand of success Spence is now enjoying was hard-won, because it wasn’t the sort that initially came knocking. In 2004, during his final year of school at Guildhall School of Music And Drama, Spence accepted a five-record contract with Universal Classics (Decca). He went on to make his first album with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, toured with Shirley Bassey and Katherine Jenkins, and was nominated for a Classical Brit Award (as Young British Classical Performer Of The Year). During this time Universal/Decca had promoted him as “The Scottish Tenor”; Spence was in his early 20s at the time. When it came time to record his second album, Spence declined; back to Guildhall he went, for more intensive study of his craft. In 2009 Spence won a place at the National Opera Studio, and a year later joined ENO, as one of their inaugural Harewood Artists, where he did an equal mix of so-called “classic” opera (David in Die Meistersinger, The Novice in Billy Budd, Steva in Jenůfa) and contemporary: Spence created the role of Brian in Two Boys, Nico Muhly’s 2011 opera about the tragic intertwining of technology and passion based on a true story, which was subsequently staged at The Met.

Spence clearly wants to be a star, but that drive is in no way at odds with his keen musicality and theatrical instincts. An awareness of timing, texture, and technique, both vocally and physically, is evident, but Spence is smart enough not to show the gears turning – not without very good (read: theatrical) reason. Experiencing him with so-called “darker” material (which encompasses much of his core repertoire) is not so much a shock as it is a clue into an artististry still unfolding. Spence is still young, not quite 40; he’s performed on the stages of the Royal Opera, the Met, La Monnaie, Opéra national de Paris, and Glyndebourne and has worked with a range of conductors, including Sir Mark Elder, Andris Nelsons, Philippe Jordan, Donald Runnicles, Carlo Rizzi, Alejo Perez, Alain Altinoglu,  Mark Wigglesworth, and composer/conductor Thomas Adès, to name a few. He returns to working with Martyn Brabbins on The Valkyrie at ENO later this year; it seemed clear from our conversation he was both daunted and thrilled by the chance to tackle Siegmund, a role that mixes dark and light, shade and nuance, in vocal writing as much as theatrical expression. So, to simply state that the tenor specializes in “darker” repertoire is to rather miss the mark, as much as for Spence as for the music; composers like Britten, Berg, Dvořák, Martinů, Zimmerman, Stravinsky, Schönberg, Wagner. Strauss, and (especially) Janáček hold an appeal for the socio-religious, spiritually chewy, stained and earthy (sometimes dirty, ugly) elements which exist as much in their scores as in the texts and characters within their works, seen and unseen. This doesn’t diminish the work of other composers like Mozart, Rossini, Berlioz, or Beethoven (whose works can be every bit as chewy – Spence has performed them also), much less the work of contemporary composers, which Spence has admitted he would like to perform more often.  Taste, talent, vocation, freedom, and the infusion of personal meaning and fulfillment are rare matches in the arts world; such an integration has implications for culture and its expression in the post-pandemic landscape (if we are even there yet). In Errata: An Examined Life (Yale University Press, 1997), George Steiner ponders this equation of rare and special matches, positing its greater relevance within ever-shifting perceptions of freedom, a notion to which many culture-lovers might find their own meaning, particularly as the opera world enters (and perhaps redefines) a new normal:

Any attempt at serious thought, be it mathematical, scientific, metaphysical or formal, in the widest creative-poetic vein, is a vocation. It comes to possess one like an unbidden, often unwelcome summons. Even the teacher, the expositor, the critic who lacks creative genius but who devotes his existence to the presentment and perpetuation of the real thing, is a being infected (krank an Gott). Pure thought, the analytic compulsion, the libido sciendi which drive consciousness and reflection towards abstraction, towards aloneness and heresy, are cancers of the spirit. They grow, they may devour the tissues of normalcy in their path. But cancers are non-negotiable. This is the point.

I have no leg to stand on if I try to apologize for the social cost of, say, grand opera in a context of slums and destitute hospitals. I can never prove that Archimedes was right to sacrifice his life to a problem in the geometry of conic sections. It happens to be blindingly obvious to me that study, theological-philosophic argument, classical music, poetry, art, all that is “difficult because it is excellent’” (Spinoza, patron saint of the possessed) are the excuse for life. I am convinced that one is infinitely privileged to be even a secondary attendant, commentator, instructor, or custodian in some reach of these high places. I cannot, I must not negotiate this passion. Such negotiation, of which “political correctness” is an infantile, deeply mendacious tactic, is the treason of the cleric. It is, as in the unreason of love, a lie.

There is no aspect of untruth to any of what Spence brings to his work. His 2019 recording of Janáček’s disturbing, highly theatrical song cycle The Diary Of Who One Disappeared (Hyperion; recorded with pianist Julius Drake, mezzo Václava Housková, and clarinetist Victoria Samek, and including other Moravian folk songs) demonstrates a range of both expressivity and flexibility, balanced by a highly intelligent technical approach that in no way robs the music (or its troubling text) of its power. As he told Presto Music‘s Katherine Cooper at the album’s release, “once you’ve mastered the few sounds which don’t exist in spoken English, the Czech language is ideal for the voice as it sits forward in the resonance and feels legato in nature, with so much potential for expression in the language. As a keen exponent of his music, I feel a duty to try and commit to the Czech language like a native.” That committed approach won Spence rightful acclaim; he was the recipient of the Solo Vocal Award, Gramophone Classical Music Awards 2020 (“He sings with sensitivity and intelligence, projects the words with consistent clarity and covers this wonderful cycle’s broad emotional range movingly and convincingly,” wrote music journalist Hugo Shirley) and the BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award 2020 (Spence “combines passionate declamation with moments of exquisite delicacy,” wrote Jan Smaczny). His experience with the music of Leoš Janáček (1854-1928), whether in recital, production, livestream, or recording, has been considerable through the years, with repertoire in Káťa Kabanová and From the House of the Dead (Z mrtvého domu) alongside Jenůfa and the Songs, but there’s more yet to come; in February 2022 Spence makes his debut at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin) as Gregor in Věc Makropulos (alongside soprano Marlis Petersen as Emilia Marty and Bo Skovhus as Jaroslav Prus) in a new production, again directed by Claus Guth, and conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. He’s also set to be Samson to Elīna Garanča’s Delilah at the Royal Opera House next spring, under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano.

Complementing the hectic scheduling of an opera world that seems to be returning a semblance of normality (or new-post-corona normality) is Spence’s bubbly style. In his conversation with stage director Nina Brazier on her podcast, The Opera Pod, recently, he says, “I found this gift, I guess, it was like a superpower, really.” No longer The Scottish Tenor; now, perhaps, Super-Siegmund-Tenor, Spence’s past life filters into his present one: the pauses as much as the tones, the phrasing choices, the dynamic choices; the smell of hay, grass, and sea; the fumes of black cabs, the perennial buzzing of St. Martin’s Lane; everything informs Spence’s sound. Such authenticity makes his performances special, and memorable, events.

Nicky Spence, tenor, classical, singer, voice, vocal, sing, stage, performer, culture, Scottish, Royal Opera

Photo: Ryan Buchanan

How are Jenůfa rehearsals going?

Hugely well – we’re heating up here onstage; my knife is sharpened, my stick is whittled, and I’m ready to go for it!

What’s it been like to step into the machinery of a production that was already largely done?

It’s been exciting. They’re such a generous group of colleagues! Although I was a newbie I felt very much welcomed into the family. I’ve never seen a video of what it was like before, so I could really put my own stamp on things. I love Claus Guth – we’re working together a lot this season; his instinct is so beautiful as a director, he really explores the grey area, which is what Janáček’s work seems to be all about.

I spoke with (tenor) Allan Clayton when he was preparing this in 2020, and again when it was cancelled; he observed that Laca has “the chippiest of chips” on his shoulder. Your characterization will be different of course, but how did singing Števa prepare you for this, or did it?

I don’t think so, really – but it did offer me the ticket into Janáček’s world and this opera, so I feel the music in my bones. Laca is such a different character, and in a way it’s much more fulfilling; the character arc is much deeper from where it starts, with, as Allan said, him carrying the chippiest of chips. Laca has so many issues in terms of abandonment and not feeling loved and not really knowing where he fits into this hierarchy – he feels like he’s at the bottom – and slowly, as he develops more of a connection with Jenůfa, during this horrendous act of slashing her face, whether it’s accidental or not, they become a lot closer. And this imperfect perfection is something I find so moving, much more moving than any Hollywood ending, the fact that everything’s gone to shit and they still decide to give it a go.

They’re both outsiders.

Absolutely, they’re misfits and they’re stuck within this mill of abuse – a generational abuse and utter emotional incapacity.

… and the social milieu, of judgement, and fitting in, or not-fitting-in, are elements sewn straight into the quality of Janáček’s music. When you first got into singing, what attracted you to it? And what keeps you fascinated now?

I think it’s his honesty, and the truth of his writing – there’s such a sense of truth to it all. I’m not sure if it’s because he had this illicit relationship, which was unconsummated, with Kamilla Stösslová, who was so very much his junior, and they were both married to other people too – but it feels as if his operas are infused, as a soundscape, with what he couldn’t have in real life. He had so much of what he would’ve loved to have happened within the writing, but the music is not quite cathartic, and what is there, well, there isn’t ever any kind of relief in that catharsis; everything is a little bit crap in the end. There’s no real goodies or baddies throughout his work; everybody is very confused, and he explores that grey area of the human condition, which I find so interesting as an actor and artist.

His writing is dramatic, and also very dense – the text together with the musical language – how do you find your way in? Through all the recitals, operas, and song cycles, has your approach to his work changed through the years?

I really enjoy the contrasts (between those forms). I try to think of something like The Diary Of One Who Disappeared as a play set to music – so it’s not just difficult rhythms but lots of other things. For instance, there’s so much folk in that work, it’s something we hear in all his music. He was a fan of Moravian folk music and you can hear it in so many things – and I’m Scottish as well, so I guess we resonate through that folk idiom. Also I love the fact that vocally (his music) does have some challenges but those challenges are so totally married to the drama. You do your work in the studio, and hopefully by the time you are onstage you can enjoy the ride.

So how did doing something like Diary inform how you do things live onstage now? Or is it the other way around – does your opera work inform your approach to song cycles? Or are they all totally blank slates for you creatively?

The songs are just like mini-operas, really, you just have less time to set out your stall in terms of your journey and the drama, but certainly something like Diary is between something of an opera and a song cycle. I very much feel it’s an operatic display, I guess, it has all of the elements in there, just the structure is slightly more like the song, but that’s the way when it comes to Janáček’s writing: it’s so through-composed that it doesn’t feel very formulaic, at all. And that’s his genius, really. I adore these darker, murkier depths of his, qualities which are quite far away from my personality. It’s fun to get down and dirty…

What’s the attraction to that, to the “down and dirty”?

I guess not being myself… and I guess, I get to explore this kind of thing without messing other people up…

… so it’s a form of escapism that’s safe?

Yes, it’s playing with those things, and when, for instance, you’re with people like Karita (Mattila) and Asmik (Grigorian), it feels very primal in a way, which is exciting as an artist.

Part of that is the notion of connecting, too.

That’s true!

You said in an exchange with The Guardian in 2016 that the most important thing at a concert was that there be “any element of human connection.” I thought of that with relation to your online activities through the pandemic, and I am curious if that idea has changed because of the pandemic experience.

For myself, as for everybody, there was a natural reordering of things. When your time is entirely consumed with learning operas, your life is one way, and I was so pleased to learn through everything that there was more than a husk of a human being behind my singing. Some people lost a lot of their their work and thus their identity through this time, but I was really thrilled to not be doing so much singing – we got a clichéd Covid-dog, and, me and my partner were just about to get married, and we had to delay that, which was annoying, but I was thrilled to be able to have some creative moments and introspection. So going forwards now I want to encourage a better work-life balance. Yes, I led masterclasses, and even though I wanted to get back onstage and go back to work, doing that was such a great way of meeting people and of having a levolor. It was important to connect with people on a universal level, but also a human one.

Your classes really reveal how much you have that human touch.

Well it’s important to be real.

Yes, especially since there’s a lot of people who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk…

There’s a lot of old bullshit in opera, a lot of the time – and in the end it comes down to personal relations. It’s about people, and about how people correspond with one another. Especially when I’m talking to young people I encourage them to get back to their roots – it’s so easy to lose that connection amidst everything.

In terms of connection, you are going to be singing Siegmund at the ENO; it’s easy to lose the idea of connection amidst the epic nature of Wagner’s writing…

… yes it is…

… so what sorts of things do you keep in mind now as you enter the world of Wagner?

Well my mind is entirely open! Although they have quite a fantastical grand feeling – they are epic tales! – The Ring operas are still very human. I know Richard Jones, our director, says these characters have super-powers, they can do things, but he also says they are real people at the end of the day, and that (notion) gives me solace. So the production will be grounded in truth. (The music) is like a long bath which Wagner draws for you, and as a singer it feels that real. I love Wagner but I mean, with Janáček, these dramatic changes (in the music) happen quite quickly, while in Wagner, they don’t turn quickly – they turn like a truck! The music is like a truck turning a corner – and that’s really lovely musically, because as a singer you have more time to change gears, and vocally it feels like a nice thing for me, so… yes, I’m really excited for this production.

What new things are you learning about your voice through the experience of singing the music of Janáček and Wagner simultaneously then?

I’m always learning new things, gosh, every bloody day! I wish singing was a bit easier! You are always opening new fields, understanding the more you know and don’t know about signing, which is really humbling. And with this sort of singing, you are waking up with a new instrument every day – and with Wagner, because it’s quite low, I’ve been lucky to have that vocal release. It’s been nothing like the Janáček (to sing) – (Janáček’s vocal writing) is quite high, it’s where I am used to sitting, really. The writing is quite tightly wound and it sits high, so the character sits quite easily. But (with Wagner) I am finding the extra release in the lower range. I normally make quite a bit of noise… and I am aware Wagner normally demands a lot of noise, so yes, I am looking forward to making some noise in The Valkyrie.

That’s a noise you modulate through your recordings – you have a few coming out soon, yes?

Yes, I’m singing Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge with (pianist) Julius (Drake) – that’s out in February; there’s also my first Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin, with (pianist) Christopher Glynn, releasing the month after … and, La Clemenza di Tito with the orchestra of the Opéra de Rouen Normandie. We recorded that in lockdown. I did quite a lot of Mozart in my early career but I’ve not done any recently. It was fun to delve back into that music.

Luca Pisaroni once told me he finds Mozart is like a massage for the voice.

Yes it is, and there’s also nowhere to hide when you do it. You can’t make it up – it’s like a singing lesson. Whatever you think you can sing, and however you think you can do it, you pick up some Mozart or Bach and you go, “Oh hell, I need to learn how to do this all over again!”

So it’s a good balance to what you’re doing now?

It’s a perfect balance.

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Jan Lisiecki, music, piano, pianist, Dorn, culture, classical

Jan Lisiecki: “Live Art Is Live”

Jan Lisiecki has had a busy summer. Performances at a number of celebrated summer festivals, including Schleswig-Holstein Musik-Festival (SHMF), the Rheingau Musik Festival, Klavier Festival Ruhr, and Musikfest Kreuth left the pianist little time to prepare for his release of a long-planned project, Frederic Chopin: Complete Nocturnes (Deutsche Grammophon) but in speaking recently from his home base in Calgary, Lisiecki is chatty and energetic, a keen conversationalist who clearly revels in the reciprocal exchange of artistic ideas.

It’s an approach that colors his latest release, one which, as he explains, had been in his mind to do for many years. Hardly his first foray into playing or recording the much-loved music of the Polish composer (he’s released recordings in 2013 and 2017, respectively), his approach to the nocturnes conveys a delicate musical sensibility and a keen artistic maturity which belie Lisiecki’s own relative youth (he is not yet 30 years of age) and, even amidst pandemic, kept him in a creatively aware state which greatly aided in the realized recording. Lisiecki’s fame as a sort of wunderkind of the keyboard through the last decade-plus served to intensify such fastidiousness. At the age of 18, he became the youngest ever recipient of both the Leonard Bernstein Award (established by SHMF and named after one of the festival’s founders) and Gramophone‘s prestigious Young Artist Award (other recipients include countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński and soprano Natalya Romaniw). Having worked with a range of celebrated conductors (Claudio Abbado, Daniel Harding, Antonio Pappano, among many others) and orchestras (Staatskapelle Dresden, Bavarian Radio Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, to name a few), his playing has been described as “pristine, lyrical and intelligent” by The New York Times. This month sees him playing Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 with Marin Alsop and DR Symfoni Orkestret in Denmark, before a series of dates in the U.S., both solo recitals and appearances with the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado. In November Lisiecki tours Europe, performing Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic under its new Principal Conductor, Edward Gardner.

Amidst his busy live calendar (which, like many artists, extends years into the future) Lisiecki had long planned for a recording of Chopin’s nocturnes. Recorded in Berlin in October 2020 and released in August 2021, the work shows a distinctively thoughtful approach to the famous, widely beloved pieces. Chopin wrote the series of works between 1827 and 1846, expanding on a form developed by Irish composer John Field (1782-1837). Unlike other piano forms (sonatas, for instance), nocturnes do not  possess a sort of programmatic narrative or formal structure, but mainly utilize a ternary form (ABA) which emphasizes a main theme and its related contrasts and embellishments. With a song-like right hand melody and the use of rhythmic, broken chords in the left hand, Chopin, in writing his own set, also utilized pedal effects and counterpoint in his composition to underline sonic tension and drama. There are a number of scholarly papers and debates around the tempos and role of rubato in the nocturnes, and the influence of such choices in relation to interpretative fidelity and style. In her 1988 book Performance Practises in Classic Piano Music: Their Principles and Applications (Indiana University Press, 1988), Sandra P. Rosenblum writes that “choice of tempo is a fundamental yet elusive aspect of performance practice. Tempo affects virtually every other aspect of interpretation: dynamics, touch, articulation, pedalling, realization of ornaments” and also observes that a pianist’s choice of tempo will certainly affect “what the listener perceives, hence it bears directly on the effectiveness of the interpretation.” Lisiecki has notably chosen to take a much slower tempo in his recording than many of his famous forebears, an aspect which has been questioned by some since the album’s release. If I may inject a personal view here, Lisiecki’s choice of tempi allow, to my own (admittedly non-conservatory-attending/music-degree-holding) self, a very thoughtful and lovely listening experience, one that skillfully combines intellect and imagination in ways that highlight the rhythmic nature of the writing (for both hands, equally) and the thought-to-word-like manifestation of clear creative articulation; such willful (nay, conscious) turning of the gears well reflect the sort of late-night contemplations to which the nocturnes directly refer. Don’t we all muse thusly in the middle of the night? This may not a so-called “traditional” reading, but, it doesn’t have to be – not for whatever perceived musical validity is deemed important by the classical world, let alone for one’s personal enjoyment. As musicologist Richard Taruskin argues in Text and Act: Essays in Music and Performance (Oxford University Press, 1995), traditions “modify what they transmit” via what he terms as “active intervention of the critical faculty, but also by what we might call interference.” Such traditions, he writes ( and most particularly within “a musical culture as variegated as the Western fine art of music has become”) are open to what he views as “outside influence.” It is this act, of combining inner critical faculty with various forms of external influence, combined with understandings of tonality, structure, and dynamics, that lends Lisiecki’s interpretations such innate power. Taking this course with such well-known works only serves to underline the pianist’s powerful blend of intellectual and musical instincts, and only makes one more keen to hear how he might re-adjust them for a live and considerably larger setting.

Despite, or more accurately owing to, the realities of the current pandemic era, Lisiecki was provided the an atmosphere conducive to the personal. The combination of simplicity (a room with a piano), proximity (or lack thereof, in relation to engineers), and the natural light in which Lisiecki recorded at Meistersaal (in Berlin) last autumn was, as he noted recently, good for encouraging a sort of natural approach, one which is so easily perceived on this, his eighth release with Deutsche Grammophon.

Jan Lisiecki, music, piano, pianist, Deutsche Grammophon, culture, classical

Photo © Christoph Köstlin / Deutsche Grammophon

What struck me about your album is how you personalize everything, but without sitting and steeping in a so-called sentimental sound. Your tempo choices, for instance, are well considered.

Well, I might not agree in ten years about them, but at the moment I did them it felt right, because, to be honest with you, those tempos choices were completely natural in the sense that I had no knowledge of them being that much slower. I’ve played the nocturnes a lot, in concerts and otherwise, and I know how I feel about them, some in the studio just ended up being like that. Listening in the booth and going back and forth, it never felt unnatural. I’m happy with it; I think it’s a good reflection of how I connected with (Chopin’s) music.

You didn’t consciously say, “I want this one to be this specific tempo” or do any sort of preplanning then?

No, definitely there was no, ‘Everybody’s playing these too fast; I’ll be much slower!” – I was recording the material at the tempo in, I guess, the way it felt right.

To me it makes them seem almost like speech if that makes sense…

Yes!

… it very much has the sound of somebody musing in the middle of the night on something; as a writer I like that.

Aw thank you Cate, I appreciate it.

But you recorded this in Berlin, in a space with natural light, during the day; did that make a difference energetically?

Let’s say, first of all I’m an artist and musician who plays concerts in the evening but I like working in the day; I’m not an evening practiser. I finish my work day of practise by 2 or 3pm, if I can, so to me recording during the day is when I feel most comfortable. What I like about natural light is feeling I’m connected to the day and not in a studio, especially since it was late October. During the day, the mood in Berlin, if you know Europe during the winter, is grey and bleak, so it’s nice to have those few hours of sunlight inside and you don’t feel like you’re missing out, and also then you can find your own space within that environment. It’s a beautiful hall, a rectangular room with high ceilings, and it’s rather ornate, not excessively so, but has some ornate elements, and feels nice to be in, the piano in one corner, the microphone in another area; it felt very natural.

It seemed like an environment where you weren’t completely in a bubble, cut off from everything, but just separated enough to be with your thoughts.

Exactly, and I’d had enough experiences of concert halls with no audience during the pandemic; it was nice to have not have yet-another-empty-concert-hall, but a studio with a piano, it almost felt like you were in your own studio practising for yourself, or working just for yourself.

That’s how it sounds.

Yes, and another sort of relevant fact, in terms of the sound, is that the booth where the recording engineer was sitting is quite a distance away from the (room with the piano), it’s down two flights of stairs and then across a hall, so it takes a fair bit of time to get from the room to the booth, and as a result, first of all, you’re more focused on doing something, it was a complete thought whenever you did sit down, and second of all, you have that crazy walk back and forth to get you out and into the mood accordingly.

And nobody behind a pane of glass staring at you and evaluating.

Right.

Now, recording in a space in these times, there is something unique about doing these extremely well-known works, and in this particular pandemic environment; how much were you able to pull down the blinds, or did you not want to? Was the act of recording amidst a worldwide pandemic an essential part of the creative process, or did you block it out?

It was definitely part of my process,and that’s part of the reason that I was able to record during the pandemic. I’d been thinking or dreaming about recording the nocturnes for a long time; it was a long-term project, not something that just came up, it was something which was a very conscious thought for years, and so it involved years of preparation, and those years of preparation are connected to wanting to experience (the works) in a concert hall – they are very personal as you said, but you run the risk while playing them of going too far in that direction, of going too far into your comfort zone, which is not where it feels the best when you are onstage, when you feel you’re losing the audience’s attention, when you can feel their attention wandering away. I can hear when that happens.

So to play and program 21 nocturnes onstage took many many many years, it’s something that I was preparing for, and happened to reach a culmination point this past year, and at the beginning of the pandemic, in March, Deutsche Grammophon said, “Oh, you’ll have fewer concerts, so let’s record this in August!” and as it got closer, I saw that things were very uncertain and people were antsy still, and I was supposed to have a few concerts but they were much more stressful than usual because there were so many external layers involved. I didn’t know how they’d look and be, and I would not have been in the right frame of mind at all. And then from March to October I did have things to do, I had things beyond music I was enjoying, and had the opportunity to do – like work in the garden or go camping with my dad, or not do anything for a whole day, which was very nice – but I could also work on the nocturnes in a much more relaxed sphere of mind, it wasn’t forced like I had a fixed deadline to prepare for and get to a certain point with. I could prepare and think through each one of them. That time right before the recording, to be honest, I was quite busy, I had something like ten concerts with Manfred Honeck and I was playing the Shostakovich First Piano Concerto in Dresden, it wasn’t like, “Oh sigh, I’m at home!” but some of the (moments leading to recording) felt calm, everything was calm, and I had to make peace with the pandemic and with the uncertainty it brought. Because of that, I could simply focus on what I was doing.

Living day-by-day has always been my motto; I’ve always lived in the present, but the pandemic has really heightened that. I like looking forward, I like to think “Well, I’m playing this concerto two years down the road” and “In two weeks I have to prepare this piece” – but all that went out the window. So it was, “Okay, what am I doing right now? What can I enjoy right now?” In this case, what with recording, it allowed me to focus, and to enjoy the moment.

Jan Lisiecki, music, piano, pianist, Deutsche Grammophon, culture, classical, Chopin, nocturnes, coverThat’s palpable in the recording, and I hear something different every time. Listening to the left hand can really bring something alive that one thought one knew well.

If the music is only a sum of its parts, if you don’t pay a close enough attention, then you can risk the music becoming too comfortable, and being too happy with the gorgeous melodies; you just completely tune out everything else because it’s easy, it’s just, “Oh, the left hand, sure, whatever, put it away!” and the right hand, “Yes, let’s enjoy that, it’s so lovely!” But it doesn’t work musically. That (balance) has always been something important to me in playing Chopin. Of course there’s a principal theme and an idea and the harmonizing in the left hand, but sometimes the interplay between right and left creates completely new concepts and I do like finding those.

To me you can hear it in other things of his, or things written around the same time, but I find it takes the right interpretation to find those connections.

That’s right.

Obviously you know the other recordings; did any stick in your mind as you prepared?

I tend not to listen to other interpreters when I’m actively playing something unless it’s a concerto and I want to hear the orchestra, which of course includes a pianist, but in the case of the nocturnes I didn’t hear any interpretations for at least a year before recording them. Perhaps it wasn’t conscious – it was not a forced effort – but I just had no need to, because I’m living and experiencing these pieces on my own, and that’s a huge privilege. I know the audience listening to these works who come to the concert hall don’t have that same privilege for the most part, to simply play something for themselves, so they have a different appreciation of what it means to listen. When I’m listening to a recording, I find it very hard to get into the right mood to enjoy it as opposed to analyze it, so I tend not to, especially with regards to pieces which I’m actively playing.

Of course, that being said, I do respect other interpretations, and the ones that accompanied me through my childhood and longer, into my life, are those by (Anton) Rubinstein. He recorded all of the nocturnes, and there’s a sophistication about his playing; it’s always so elegant, so poised, it’s hard to find any fault with them… it’s just beautifully done.

Yes, I have that set! I wanted to ask you with relation to others and individual identity, some have said, “Oh it’s a Polish pianist playing Polish music!” I’m not sure if that kind of a reduction is good or bad for art, but I wonder what you make of such an assumed connection.

I think Poland, of course, likes to claim Chopin as their own, and they have a complete right to do that, but he lived most of his life beyond Poland, his composing and adult life, so undeniably that (experience of living abroad) did shape his writing, and likewise, while I was born in Canada, I do have Polish roots, and without a doubt they must also shape how I approach Chopin, although I never had a Polish teacher and I never really liked the so-called “Polish sound” in playing Chopin, which has a lot of rubato, it’s very rich, quite swingy, and not at all my taste. Now, this is a sort of stereotypical description, and there are exceptions – I love how Zimerman plays Chopin, for instance – and so that’s a rather unfair stereotype perhaps, but it’s an easy thing just as much to say or assume, “Oh you have special affinity for him then, being Polish yourself?” It’s hard for me to say, because I am who I am, and I don’t know how I’d be if I wasn’t – if I was born in Poland, or if I didn’t have those roots, but I appreciate his music as a person and an artist. I just like it , and I feel very comfortable playing his music. I can sit in front of a score I’ve never seen before and feel, “Ah yes!” – I have a vague understanding of what I want to do, and how I will play it, which cannot be said for every composer. I will get to a point, eventually, that isn’t that straight-forward, but (the inherent understanding) speaks to how he wrote for the piano; his musical language is very familiar to me, and he wrote so beautifully for the instrument. It doesn’t feel to me like I’m ever struggling to find a way to solve any problem (within the work).

Do you find you approach other musical things differently now, having had this time with Chopin and especially, this time with Chopin during a pandemic?

Again, sort of like the Polish question, I don’t know how it would’ve been if I didn’t record during this time, but I do feel everything has an impact and shapes the way one approaches music broadly. I think the sort of calmness that has pervaded, or became constant during the pandemic… for me, I will certainly take it with me into the future, though I can see and am hopeful of course it all turns out, and that life is getting back to normal in the some parts of the musical world. Some countries are getting back to normal, so the natural thing is to feel like, “Oh I’m going to get back to my old self now – at last!”… but it’s not quite like that. The pandemic has changed our values and understanding, in the same way it’s changed the approach to the nocturnes, and I’m glad I had that chance of recording them amidst all of this.

What’s it been like for you to go back to live performance then?

There have been many stages, because last summer I played one of the first concerts live, if not the first in Germany, in June 2020. So if you think of the situation in Canada then, like… wow, just nothing… and it was the same in some parts of Europe in many regards, except where they were starting to experiment, and those experiments kept going and going, and there was a palpable excitement with each one. And after each lockdown this excitement kept building in the performing arts world – I experienced it so many times, and everyone had different concepts of how long they’d be locked down, so even though I had been playing live a while, everybody was so excited, and asking me “How does it feel to be back?” And I’d say, “Well last week I was playing a live concert in Spain!”

I was always happy to play live, but the difference for me is, I’m not a fan, at all, of streams. I prefer not to play if I have to do a stream, for the most part. It doesn’t have any aspect of what I cherish in music. Live art is live, and it should stay with those who are there, those who have shared that experience and felt its power. Recording is high quality: you prepare, you put a lot of thought into it; you have the best environment; you have the studio, the piano, the technician, the sound engineer. But streaming is somewhere in-between these things; it’s not live for an audience, it’s not the same high-quality sound you expect – in fact, it’s usually poor-quality sound. It was interesting to see orchestras doing streams, and it was good to see that musicians were playing, that they had the chance to play – but just me playing solo, no way, no – I’m not doing that, at all.

So you need the feedback?

Yes. And you know, people say with these streams, “Well of course live art will die now” – no it won’t. Many people will be happy to go back to the concert hall the moment they can. But until then, to be honest, we have such a rich array of performances, both live recordings from pre-pandemic times and things recorded in a studio, and we haven’t had time to listen to those during normal our lives – why don’t we go back to those amazingly high-quality things and listen to them? Instead of choosing to watch something live, just because…? Others will disagree but I’m happy to argue with them.

There’s a tremendous drive on the part of marketing departments everywhere to get people of your generation interested in classical music through streaming…

… but that’s not the strength of our genre. The strength of our genre is in the concert hall. It’s about this extraordinary experience you will sometimes have… sometimes. I play hundreds of concerts a year and not every single one will be magical, either it’s me or the piano, it’s something in the hall, or the day, or the circumstances outside – whatever. You will have those extraordinary experiences a small percentage of the time, and everybody remembers them. Many who’ve never been to a hall happen to chance on those magical concerts and they’re suddenly a huge fan of classical because they had that experience of intimacy which provided a foray into the musical world of live performance.

And you think that epic and imitate combo only happens in a live environment?

Exactly, yes.

opera, Wagner, Tristan und Isolde, Jonas Kaufmann, Anja Harteros, Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, stage, culture, opera, performance, reach, hands, beautiful

Essay: Bridging The Divide

One of the most painful aspects of the current era has been the observance and experience of chasms. Opera, as an art form, mixed with the reality of pandemic may find fascinating intersections within the virtual sphere, but that meeting does not translate very effectively, at least so far, within tangible form. Cost, travel restrictions, vaccination passports, and Brexit challenges aside, many more barriers exist which ask for careful consideration. The opera road has many divergent avenues which are all largely based around locale; views and vistas along respective routes, to say nothing of who travels them, vary widely. Big trucks, small bikes, winding paths, superhighways; “how far to the next pit stop?” and are-we-there-yet-isms; lamps, darkness, diners, picnics; baggage, necessities, extras; time, route, and of course, purpose, are all paramount, but none trumps locale, of calculating just how one actually gets from Point A to Point B, and just who’s going to pay for that particular ride.

Such matters came to mind during Bayerische Staatsoper’s final presentation of the company’s 2020-2021 season, a performance / livestream of Tristan und Isolde featuring tenor Jonas Kaufmann and soprano Anja Harteros in the title roles and outgoing Music Director Kirill Petrenko on the podium, with a moody production by Krzysztof Warlikowski. During the second intermission, German media personality Thomas Gottschalk, acting as event host, spoke with American baritone Sean Michael Plumb (who was singing the role of Melor) about the differences between North American and European systems, highlighting obvious financial realities and the ways in which certain perceptions relate to not only aesthetic expectations but to overall presentation, as well as to the early and regular exposure to classical music. I confess to being struck by this exchange, especially the questions – ones that are rarely if ever asked in interviews, let alone at the intermission of a major production at one of the world’s foremost houses; they’re the sorts of things I tend to discuss privately with friends, not openly in a broadcast, for thousands to hear and ponder. Yet such an exchange is worth publicly contemplating in an era when some North American opera/classical devotees may well be looking across the sea green with envy (or blue with sadness), highly aware that homegrown and European models are simply not comparable. Artists and administrators who have traveled from Europe to North America, whether on a contract or in lengthier capacities, are struck by such sharp contrast, within the realms of style and approach as much as the realities of funding on one side and audience expectations at the other. There are a lot of those expectations to fulfill, many more demands to be met at every turn, and sitting at the obvious core of it all, of course, is money. In many senses it is miraculous that wheels turn at all in North America, given the delicate state of funding, the realities of union negotiations, a near total lack of media exposure, and widespread public indifference to an art form so heavily laden (if not outright presented) with hideous clichés, literal as much as figurative.

And while there’s plenty of talk about the funding side (not wrongly), the other aspect which must be considered is education, perhaps now, more than ever. Generations of brutal government cuts in Canada and the United States, to education as well as to public broadcasting services, have cultivated an environment whereby experience, understanding, and appreciation of the arts has been perniciously removed from numerous non-arts contexts to which is dependent; history, social issues, politics, and other art forms (literature, painting, dance) are now largely disconnected from any form of live performance art and/or presentation. The teaching of history, in all of its diverse and frequently ugly aspects, has been divorced from that of cultural expression (and direct experience) by generations of teachers who may well not know or understand the role of culture themselves, and who, not unlike opera companies, are working in relation to the decisions of their own boards and committees, and the related budgets as set forth by each according to respective government bodies. Teaching journalism at post-secondary institutions myself, I wrestle with how to infuse my media teachings with music; students tend to get fired up through sounds, not words, because sound, in most spheres, has a resonance words do not (cannot) wholly possess. Sometimes  international examples (written + audio/audio-visual) are given within the contexts of lectures and homework; study this, listen to that; watch this, what did you get out of that, and how can you apply it to your work? The results are usually insightful, enlightening, expansive, lending themselves to new questions – and that’s precisely the intention.

Encouraging such enthusiasm is central to education, particularly for endeavors attempting to integrate the world of culture within an environment that would seem to spurn and diminish such efforts. Stefan Zweig writes in his momentous memoir The World Of Yesterday (Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers, 1942) that “enthusiasm is infectious among young people. It passes from one to another in a school class like measles or scarlet fever, and by trying to outdo one another as fast as possible novices, in their childish vanity and ambition, will spur one another on.” Infection does not live long in a state of lockdown, as many of this era certainly know; enforced isolation, within education as much as artistic realms, is its own form of hell. Teaching online this past year was harsh for all involved; the “enthusiasm” of which Zweig writes was in little supply, yet I found its expression in some unexpected if delightful places. At the end of various classes, there would almost always be some students who would want to chat – about the lesson and the issues we raised, about things they’d seen/read/heard which were somehow related, about the various music things I’d brought in as illustrations of this or that concept. Very often there were further questions, about how I became interested in opera, who introduced me, what I specifically liked. Such curiosity and enthusiasm would later be glimpsed (explored, realized, manifest, however tentatively) via formal submissions, whether written or via audio or visual means. How different these exchanges might’ve been within a live context is difficult to say; would students have possessed as much boldness? Did the perceived safety of a monitor – distant, faceless if they so chose (most did), vocally disembodied –  make the asking of such questions, about a world so foreign (and perhaps daunting) to them, less awkward? I find the medium of a monitor energetically deadening, that it robs me of the vibrations and resonances which accompany the experience of the live, whether in the house or the classroom; one senses the receptors inherent within learning and response, which allow one to fully listen and fully feel, are simply not there. I never felt entirely as present I should’ve been for my students from behind the screen, and yet there was something about the experience that encouraged curiosity. Hurrah!

Just how much this curiosity may or may not be expressed in the autumn is questionable. As of now, classes and labs are to be held in-person partially, with a 50% in-room capacity. It will be another chasm to cross, creatively, enthusiastically, with much courage, curiosity, commitment. I am not quite sure what I’ll be using, music-wise, as part of my instruction, but by December, I imagine we will all be thirsting to attend some form of live music event, perhaps genres not yet anticipated. Until then, I’ll be cocking an eyebrow at the various education departments of opera companies, hoping they encourage the experience and exercise nuance, rumination, and curiosity; though not formally part of the STEM system, they are vital to helping close the chasm to which Gottschalk and Plumb’s exchange alluded. It isn’t about budgets now; it’s about brains. Bitte, let’s use them, in all their various capacities, through all the various trips.

Top photo: Jonas Kaufmann as Tristan and Anja Harteros as Isolde at Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

Socialist Laments: Exploring Mourning Music Of The GDR

One of the more engaging works I’ve read this summer concerns a seemingly-crusty topic, albeit with a very soft core: the music of the GDR (or German Democratic Republic), specifically mourning music, and the ways in which that music and its composers are remembered – or not. Founded in 1949 and dissolved in 1990, East Germany is, at least in the some quarters, very often associated with cartoonish images, frequently manifest in the form of glowering villains in grey suits and/or leather coats, breezily presented in Western popular media throughout the 1970s and 1980s, even into the 1990s. At the other end of the spectrum, the rising tide of ostalgie has made it equally hard to gain a proper picture, with the GDR’s more unsavoury elements glossed over in the name of sentimentality. Having an interest in GDR-born composers myself (Georg Katzer (1935-2019) and Paul Dessau (1894-1979) among them), it seemed like some form of fate to come across Martha Sprigge’s Socialist Laments; Musical Mourning in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford University Press, 2021) earlier this summer. Surveying various aspects of musical expression in post-WWII Germany (theoretical, practical, political, social, historical) and their intersections, Sprigge, who is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, presents a fascinating portrait of specific creative expression, and its performative manifestations, amidst the time before, during, and after (however briefly) the time of the Berlin Wall. It paints a multilayered portrait of a time, place, and people that is at once difficult and diffuse, but just as equally heart-rending and human. Also, rather refreshingly, the book comes with its very own playlist, complete with performance suggestions, in its opening pages.

Organized not solely via strict historical chronology (the end of the Second World War and onwards through the socialist era), Socialist Laments is driven by memory – its perceptions, presentations, manifestations, and, by the actual act of remembering itself: the meaning, in micro and macro ways, in post-war, post-communist, and ever-creative senses. The idea of ruin, literal as much as figurative, casts a defining shadow throughout the book, past its opening explorations of the bombing of Dresden and related figures whose works had resonance in post-war times (among them choral conductor/composer Rudolf Mauersberger and his Dresdner Requiem from 1961), concentration camp memorials (including Tilo Medek’s controversial Kindermesse zum Gedenken der im Dritten Reich ermordeten Kinder / In Memory of of the Children Murdered in the Third Reich, 1974), Soviet influence (the apparent appropriation of the Russian funerary hymn “Immortal Victims” being but one example), the role and continuing function of the Kreuzchor in religious and cultural life, as well as anti-fascist expressions of the 1960s and 1970s, with reference made to the works of Dessau and Katzer among others – many of whom, as Sprigge notes, “often had memories of the wartime years that presented direct conflicts with the country’s official narratives.”

Sprigge opens the book with a remembrance of her visit with the widow of composer Reiner Bredemeyer (1929-1995), who had the names of her husband’s compositions carved into his gravestone, which is situated at Pankow III along with a number of celebrated German cultural figures, singer/actor Ernst Busch (1900–1980) and conductor Kurt Sanderling (19192-2011) among them. Understanding the place of Bredemeyer, and his GDR colleagues, in the wider spectrum of the GDR’s music world is less about convenient placement of puzzle pieces that might fit current post-reunification narratives, and far more about experimentation with new ingredients in a varied stew; you may not entirely recognize the end result, but you will understand, nay appreciate, the level of creativity and labour that went into its creation. Thus is the Freudian conception of Trauerarbeit (or work of mourning) manifest in ways that move beyond simple sentimental and/or melancholy definitions, and into a more varied, thought-provoking, and nuanced take on German cultural history and its contemporary echoes, or a distinct lack thereof. How often do we hear the works of Dessau, Bredemeyer, Biermann, Dessau, Katzer, after all? With incredible attention to detail, a scholarly approach to analyses, and a clear love of the composers and their respective works across 300+ pages, Socialist Laments underlines the importance of an ever-evolving history that deserves to be – quite literally – heard and experienced. Is it a kind of advocacy? Perhaps, and perhaps that’s overdue. The book, published in mid-2021, joins a growing body of literature which looks at the work of a multifaceted era, and its people, in ways that bust out the old, Western-influenced clichés of humorless, grey grimness and show the ways in which meaning, mourning, and moving on, helped shape not only late 20th century Germany but modern Europe. It’s worth keeping in mind as the music world slowly reopens amidst coronavirus restrictions, and, to use a hoary old term, “reimagines” itself; the composers of the GDR understood this act very well, and the classical music world now, and its fans, would do well to remember such expressions and perhaps ask more from organizations, programmers, and most especially, themselves.

Professor Sprigge and I spoke in early July 2021.

Martha Sprigge, Socialist Laments, GDR, music, history, politics, Germany, book, Deutschland, Oxford Music Press, German Democratic Republic, ostalgieWhy did you focus on mourning and the music associated with it? You outline some academic motivations in the book but I’m curious about personal instincts.

This is a great question that I love answering! As you mention, I give a more academic explanation in the intro to the book, but there are a few more experiential reasons for choosing the lens of mourning to approach East German music culture. Musically, I’ve had a slightly morbid fascination with mourning music for a while, possibly longer than I realized. When I first started working on this project I was chatting with an old friend from high school, who reminded me of the number of requiems and choral mourning works we sang in the choir we were both in growing up – she joked that I must have really taken those experiences to heart! I suspect my personal experience of singing and playing mourning music might not be all that unique; memorial customs are everywhere in Western art music customs, though we might not always consciously be paying attention to the relationship between a generic title – for example, Requiem, Epitaph, Elegy, or a dedication, (like Schumann’s piano piece “Remembrance,” which was written the day Mendelssohn died) and the mourning rituals that lie behind them when we listen to or play these pieces. But sometimes we are (consciously paying attention), and I wanted to explore these customs and their continued use in more depth, especially in 20th century Europe, or after WWI and WWII specifically), when both the musical languages and the subjects of mourning were dramatically transformed.

In terms of the historical time period, I was struck by the disconnect I felt when I first read/heard about the GDR in (admittedly Western) texts, compared to the emotional impact that many of the sites of the former GDR had when I first visited them (and in the time since). The texts seemed to present East Germany as incredibly restrictive, especially in terms of emotional expression, while the sites I visited were sites of so many insurmountable losses, from wartime monuments to former concentration camps, that would seem to prompt an emotional response. I thought that looking at music would be a way in to exploring the various tensions surrounding expression in East Germany, not least because commemorative practices – and music – were so central to the cultural life of the GDR.

So how did this project actually begin?

Around 2005-2006, you could take a history class about the 20th century, and you’d learn all this political stuff; then you’d take a music class about the 20th century, and you’d learn about these seemingly very detached things – but I realized, in taking them in university, that they are closer together than one might’ve thought they’d be. These elements of history are not just political, or apolicial, not strictly one thing, or another; there’s messiness there. And I like messiness.

How do you go about capturing aspects of that messiness, or did you feel you had to clean some of it up yourself?

I guess, I got into this topic through the music and related places, and so in that way, it comes through in my organization of the book, it’s like, places and music are interlinked, very much. I had started from that perspective of, “This music is interesting; these places are interesting” – they reveal all these multiple histories if you sit and pay attention, or walk and pay attention – and as I read more, I realized that there was something more to that than just me liking going on walks and listening to music; there’s something one can do if one takes a very site-specific approach to an historical topic that kind of mirrors a piece-specific approach to an individual work. I broadened it out from there.

Did you intend for the introduction to feature Bredemeyer’s widow, or did the idea come later?

That was after I met her. She is such a generous woman; we sat and talked for long periods of time. I was a grad student at the time, and I mean… who does that?! Who invites you into her home and lets you converse about this time period in such a way? I’m not even German! But that level of generosity stuck with me. And as I worked through this book and thought about what to do next, it occurred to me that this is a central part of the story; these women – it’s usually women – have spent years collecting their husbands’ works and figuring out what to do with them, they’re telling these specific histories in how they archive. So yes, I remember, I left that conversation and I did not actually know about Bredemeyer’s grave until I spent that time with her, after that, I went and found the grave the next day. In the first draft of everything ,which was my dissertation, this meeting with her was at the end, but as soon as I reworked the material into a book, I thought, “This meeting needs to go at the beginning, and it can broaden out from there.”

Such generosity points to a humanity that I think is very often ignored or taken for granted in the history of the GDR in terms of how the West thinks of it…

That’s very true.

… and that notion-busting extends to gender also. I love the observation you make about how gender parity under communism was every bit as performative as elements of commemoration; I wonder if there’s a companion book to be written on that topic.

Funnily enough, that’s what I’m hoping to do next!

Psychic powers!

Yes! There’s something about it though – and, the longer you stay in this particular world, the more ideas you get to write about. I think the music… the longer I stay in this field, the more I feel there’s a lot more that can be said, not just about composers who identify as women and how they navigated it all, but the much broader set of activities that took place to make the musical world work for them, and their partners, under that system.

That’s part of the nuance which is so palpable, along with the references to the Soviet Union. How challenging was it to navigate that element? I ask this as someone who interviewed Marina Frolova-Walker, whose work you also reference in your book.

That’s a good question – funnily enough, I read your interview with Marina this morning! Well, the Russian thing… I think especially now, Shostakovich is getting programmed significantly more often than most other Russian composers, especially the next generation – I mean, nobody’s running to tell you about Edison Denisov…

Some are

Sure, but there is a common frame of reference that a lot of Western audiences and musicological audiences have, and in some ways I could rely on the fact that the audience probably already know a fair amount, or have a fair amount of ideas, about the music of the Soviet Union, so I figured, with good footnotes and recognition, I could imply the realization that, “Yes, I know you want to know about Shostakovich right now, so here you go; here’s the formal reference” – but the other, thornier question, in terms of thinking about the field of musicology, or how people thought about artistic practise in the Cold War, for far too long… it was so very Soviet Union-focused. So some of what I was doing was building on the work of other scholars who have taken this very interesting era and explored how yes, the Soviet Union was hugely influential on East Germany, but the musical life there looked, and sounded, different. And that is significant.

Martha Sprigge, Professor, University of California, music, research, academe

Photo: Eric Isaacs

How much do you think the current interest is fuelled by “ostalgie”?

Oh for sure, a good chunk of it, there’s no question. I got into this field right around the time of the 20th to 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. You’d go to these conferences (2010-2015) and there would be a certain generation of people saying, “Well I went to East Germany and it felt like this” and “I remember life was like that.” You know, this past week I came across a list of movies that were meant to help you understand the GDR but none of them were actually by East German film artists… so, I mean, people are intrigued by this era and place, because they have this idea of what East Germany was.

One that has been largely shaped by Western ideas, as you noted.

Yes, that’s right.

But the sense of nostalgia within Eastern cultural expression is also significant; the interplay between nostalgia and reality, sentimentality and authentic expression, seems especially relevant to contemporary programming. Why do you think the work of East German composers isn’t programmed more often? There was a production of Dessau’s opera Lanzelot (1969) in Erfurt and Weimar) in 2019, but that seemed unique. 

I think the reasons might’ve shifted – it was always multifaceted, why they were or weren’t heard. In the 1990s, there is ample evidence to indicate that yes, Western intellectuals took over former East German institutions for reasons which were based on completely discrediting Marxist thought; for a peek into that kind of world, Anna Saunders and Debbie Pinfold have this great book (Remembering And Rethinking the GDR, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2013) demonstrating this sort of effect in various areas of the arts and culture and in universities, with some of the essays (“Reflective Nostalgia and Diasporic Memory: Composing East Germany After 1989“, Elaine Kelly) exploring the cultural atmosphere of the early 1990s in that vein. Bredemeyer himself commented on this issue as well; he said he felt like his works were being shaken off, that the perspectives this generation of composers had grown up with had suddenly been discredited. And, I think there’s this other dimension, which is more connected to new music writ large, and that is… it’s hard to get programmed. A lot of composers are continually and justifiably complaining about this or, if not complaining, aware that it is a system where only a few people get programmed again and again and again, and there is this broader movement which is not necessarily linked to the collapse of communism. Also, yes, the new music world is modelled on a world that is almost a century older now.

That makes generational divides all the more stark, and also brings up some very timely ideas around funding, especially in the post-Covid cultural landscape, or whatever we’re in now…

Which-Stage-Now-Covid…

How much did those elements – intergenerational, financial – come into play as you were researching and writing?

One of the things I realized I had to do at some point in this project, for my own sanity, and also to do justice to that messiness I referenced without making it a free-for-all, is that I had to focus on a certain generation that had come of age, or a couple of generations, that came of age during WWII and then came into the GDR as fully grown adults, versus those born during the war, and then those born in the GDR and after – I just don’t know enough about the more contemporary ones to comment. I’ve been tangentially following this third-generation group who were children when the GDR collapsed, or are first-generation and born in reunified Germany, but may well have parents from the East, and they’re adults now, doing various creative things – I just haven’t followed them as much. I think there is that dimension of how much people are holding onto stuff from the past, compared to how much those elements they think of with so much nostalgia have, in fact, morphed into totally different things. Like the element you mentioned about levels of state support – that’s also been fused into this whole idea of, ‘where do you go to get your works performed?’ – which I think is very valid right now. Europe seems to support musicians more than the U.S., for sure.

Indeed, and North Americans never get to hear the work of people like Bredemeyer or Dessau performed live as a result, because programming them is perceived as too risky. Do you think in our current pandemic era we might start to appreciate these artists, people who wrote through their own difficult times?

Possibly. I finished this book right as Covid started, which I wrote about in the intro, and I was thinking, “What on earth is going on? I have to finish this book!” So that opening chapter is colored by that whole initial experience, but throughout the book some of the examples I was working with made me think about motivation in multiple ways, and in slightly different ways – there’s this kind of potential therapeutic element of, “This is my response to this situation; this is what I do. I’m a musician: if something happens, I’m going to respond through music” – so I think it is possible that composers and audiences may turn back to, and look for, these moments of mourning in sound. There was this article at the beginning of the whole thing I saw, about music during the plague, the Renaissance, about it being repurposed and in thinking about that today, it’s possible that would happen now, but I can also imagine… I don’t know what format it would take, whether it would be a composer turning back to previous examples and pondering how that would help them work through things. Speaking for myself, I love work that changes the way I listen to and comprehend other music. To give you an example, I’m struck by Mauersberger’s turn to Schutz; at first my reaction was, “Well of course, it’s Dresden!” – I studied Schutz as an undergrad with a scholar of his work, but then I thought, “Hold on a second, Schutz and the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648); Schutz and all the religion issues” – there were lots of potential layers.

So yes, it would be really interesting and intriguing if audiences did turn back to music, maybe GDR music, and, this sounds twee, but to music that fully represents this current time of need. I can also see that taking different forms; for instance, Courtney Bryan recently had the premiere of her Requiem in Chicago, which was postponed from before this whole thing, but the work takes on a new meaning now. The form is still there, but musicians are adapting and making such works fit to the present, which seems very similar to what the composers I studied were doing.

Some may look at your askance for not being European and doing this; how much do you think being a kind of cultural outsider helped or hindered your writing and understanding?

I think there’s been so much attention and work and really rich stuff written about East Germany, and the arts in East Germany, over the past decade or so, so it’s not just one book everybody’s turning back to anymore, or one person; it’s not like, ‘if you read German then you definitely read this person; if you read English, you definitely read this person’ – no, it’s a bunch of people. There’s this rich, very engaging dialogue taking place now. So I don’t think I’d feel comfortable writing this if I wasn’t in dialogue with that larger community. We need both perspectives, from insiders and outsiders; it’s the only way to form something approaching a complete picture.

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Vladimir Jurowski: “What Would Good Old Strauss Have Said To All This?”

Vladimir Jurowski, conductor, Jurowski, Russian, maestro, Music Director, Bayerische Staatsoper, lead, music, classical, artist, musician

Photo © Wilfried Hösl

Owing to the realities of the coronavirus, the days of crowded orchestra pits may be some ways off to being fully realized, but restrictions have created large opportunities for the small. Reorchestrations are not new, of course; history is filled with examples of composers reorchestrating their own work and that of others. Mahler, Mozart, Stravinsky, Strauss, and Schoenberg all reworked (or, in fashionable parlance, “reimagined”) their own compositions and the works of other composers, contemporary and not, as need (social, financial; sometimes both) dictated and creative curiosity allowed. Such reworkings reshape one’s listening, in small and large ways, and shake up the foundations of perception (conscious and not) which come to be associated with particular sound worlds.

Conductor/director Eberhard Kloke’s reorchestration of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier at Bayerische Staatsoper, a new production helmed by Barrie Kosky and led by Music Director Designate Vladimir Jurowski, was one such pandemic-era production providing this shake-up. The opera, and its composer, are deeply intertwined with Munich and its cultural history, with many opera-goers holding specific memories of related work by conductor Carlos Kleiber and director Otto Schenk. Appreciating a new version of something old means prying off the determined octopus which has wrapped itself around the object of musical worship; usually the tentacles spell out things like “comfort”, “nostalgia”, even “expectation” and “ego.” Analyzing the whys and wherefores of one’s listening habits, as such, is not always pleasant, but is necessary. Along with being the incoming Music Director at Bayerische Staatsoper (2021-2022), Jurowski is Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin (RSB). As I observed in 2018, the Russian maestro is well-read and very articulate; just as he spoke at length about Mussorgsky, programming, and stagings back then, so he now speaks about the act of reorchestration and its historical and creative antecedents – what works, why, and how; to quote the Marschallin, “in dem “Wie” da liegt der ganze Untershied” (“the how makes all the difference.”).

Thus has curiosity and anticipation for the new staging grown since the opera’s livestream presentation on March 21st. Despite having studied Kloke’s reduction of Strauss’s score (published at Scott Music), the experience of hearing it was, and remains, deeply poignant, even rendered through home speakers; if reduction and translation are analogous, then so too must be the act of reading to one’s self versus the full sensory experience of hearing the words aloud in all their syllabic, rhythmical glory. Frissons of shock and sincere wonder raced through veins in experiencing the online presentation, with Strauss’s grand cotillion on dewy grass becoming a deliciously barefoot belly-dance across an ornately-patterned rug. Taste is personal, but so are hang-ups; the awareness is all. The “how” indeed makes all the difference.

Our conversation took place in early 2021 in relation to a magazine feature I was writing at the time (for Opera Canada) about opera reductions in the age of pandemic; that feature also had insights from tenor John Daszak and Canadian Opera Company Music Director Johannes Debus. For the interests of education, possible inspiration, and clarity into the wide world of reorchestration, I was granted permission  to publish this exchange with Maestro Jurowski, in full. Make a pot of tea, sip, and enjoy.

You’ve done a few reductions, haven’t you?

Officially I did one which was aired on Deutschlandfunk Kultur (radio) – I did it during the first lockdown (spring 2020). It was a longtime dream of mine to do a version of a piece which I’ve loved for years and which for some strange reason never become really popular, although other works by the same composer have made it into all possible charts – I’m speaking of Prokofiev here, and the piece which I have created of is The Ugly Duckling, the fairytale after Hans Christian Andersen. It’s a piece Prokofiev rewrote several times himself; he wrote the first version of it in 1914 for voice and piano, and then he came back a few years later and did a version still for voice and piano but a different voice, a higher voice, so he started by amending the vocal lines and ended up amending the whole structure. He moved the keys, not all but some, so it became singable for a soprano; I think it had to do with the fact that his first wife, Lina Prokofieva, was a soprano, and he reworked it for her. Then he came back again much later, about 20 years after the piece was finished (in 1932) and created an orchestral version. I always found it fascinating composers creating orchestral versions of their own piano pieces. In the case of Prokofiev there are two famous examples, one is The Ugly Duckling, and the other one is his Fourth Piano Sonata (1917); the slow movement of this sonata, the Andante, he later made into a self-standing piece of orchestral music, the Andante Op. 29 (1943), and that is a firework of compositional craft, comparable with the best orchestrations of Ravel, who was orchestrating music by other people too, like Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition; in the same vein, Rachmaninoff did a very interesting arrangement of his Vocalise, originally written for voice and piano, which he later reworked into an orchestral piece, first with solo soprano, and then a version where all first violins of the Philadelphia Orchestra would play the tune and a small orchestra would accompany.

So Prokofiev wrote The Ugly Duckling having a certain type of voice in mind, and then he came back and orchestrated it, but in such a way that made it literally impossible for a light voice to perform, simply because the orchestration was too heavy; I wanted to bring the piece back to where it belonged, in the realm of chamber music. So I chose to do a version of it for 15 players, which is the normal size of a contemporary music ensemble; it all springs from Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony #1, which was scored for 15 players. I realized very soon that it was impossible to simply reduce the missing instruments; for that size of group you have to re-balance the score, and very often I found myself in need to address the original piano score. So, I was moving along the confines of Prokofiev’s orchestral score, but eventually what I wrote was much closer to the original piano score, and that made me realize again how huge is the gap between what composers set for piano, two-hand piano, and the same music being reimagined for large orchestra – it becomes a different piece. It’s a different weight, there’s a different sound world, there are different colors in it, and obviously it produces different kinds of emotions in us listeners. If you take a Beethoven string quartet and simply double each voice, so play it with 40 people rather than with four, it won’t automatically be 40 times stronger – it will be louder, for sure, but not necessarily as balanced, because it’s like alchemy; you multiply the numbers, but different numbers in the same mathematical relationship calls for completely different sound effects.

What kind of effects?

For instance, one violin, obviously, is a solo instrument; if you have two violins playing the same tune, acoustically, it would create a clash. Even if they were playing ideally in tune, you would still hear two violins. Take three violins, and make them play the same tune again, and it will sound much more unified. At four, it will sound again heterogenic. Five is better than four, and three is better than two. At six you would still hear a small ensemble, and somewhere between seven and eight you will start hearing a section. When hearing a section playing a single note or a melodic line, it gives this melodic line or this note a completely different weight, and not necessarily a bigger weight, than when played by one person.

“Weight” is a good word within the context of what is lost or gained. How do you approach weight in orchestration when you are reducing a score?

You have to shift it; it’s like in tai chi, shifting the weight of your body from the centre to the left foot and then the right foot again, and so on. So you’ve got to decide exactly how many instruments you leave on the melodic voice and how many instruments you would leave with the harmony, how many instruments you’ll give to the bass…  it’s not always mathematically, I mean, obviously you could calculate everything, but not all of these calculations will be obvious. So for me the scores of Richard Strauss or Rimsky-Korsakov, to give you two very different examples, or late Wagner, are such examples of perfect calculation. When it comes to others, well, some don’t understand how to go about composing for the weight of a symphony or orchestra; they might treat the orchestra like a large piano, and that is, with permission, wrong. An orchestra is a different instrument – Bruckner treats the orchestra like a huge organ, and that’s sometimes very strange, it seems much less plausible than treating the orchestra like a piano, but it calls, interestingly, for better results.

But composers who write specifically for the stage, for singers: that is a whole different beast.

It is! And that is where the problems start. So Strauss was among the first composers who not only sanctioned reduction of his scores, because Wagner did too, Wagner sanctioned the reduction of several of his operas, most famously Tristan, but Strauss was among the very first composers who started doing the job of reduction himself. And that is where you can see the difference between an artisan, a very secure craftsman being at at work, and a real artist being at work, because Strauss’s own reductions of Salome and Elektra, and the few fragments from Die Frau Ohne Schatten which he reduced, they are masterpieces, and near-ideal examples, entirely didactic examples, of how one should go about reorchestration. Another example of such reorchestration in the sense of adding weight is Mahler. When Mahler revised his symphonies, especially such symphonies as #4 and #5, the amount of weight loss these scores have undergone in Mahler’s hands is mind-blowing – yet they never lost their essence.

So I think, essentially, it’s like this: the composer always knows best. They always know how his or her works should sound with different, let’s say, smaller, forces. But what you need to do as an arranger is to get into the mind of the composer and crack the DNA code of the piece. You basically need to put yourself in the state of composing the piece within you – not with your own mind, but the mind of the composer. Once you’ve done that, you’re able to do any type of technical operations with a piece without damaging its essence, because one thing is simply reducing a score, and another thing is reducing a score in such a way that it would still sound its very recognizable self in this new attire, in these new clothes. For instance, Schoenberg’s own reorchestration of Gurrelieder was originally scored for a huge orchestra, and he created his own reduction for a chamber orchestra; I think it is an ideal example of how a composer reinvents the same piece with much more discreet means and yet it appears to you in all its glory. And yet I’ve done, during the pandemic, several reduced versions of symphonic pieces of opera. While in Moscow (in November 2020) I did a concert with a reduced orchestration of Götterdämmerung. I didn’t do the complete piece but selected fragments and that was a well-recognized, you could say, classical reduction by Alfons Abbas (1854-1924), published by Schott, and obviously going back to the composer himself, and yet I have to say, having done it, I… never felt at ease with it, because I always felt the piece was being betrayed.

Why?

Because by the time Wagner came to composing Götterdämmerung, he really knew why he used such a huge monstrous orchestra. In the first pieces, in Rheingold or Walküre or even in parts of Siegfried you would argue, he was going for more sound, for more volume – by doubling, by adding up stuff – but by the time he came to composing Götterdämmerung and even more so in Parsifal, he had a perfect command of those full-voiced chords, distributed among the four voice groups, meaning each wind group had four players, and when you started redistributing them, between the groups – because obviously a normal orchestra would have only maximally three players per section – then you get into all sorts of trouble, and then I thought, it would have actually been better, more honest, and certainly more productive, reducing it further, from quadruple not to triple but to double, so you exactly half the size of the players – just as Kloke did in his reduction of Wozzeck – because (in) leaving three original instruments and adding one on top, there’s always this torturous moment of choosing the right instrument: what do you add to three flutes, an oboe? Do you add a clarinet? Do you add a muted trumpet? Whatever you add won’t sound right.

Wozzeck, stage, opera, production, classical, presentation, Kriegenburg, Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, theatre, performance, reduction, Kloke

Wozzeck at Bayerische Staatsoper, 2020 (L-R): Ursula Hesse von den Steinen (Margret), John Daszak (Tambourmajor), Anja Kampe (Marie). Photo © Wilfried Hösl

And so, I’m coming to the conclusion that orchestration and reorchestration is a very special art which resembles the art of poetry translation. We know poetry is untranslatable, and that there are very rare cases where you find a translation which is completely idiomatic; most of the time you just get the very dry account of the events of the poem’s plot, or you get one very neat rhyme, if the original poem was rhymed – which makes a new composition, which might be a very interesting work in its own right but has little to do with the original poem. It is the same with the art of reorchestration. It depends also on what your aim is as the orchestrator; is your aim really to give the piece a new birth in these new circumstances but still keep its essence? Or are you after some very bizarre effect of deconstruction? One needs to be careful when dealing with these orchestrations, and reorchestrations, in that one can, in trying to translate the composer’s thoughts, become a traitor of the composer.

How so?

Well Stravinsky used to say to the performers that any kind of interpretation is mostly an act of betrayal toward the original’s composition. That’s why Stravinsky demanded strict following of the original text and no personality of the performer. At the same time Stravinsky himself, when re-orchestrating his own works, redid them every time, but in such a way that they became new pieces. Look at the three versions of The Firebird, the 1910, 1919, and 1945 versions: there are three different versions, there are three different birds. It’s not the same bird in a new dress; it’s a different bird – a bird which sings the same song, but the song gets a completely different meaning. The same happened with Petrouchka (1911), the same happened with Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920); when they got revisited in later years – Stravinsky often did it for financial reasons because he wanted to renew his copyright and get maximum revenue from performance of the pieces – he couldn’t help updating them to the new stage of compositional career he was at, at the time.

How does this relate to current trend of reduction then?

Well, I’m of two minds on this whole issue of reorchestration, because on the one side I find it fascinating business and a fascinating time, because it gives us so many opportunities to revisit the pieces we all know, but… I find a slight problem in that mostly works are not being revisited by the composers themselves, but by people who are our contemporaries. We’re talking of composers who are long dead, so unless they are artists of an equal level… well, who could be on an equal level with Wagner, Strauss, or Mozart? It’s worth remembering, when you think that Luciano Berio created his version of Combattimento di Clorinda by Monteverdi in the 1960s – when Hans Werner Henze created his version of Ulysses (1985); when Strauss created his version of Idomeneo (1931); when Mozart created his version of the Messiah (1789) – those were genius composers dealing with works of their genius predecessors. Speaking of more recent events, Brett Dean reorchestrated Till Eulenspiegel by Strauss for nine performers (1996); even if I disagree with some decisions (in the reorchestration), I’m always finding such attempts much more plausible and worthy of being performed than some (recent) reductions which were done for practical reasons by people whose names become slightly more familiar to you now, because they’ve touched on the great, famous compositions.

Schmutzer, portrait, sketch, composer, Strauss, German, classical, music

By Tucker Collection – New York Public Library Archives, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16243459

Where does Kloke’s approach to Rosenkavalier fit into all this, then?

Kloke has created something unique, first as a conductor, then as a programmer, and eventually as a reinventor of these old great pieces. His role is comparable with the role of a modern opera director who is revisiting the old pieces and sometimes deconstructing them, but there is always a thought, there is always a good reason. You might disagree with his solutions and ideas, but they are always done with an artistic purpose; that isn’t always the case. And, now is the heyday of rearrangers, because we are all forced to either completely take leave of certain compositions for the time being, or to hear them in reduced formations. I personally have no problem in waiting for another four or five years until a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony becomes possible in its original Gestalt, to do it the way Mahler conceived it with a large orchestra, than in doing it now in one of these multiple available reduced forms. I’ve looked at all of them and the only symphony which I have done in reduced orchestration and I found absolutely plausible was #4, because it is in itself a piece of chamber music; there were moments where it was missing a big orchestra but they were a few.

And, I haven’t done it yet, but I would like to do Schoenberg’s orchestration of Das Lied (Von Der Erde), simply because Schoenberg knew Mahler, so it is the pupil revisiting the work of the great teacher – but no other symphonies. Likewise I would have absolutely no interest in performing a reduced version of The Rite Of Spring.

So this time has changed the way you program?

Yes… yes. My whole philosophy during the time of the pandemic was to keep as much as possible the names of the composers in that co-relationship in which they were programmed. For instance if I had, let’s just imagine the names of Mozart and Strauss on the program, then I would try and keep Mozart and Strauss, but a work by Mozart can be kept anyway without any amendments, you just reduce the amount of strings and you can still play it, but in the case of Richard Strauss, if the piece was the Alpine Symphony or Zarathustra, I would never even *begin* to think of performing a reduced Zarathustra or Alpine Symphony; I think it’s a complete waste of time.

Does that attitude, of keeping certain things in their original Gestalt, extend to opera as well?

Yes. For me The Ring is such a piece, as a tetralogy. There are certain pieces like Rheingold – I know there is a version by Jonathan Dove which the Deutsche Oper presented in the carpark last year, that he reworked all four for Birmingham Opera originally – but for me, having done this little bit of Götterdämmerung with my Russian orchestra (in late 2020), I felt I had to keep it because it was just an important symbol of hope to give to people: “You see we are still performing, we can still do it.” But artistically I remain deeply unsatisfied with the whole experience; it had nothing to do with the orchestra or the wonderful singer (soprano Svetlana Sozdateleva) who learned Brünnhilde for us, it was just not the sound of Wagner as I knew it and as I would expect it; all the beauty of Wagner’s wonder machine, this symphonic orchestra he invented, was gone. It was simply a very crafty piece of orchestration, but nothing else. There was no magic in it at all.

At the same time, I found when we had to go back to smaller sizes – the string orchestra in performances of let’s say early Beethoven symphonies or something like Symphony Classique by Prokofiev – the pieces gained from it, hugely, so there was a loss but there was also a gain, and the gain was in clarity and virtuosity, in transparency and all that. The question is, do you want more transparency in pieces like… Tristan?

I was just going to mention that precise opera… 

I mean, is that what you want? For transparency?

.. yes, in direct relation to transparency. You took the words out of my mouth there.

Right?? So, yes – I would choose my pieces very carefully these days. Specifically in relation to what I’m preparing now, Der Rosenkavalier has this neo-classical aspect which got later developed by Strauss and Hofmannsthal and found its most perfect resolution in Ariadne auf Naxos, especially the second version with the prologue, composed in 1916. Revisiting Rosenkavalier from the backward-looking perspective of Ariadne I find very interesting. I am not saying that this is an absolute revelation and this is how I want to hear my Rosenkavalier from now on – I would be lying! I want to go back to Rosenkavalier as we knew it before! – but I bet you there will be discoveries through this smaller version which will help us when working on the piece again in the larger orchestration, to work on the finesse and bring out the theatricality of the libretto.

Actually the main difference between the small version and the big version is, the big version, however transparent you do it, you still first hear the orchestra and then the voices; with the smaller version you can almost perform it as a play, with background music. And I am sure Hofmannsthal would have been thrilled because he thought of the piece as mainly his composition, with music by Strauss; we tend to think of it as a great opera by Strauss with text by Hofmannsthal. So there are two ways of looking at it.

But Wagner… ?

Well, when it comes to something like Parsifal or Tristan or Götterdämmerung, I think the pieces are perfect the way they were conceived, so I personally, with all due respect to the people who reworked these operas now for smaller forces and those people who perform them… I personally don’t think it’s the right thing to do; I would keep my fingers away from it. As I would keep my fingers away from Shostakovich Symphonies, apart from #14 which was composed for chamber orchestra, and I would wait as long as is necessary until performing them again. I would not touch on any Prokofiev symphonies or big Stravinsky ballets or Mahler, Bruckner, symphonies, what you will; I simply think there is a limit beyond which the reduction changes the pieces beyond the level of recognizability – and then I much prefer to sit in my armchair and look at the score and imagine how the piece would sound, or listen to a good old recording. I mean, it’s everybody’s right to decide what’s best for them, and there is no right and wrong here. Besides it’s always better to have some music in whatever form than no music at all, but my feeling is also there’s been so much music composed over the last 2000 years, well, even take the last 500 years or so, you could fill hundreds of lifetimes with programs, never repeating the same pieces; why do we always have to come back to the same pieces over and over again?

Because they’re crowd pleasers, they sell tickets, they put bums in seats…

Yes, and because they give us this sense of safety, because we come back to something familiar, we can cling on to that, etc etc, again, anybody has the right to do what they think is best for them, but I had absolutely no hesitation in cancelling all these big pieces and replacing them with other pieces by the same composers or in the case of Mahler, there is actually nothing which can replace Mahler 9, nothing at all, so I would say, if we can’t play Mahler 9 now, we play a different piece by a different composer, we just leave it at that; there are some things which are irreplaceable.

Jurowski, Kosky, rehearsal, probe, Munich, Bayerische Staatsoper, Der Rosenkavalier, opera, classical, music

Director Barrie Kosky (L) and conductor Vladimir Jurowski (R) rehearsing Der Rosenkavalier in Munich, 2021. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

Perhaps this era will inspire audiences not to perceive reductions as a poor compromise but as a new way of appreciating an old favorite.

Yes, and you know, I’m always asking myself – again, this is me being a grandson of a composer – I’m always asking, “What would good old Richard Strauss have said to all this?” Because knowing Strauss and his ways from the many letters and diaries he left, and the bon mots he pronounced in conversations with other people, I think he would have still preferred hearing his work in a strongly reduced version, than not hearing it at all. So I think when it comes to Strauss, he of all people would have been actually rather happy hearing his Rosenkavalier even if what we are going to present in Munich will be very, very far removed from the sound world of the Rosenkavalier he thought of when he composed it. In his time as President of the Reichsmusikkammer, the Ministry of Music in Nazi Germany – a position he held until he fell out with Goebbels – Strauss insisted on ruling out the possibility of performances of some operas by Wagner by smaller theatres because he thought performing these works with orchestras less than such-and-such-number of strings were an offense to the composer, so he was quite… in that time he was quite radical with his views. Because people then were much less purist than they are now, they just wanted to hear their Lohengrin, and they’d gladly hear it with six first violins. Just as recently, in Munich before everything closed down completely (in late 2020), (Bayerische Staatsorchester) was playing in front of 50 people, when (just prior) they were playing in front of 500 – they were playing Tosca with six first violins, and Swan Lake with six first violins, and you know, that was the only possibility. That’s why, when I came to Wozzeck, I thought, “This is a good one; this piece was sort of the cradle of modernism, and we will find a good version of the piece, reinvented” – and we did find that version, in Kloke. There is an even more drastically-reduced version for 21 musicians…

The reduction by John Rea?

Yes! I was prepared to play it as well! I said, “If the restrictions will go that far, then we’ll play this version for 21 musicians.” It was almost an act of defiance back then, but now, when these things become normality, when we see that the next few months, maybe the next six months, maybe the next year, will be all reductions, I think one needs to choose carefully.

For instance, I completely reprogrammed the season in Berlin; I remember when we published the program of the RSB in, it was right at the beginning of the lockdown March-April last year, there were some journalists in Berlin who said, we were lunatics, we were completely out of touch with reality that we were presenting this program which was completely impossible, and I said then, “I’d rather present something which is impossible but which represents my dream, a certain way of thinking about the music, and then I will bring it in cohesion with reality.” I’d rather do that, than simply leaving all the dreams behind, and presenting some completely randomly-made program simply because we know, “Oh there is a pandemic coming and we can’t play this and that.” I’d rather say, “This is what we thought of; this is what I would have ideally liked to have played. And now we see we can’t, we still try and weave our program along the pre-made lines of this concept.” So we had all the Stravinsky Russian ballets and many other works, and of course none of them will happen now, it’s clear, but I would still have a Stravinsky festival in Berlin, and we will already start, we have already had a few pieces by Stravinsky and we will keep that line, the same will apply to Schnittke or Denisov or almost any composer, the only ones we left out completely without replacing them were the really big ones such as Mahler 9 or Shostakovich 8, there is no replacement for them.

But I’m quite hopefully because you know if you see how composers themselves developed – take Stravinsky for instance, he started composing for these monstrous-sized orchestras and eventually lost interest in them, later in his life the more chamber musical or unusual he got the combinations of instruments got more and more unusual and the compositions didn’t lose any of their qualities, they simply became something else. So if we take composers’ development as our guide, then we certainly won’t get completely off-road.

Marlis Petersen, soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, Der Rosenkavalier, Bayerische Staatsoper, Barrie Kosky, Strauss, Hofmannsthal, stage, performance, Marschallin

Marlis Petersen as the Marschallin in Barrie Kosky’s staging of Der Rosenkavalier at Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

But how much will stagings match that whilst complement the overall spirit of the current era?

Well our Rosenkavalier will also be different to the one originally envisioned by Barrie Kosky; it will be a corona-conforming production. And I’m sure when we come back to revisiting it in the post-corona times, obviously, as every new production will be revived hopefully multiple times, we’ll change it once more. But again, I’m thinking of Mahler, who would change the orchestration of his symphonies every time he would conduct them in a different hall with a different orchestra – it was never the same process. It was Mahler who said, “Hail the conductor who will have the courage to change my pieces further after my death.”

… which, in my mind, underlines the flexibility of audiences’ listening then; it’s interesting how  auditory intransigence – ie, “x opera has to sound exactly like this, the end” – doesn’t match composers’ visions…

… because for the composers their pieces were part of a living process, a *live* process of genesis, it was part of their life and they were still alive and as they were alive they were changing things along the way…

… but that’s music.

That is music! Mozart would compose extra arias for his operas and take some arias out in the next edition and he would also have very different orchestra sizes depending on the places where he would perform them. Our problem is that we have this… this is a completely different subject matter and it would take a whole separate conversation… but, we got fixated. It’s like an obsession with the music of the famous dead composers. So that we found ourselves in this museum where everywhere there is in a line saying “Don’t touch this; don’t come close!”

It’s not a separate conversation though, it’s part of the reason some organizations have closed  instead of trying to find ways to perform. They assume audiences will be afraid of that different sound.

I agree with you, absolutely. But it’s a different thing when we are scared of reductions: we might injure the essence of the composer’s work or we might simply injure our little feelings provoked by certain compositions, so basically we’re not interested most of the time – we’re not interested in the music; we’re interested in the emotions this music provokes in us, and we want to have a push-button repetition of the same emotions over and over again.

“I want to feel THIS during Aida; THAT during Rosenkavalier… ”

Precisely.

… but I think this is an opportunity for examining those preconceptions, and asking asking what our vision of “normal” even means now.

What does “the normal” mean in the post corona times, yes – because anything will feel completely abnormal, everything will feel huge and new and very exciting, and playing Beethoven’s 9th again or Mahler 5 will feel like a real revelation. People will get heart attacks, hopefully positive heart attacks, from being in touch with this music again – certainly us musicians will.

Some of us audience members are also musicians.

So you can get a heart attack, then – hopefully in a good way.

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Der Rosenkavalier in Munich: “We Can Be Alive And Find Ourselves in These Roles”

Bayerische Staatsoper, Bavarian State Opera, auditorium, Nationaltheater, opera, music, stage, seating, Munich, Muenchen

Nationaltheater, Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

Anticipation, excitement, and anxiety tend to be usual feelings in relation to new productions, for artists and audiences alike. When the opera being staged is a favored work, those feelings become distinctly pronounced, and call into question the whole nature of fascination with the piece, the composer, the librettist, and the art form overall. As a pseudo-knowledgeable, ever-studying, non-singing, over-wordsy, wide-eared opera person, you may become conscious of your love, others’ love, your expectations, others’ expectations, your preconceptions, others’ preconceptions, your reactions, others’ reactions – and you may find yourself exhausted by the conscious, semi-conscious, and unconscious levels of identification, non-identification, meditations, musings, and various analyses you perform, repeatedly, over the course of weeks, months, years. You may hear bits of arias and orchestration at unexpected moments, and tap your foot or teeth or waggle eyebrows or fingertips along, an internalized melodo-sensual-rhythmical complement at all hours of the day or night: in the bath, out on the street; looking out the window at a white dog, looking up in wonder at a purple-pink orchid; frowning in a mirror, forking in cold spaghetti, falling asleep in front of the telly. You may wonder and worry about those new costumes and sets and what form of fancy choreography might complement some favored passages, to say nothing of all the secret, conversational places between. You also ponder why any of this should actually matter amidst a year-long worldwide pandemic. Yet it does, and very much; art takes on new and precious significance amidst pandemic, more so when there is the willpower to see it realized in a live form. Anticipation, excitement, anxiety; soap, rinse, repeat.

And so it is with a new production of Der Rosenkavalier set to make its debut in Munich this coming Sunday. Premiered in 1911 in Dresden, the opera is associated with a distinctly Rococo visual, helped along by celebrated recordings and fusty album covers as well as the famous Otto Schenk production, first presented in 1972 and led by Carlos Kleiber. The wigs, the dresses, the buttons, the buckle shoes – the glitter, the gilding, the glamour: these are the elements co-related (however consciously or not) with Der Rosenkavalier. There was more than a hint of public mournfulness when the Schenk production was retired in 2018. New visions of old favorites tend to create waves, sometimes (/ often) brushing against the sandcastles of expectation lining the shores of creative consciousness. It’s difficult to gauge how any new production will be ultimately received,  but in an environment so heavily re-shaped by pandemic, it’s little wonder that a new staging will court reaction, for after all, certainties within the artistic sphere are nice (or perceived to be so) in an age where there is naught but uncertainty everywhere else. “Give me my buckle shoes,” goes the thinking, “they hurt to walk in but they’re comforting nonetheless.” Such clinging can, of course, lead to needless suffering; bunions are not marks of virtue, after all. Sometimes a good dose of curiosity is the best (and only) thing to provide a proper shoehorn. Yes, it’s frightening to stay open at a point in history when it feels so dangerous on all fronts – but in the current cultural climate, that openness seems more vital than ever.

Certainly good leadership can help to encourage the needed spirit. The determination of the Munich team behind the new Der Rosenkavalier, together with actionable choices which manifest such determination, have provided much inspiration and hope. Directed by Barrie Kosky, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, and designed by Rufus Didwiszus, the new production was birthed in an environment characterized by rules and restrictions which would have seemed like a form of creative straitjacket only 14 months ago; now that straightjacket is a parachute, the very thing which allows for any sort of a view. Hugo von Hofmannsthal wrote, in Buch der Freunde (Book of Friends), his 1922 collection of aphorisms, itself a kind of postmodern conversation with artists of the past (the title is lifted from Goethe’s own West-östlicher Divan), “(t)here is more freedom within the narrowest limits, within the most specialized task, than in the limitless vacuum which the modern mind imagines to be the playground for it.” (trans. Tania and James Stern; The Whole Difference: Selected Writings of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Princeton University Press, 2008) Like every event currently unfolding (or planned) at various houses operating at various levels in Europe, this Rosenkavalier conforms to current Bavarian health regulations, ones which (as you’ll read) entail a strict system of interaction for artists.

Samantha Hankey, mezzo, Marlis Petersen, soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, Der Rosenkavalier, Bayerische Staatsoper, Barrie Kosky, Strauss, Hofmannsthal, stage, performance, jump, joy, Marschallin, Octavian

Marlis Petersen (L) as the Marschallin and Samantha Hankey as Octavian in a scene from Barrie Kosky’s staging of Der Rosenkavalier at Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

Such a conformation also means that Strauss’s original, immense score isn’t going to be presented (at least this time), but a reduced version of it, by conductor/re-orchestrator Eberhard Kloke, will; with its dramaturgical approach, Kloke’s reorchestration utilizes the sound palette of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos (which premiered the year after Rosenkavalier, in 1912) and, notably, makes no deletions to the original, as has been the case with past presentations and recordings. Hofmannsthal’s libretto, filled with a delicious syllabism, mixes intimate poetry and epic theatricality (including broad farce) within a dialectical framework involving the Marschallin, her young lover Octavian, her obnoxious cousin Baron Ochs, his intended bride, Sophie (who falls for Octavian, and vice-versa), her status-obsessed father Faninal, and, I would argue, the immense if unseen character of the work, the Marschallin’s husband. The opera’s final scene features one of the most famous trios in all of opera, but each part could (does) stand as its own form of soliloquy, a moment whereby Octavian, Sophie, and the Marschallin are enacting a hoary old romantic cliché (the love triangle) whilst forming something new, as, from word to word and note to note, they individually express and refine their sense(s) of freedom, circumstance, choice, and actual, felt consequence. “Es sind die mehreren Dinge auf der Welt, so dass sie ein’s nicht glauben tät’, wenn man sie möcht’ erzählen hör’n. Alleinig wer’s erlebt, der glaubt daran und weiss nicht wie,” sighs the Marschallin. (“There are so many things in the world that one would not believe them if one heard them told. Only those who experience them believe in them, and do not know how.”)  Every time I hear this, no matter the recording, I want to run across a dark beach barefoot, leaving wig, corset, and buckle shoes behind, kicking the sandcastles as I go.

Sunday’s presentation in Munich is new in not only the approach to staging but in its casting, with many here making important role debuts. Marlis Petersen, celebrated for her interpretations of Lulu and Salome, debuts as the Marschallin; mezzo soprano Samantha Hankey sings Octavian, the “cavalier” of the title, while soprano Katharina Konradi is Sophie, the recipient of the cavalier’s “Rose.” It was a true a privilege to speak with the latter two singers the day after their first general rehearsal, with the artists carrying an ebullient energy from the experience, their first in front of an audience (however limited) after a long period of deprivation. Both artists have extensive experience across celebrated opera stages, and with singing the music of Strauss. Soprano Konradi is currently a BBC New Generation Artist (2018-2021), and has made numerous recordings for BBC Radio 3. From 2015 to 2018 she was a member of the ensemble of the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, and joined the ensemble of Staatsoper Hamburg at the start of the 2018-2019 season, during which time she also performed as Zdenka (in Strauss’s Arabella) at the Semperoper in Dresden. She has enjoyed concert engagements with Orchestre de Paris, the Tonhalle-Orchester Zurich, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, and NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, to name a few, and worked with a range of conductors including Daniel Harding, Manfred Honeck, Kent Nagano, and Paavo Järvi. Along with performances at Wigmore Hall last year, Konradi has a new CD of lieder out now, Liebende (or Lovers, Avi Music), featuring the music of Strauss, Mozart, and Schubert. This summer, restrictions allowing, she’ll be performing in Tobias Kratzer’s staging of Tannhäuser. Mezzo soprano Hankey is a member of the ensemble of Bayerische Staatsoper, where she made her role and house debut as Hänsel in Hänsel and Gretel in late 2019. A former member of San Francisco Opera’s Merola Opera Program, she has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Opernhaus Zürich, Den Norske Opera, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Birgit Nilsson Prize (part of Operalia) for her interpretation of the music of Strauss. She’s worked with numerous conductors, Philippe Jordan, Gianandrea Noseda, Nicola Luisotti, and Carlo Rizzi among them, and this summer performs in Andreas Kriegenburg’s staging of Das Rheingold as part of the Münchner Opernfestspiele, the annual summer festival via Bayerische Staatsoper. The event, as with Bayreuth, and so many cultural events, depends entirely on which restrictions may (or may not) be in place as the result of coronavirus infection rates.

Der Rosenkavalier streams live from Munich on Sunday, March 21st, at 3.30pm CET.

Katharina Konradi, soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, Der Rosenkavalier, Bayerische Staatsoper, Barrie Kosky, bed, Strauss, Hofmannsthal, stage, performance

Katharina Konradi (foreground) in a scene from Barrie Kosky’s staging of Der Rosenkavalier at Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

Does everyone working at the Staatsoper receive regular testing?

SH Yes, the opera has a whole bunch of safety procedures in place in addition to regular testing and mask-wearing; everyone in the house is sectioned off into groups. Performers are at a specific level of risk, the red group it’s called; your group determines the level of interaction you are allowed to have with other people.

Samantha’s recent Bayerische Staatsoper Instagram takeover showed a bit of this testing process but also featured Katharina on her trampoline at intermission.

KK Oh, I take it everywhere! Whenever I have performances, concerts, projects like this, I make a recording, whatever, I take it with me, and I relax before performing with it. I don’t know how to quite express it, but my body is like waves, so I’m so happy to have it.

It’s a good way to keep your energy up – literally.

KK Yes it is! It’s fun to do before a performance.

SH You also have a balancing circle, what’s it called?

KK Ah yes, a balance board…

SH I always want to come into your room for it, it moves in all these different ways – very cool!

Working in the current environment must be quite different from what you are used to.

SH We haven’t performed in so long. I think Barrie saw we’re young, fit people and we like to move, and so…

KK I think the big difference is that we don’t have an audience. Yesterday we had a general rehearsal and we had fifty or sixty people watch, and it was completely another scene, because you know there are people sitting there, and you can send the energy to them and you also take a small part of this energy to you on the stage. It was a great experience after this long time without an audience.

SH Hearing applause at the end was so unexpected, we were like, “Wow, this is … incredible, this is people’s way of saying “Thank you for doing this.” It was very emotional. I didn’t anticipate hearing applause.

I’m reading John Mauceri’s Maestros And Their Music (Vintage, 2018) and one of the things he writes about is how audiences and artists are in partnership; how has that idea played into your experiences? 

SH In rehearsal there would be some laughs from the artistic personnel, and yesterday I was thinking, “Will (the audience) laugh here? Am I not hearing laughs because of the masks? Is this working? Are you enjoying this?” That’s the difference between having fifty to sixty people and having absolutely no one. I think of it as this double-sided coin, though, because you can also do so much without an audience – you feel safe to explore and play and make the most of it, even though it’s being streamed to the world. Digital isn’t a replacement for live performance but it’s the best option we have right now.

What’s it been like working on this with Barrie Kosky?

Katharina Konradi, soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, artist, performer

Katharina Konradi (Photo Simon Pauly)

KK For me it was a surprise – Barrie gives us the ability to be free on the stage, and to find things, by ourselves. For me it was the first time for this kind of experience, I was like, “What should I do?” And he said, “You can do whatever you want and I will say if you are right in your character, in your body, and in what Sophie is like.” It was, for me, the first time the stage director doesn’t say something before to the effect of, “Sophie is like this and like that, and so you must be like this.” I felt really free to build my character. He just put in small corrections, like, “You can be younger and laugh and be excited” but it was not like a set frame, with no possibility to take my own experiences into this role. And that’s been fantastic. I think this cast is full of personality and full of people who are so different and we are not all alike, we all have imaginations. Barrie never dictated how we should be, so we are allowed to use that difference. Every time in rehearsal we are trying to find some new aspects to take into our characters. I don’t know how it was for Sam, because she’s on the stage all the time. Maybe it’s different again…

SH I think, like what Katharina said, it’s been completely liberating working with Barrie. We’re doing such major roles that have such incredible history; you know, so many great singers have done these roles, and they’ve been in these iconic productions that we’ve all seen…

… may I add here, it is Christa Ludwig’s birthday today…

Samantha Hankey, mezzo soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, artist, performer

Samantha Hankey (Photo © Famous)

SH Oh, what timing! So yes, there’s so much weight in terms of that whole history, and, I don’t want to say fear, but it’s a huge amount of responsibility in doing these roles, and seeing all the traditional productions you think, “Okay, they follow the exact Hofmannsthal style and directions” and “This singer did it *this* way” and “Well this is how it’s always been done” – and Barrie said, “We want to do something different here.” So that means we get to do our own versions of these characters. In a piece like Der Rosenkavalier there aren’t a lot of variations in terms of interpretations of the piece – there’s a set type of Sophie, there’s a set type of Octavian. And now I really feel we’re creating something new that still honors this libretto. It’s very real.

In that vein, you are singing a reduction of Strauss’s score by Eberhard Kloke right now; some have expressed doubts about the sound world of Strauss undergoing such a transformation…

SH … well we can either not have art during the pandemic or we can have music in a reduced form and stream it, or we can all stay home. What’s preferable?

KK In this orchestral form, you can hear different things – for instance, a piano playing through our conversation. It’s better to perform like this, than to stay at home.

… and this Kloke version seems like a theatre piece in its own right, with a dramaturgical approach, and the sound palette of Ariadne auf Naxos. What’s it like to sing in such an expansive space?

KK For me and for Sam, it’s the first time we perform these roles. I don’t have experience with a full orchestra in this piece, I know only a bit and I know recordings from the past, but I think it’s a great experience to start with this orchestration, this not-so-big sound… but now the sound *is* really big because the orchestra is not in the pit but on the regular level. It’s a special experience, to take this sound, in a reduced form right now – like a child, we start with the small and then grow, and the role will be growing also, and in the next year hopefully it will be with the full orchestra.

SH I think it’s a great warm-up for when we do it with a full orchestra in the pit. Right now in an empty house the orchestra, already with its 36 to 40 instruments, is huge, because they’re placed on the orchestra level, so maestro and the team have come with ways to deaden the sound a bit, especially under the woodwinds and brass section, but with no one in house to absorb that sound and with our very boomy set, the sound is crazy. The Staatsoper is meant for bodies, for people to be there to absorb that sound and for the orchestra to be in the pit. But it’s a good compromise and a good way for us to warm up to these Strauss roles.

This being your first time doing these roles, how have your perceptions of them changed through rehearsals?

SH These are real people – the fact we’ve taken them out of this traditional Rococo style and thrown so much life and color into the characters, I think, means they’re very relatable and, I don’t want to say modernized, but a lot of the stuffiness is just gone, at least for Octavian.

KK For me it’s also really been freeing. I tried to find my own character in the (depiction of) Sophie. So in the normal life I am not like a “lady” – I can also be like a child, so I took this part of life onto the stage. In the old recordings, everything is really formal – “you must be like this” and you have rules (for the character’s portrayal) – we threw it all over and we can do, actually, everything. So we can be alive and and find ourselves in these roles.

Samantha Hankey, mezzo, Marlis Petersen, soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, Der Rosenkavalier, Bayerische Staatsoper, Barrie Kosky, Strauss, Hofmannsthal, stage, performance, Marschallin, Octavian, Mariandel, gender, curiosity, Christof Fischesser, bass

(L-R) Marlis Petersen as the Marschallin, Christof Fischesser as Baron Ochs, and Samantha Hankey as Octavian/Mariandel in the new Bayerische Staatsoper production of Der Rosenkavalier. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

That points ups something said in the recent video interview, that even with a fantasy element present, the emotions are nonetheless authentic. How do you find that in a role like Octavian?

SH There’s so much curiosity in the character. For instance, you’ll see in our production we do a very different Mariandel than what anyone’s prepared for, I think, and it’s really so much fun. Octavian is so in control, and he is so not afraid; he’s young, and very curious. I take a lot of inspiration (in characterization) from what’s going on in the current world, in terms of him being slightly androgynous, perhaps gender curious – there’s so much room within these roles to explore what’s in the libretto.

Samantha, you’ve sung Cherubino (from Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro), which is also a famous trouser role. Do you see a connection?

SH No, I have to say; I think Octavian is very different to Cherubino.

People think of Mozart as a massage for the voice; I’m curious how Strauss has been for your voices through this era.

SH I spent the entire pandemic doing work personally – for myself, and in preparing to sing Octavian. That’s really all I did. Sometimes I see these questions put out there online – “What would you have done differently if you could go back to March 2020?” I’d do the exact same thing; I really prepared physically to get in shape for the stamina I knew I’d need for this, and put my heart and soul into the role and toward knowing everything I could about the music. I don’t feel like vocally it hasn’t gone well. But I kept hoping we’d get to the point of rehearsing this and put it onstage, and we’ve been very lucky to do that.

KK It’s a strange thing, when people in this pandemic era don’t use their time to develop the voice, to try something, to practise. So I work every time through this period, and I can say the same thing as Sam: I feel really fit, and I worked for this role. And I’ve done this CD recording (Liebende); I tried to do as much as possible, because in normal times I didn’t have so much time for other projects. Now I can practise every day when I want, with calm, and I can take a lot of time with things. And Rosenkavalier, it’s like a cherry on top of the cake, to be able to do this, to present our ideas and our voices in this production.

SH Of course there are times when the inspiration hasn’t been there, it would go on and off. Some days you don’t feel like singing, sometimes because of a gig that got cancelled, but really, for me, it was holding on to hope we’d get to February 1st and start rehearsing. I said to everyone in the room that very first day, “I’m just happy we’re here today.” With all the lockdowns and restrictions, you never know, so every day has been a gift we can go to work. The whole process of working with Barrie and Vladimir and the entire cast has been really inspiring, and creatively very restorative in the sense of wanting to work on other projects once this wraps up.

I would imagine being around each other has also been very good; as arts people it’s important to have the energy of others in a sensual, not solely virtual, way, and to have the knowledge you’re doing something new as well.

SH To be together and to create something so beautiful as this production has been special. As Barrie has said, art needs to be a reflection of the times – he also said something like, “I don’t want my productions shown after ten years” so as an artist, getting to create something new, it takes so much of the pressure off, because we can be ourselves, and be entirely present. We just take it one day at a time. As an American working in Germany I feel really fortunate, but for the majority of the pandemic I felt I shouldn’t’ be going in the opera house at all, that I’m really not an essential worker, but through rehearsing this piece, I felt like, “This feels important, this feels like it has meaning.”

Samantha Hankey, mezzo, Katharina Konradi, soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, Der Rosenkavalier, Bayerische Staatsoper, Barrie Kosky, bed, Strauss, Hofmannsthal, stage, performance

Katharina Konradi (L) and Samantha Hankey (R) in a scene from Barrie Kosky’s staging of Der Rosenkavalier at Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo © Wilfried Hösl

I’d say you are an essential worker, at least to some of us. Lucas Debargue said recently how culture has suffered through the pandemic, but art and artists have (or will) become better.

SH I’d agree with that, but I also don’t think the arts were ever prepared for anything like this. You always think, “This is going to happen, it’s in the diary” and then for your whole world to be shattered… you don’t know if things are going to happen in the future at all. So again, I feel lucky working in Germany.

Helmut Deutsch and I discussed how perhaps the quality of listening has improved, how that’s a very valuable thing to have emerged from this era. 

KK For us, because of this situation… yes, but also, when just one listener is in the house, as a performer you’re so happy. In normal times, when the auditorium was full of people, it was just another normal performance for us, but now, with just one person, you are *so* happy to see him or her, and you have another sense entirely of what you are doing, and for whom you are doing it.

SH And audiences have been silenced as well.

Yes, but not all people have the quilt of culture woven into their lives in the same way…

SH That’s why opera becoming digital is important. Not everyone has the luxury, once this pandemic is over, to travel to see performances. I do think this time has provided a big step forward for the industry to get with the times and have more digital content.

KK I think there is another side of this digital thing. I’ve done a lot of concerts in this pandemic time, and every concert, or almost every one, was recorded, and sometimes you don’t feel like, “I’m a singer of the world” and sometimes you also don’t do a very great performance, and in this time all the performances are recorded, so it’s like, “Okay, I must concentrate / I must be here and now / I must do it perfectly”…

How much do you think that expectation of perfection and the related pressure highlights the nature of digital then?

SH It is a bit stressful going into the livestream knowing that there will be imperfections, because art is imperfect…

KK I will say, I am a bit nervous about the presentation of the rose scene and how it will be filmed…

SH Oh, I don’t think they’ll do an extreme close-up then… and really, you sing it so beautifully, Katharina. I do think the atmosphere we create in the theatre might not transfer to the filming; the sound we make in the theatre might not be beautiful in recorded form, even though it was or is good in the house it’s designed for. But again, I still think it’s a better alternative than nothing. And I think listeners also understand that and can try and see past it. That’s my hope.

Katharina Konradi, soprano, sing, voice, vocal, opera, artist, performer, trampoline, jump, energy

Photo: Katharina Konradi

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