Gustav Mahler the Conductors' Interviews

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Gustav Mahler was considered as one of the greatest opera conductors of his time; he could even be described as the first intercontinental star conductor. But that was not the case with his music; until the 1960s his compositions were only performed by specialists, the pieces, belonging nowhere near to the standard repertoire. Today, however, the frequency of performances of Mahler’s music rivals that of Beethoven, thus placing Mahler among the most G u s t a v M a h l e r successful symphonists. What happened to cause that change? This book seeks to answer that question with the aid of interviews with the great Mahler conductors of our day.The discussions range from Mahler’s reception by audiences in different The Conductors’ ´ countries to the way his audiences gradually came to understand his aesthetic – an expression of the modern human condition, its longings and its aspirations. Interviews

edited by Wolfgang Schaufler, born 1963, studied musicology in Vienna. He was Wolfgang Schauﬂer a journalist for Der Standard newspaper and the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation and later press officer for the directorate and music dramaturge at the Salzburg Festival. Since 2006, he has been the International Promotion Manager for Universal Edition.

Peter M. Hoffmann, born 1968, is an illustrator for Die Zeit, Falter, Cicero and other publications. www.pmhoffmann.de Gustav Mahler The Conductors’ Interviews Gustav Mahler The Conductors’ Interviews

ISMN 979-0-008-08493-5 UPC ISBN 978-3-7024-7162-0 ISMN 979-0-008-08493-5ISMNISMN 979-0-008-08493-5 979-0-008-08493-5UPC UPC UPC ISBN 978-3-7024-7162-0ISBNISBN 978-3-7024-7162-0 978-3-7024-7162-0 UE 26 311

Universal Edition Printed in Hungary, PR 11 / 2012

Printed Printedin Hungary,Printed in Hungary, PRin Hungary,11 / 2012PR 11 PR / 2012 11 / 2012

UE_Mahler_Cover_Dirigenten_E.indd 1 14.11.12 14:44 Gustav Mahler The Conductors’ Interviews

edited by Wolfgang Schaufler

kern_mahler_en_DRUCK.indd 3 07.11.12 09:45 GUSTAV MAHLER The Conductors’ Interviews

UE 26311 ISMN 979-0-008-08493-5 UPC 8-03452-06873-0 ISBN 978-3-7024-7162-0

Interviews: Wolfgang Schaufler Cover Design: Stefan Fallmann Illustrations: Peter M. Hoffmann Photo Gustav Mahler: Moritz Nähr Layout: www.vielseitig.co.at Proofread by Clare Clarke and Grant Chorley

kern_mahler_en_DRUCK.indd 4 07.11.12 09:45 Content 7 Foreword 9 Reinhold Kubik “The company does its work in grand style” – Gustav Mahler and Universal Edition 14 Claudio Abbado “Mahler is the bridge to the modern era“ 20 Daniel Barenboim “I began to conduct Mahler out of spite” 30 Herbert Blomstedt “Mahler must have been a great man” 38 Pierre Boulez “One cannot refer to the biography to explain the music” 48 Riccardo Chailly “Mahler’s First was the great emotion of my youth” 56 Christoph von Dohnányi “Mahler composed inwardly“ 64 Gustavo Dudamel “Wow, Mahler!” 70 Christoph Eschenbach “Mahler is certainly the greatest symphonist ever” 78 Daniele Gatti “Mahler should be performed simply and humbly” 84 Valery Gergiev “Mahler’s Seventh made me sleepless” 92 Michael Gielen “Bernstein turned Mahler into kitsch” 100 Alan Gilbert “In New York he was kind of giving up” 108 Bernard Haitink “I always found Mahler alarming” 116 Manfred Honeck “The rubato is essential when conducting Mahler” 124 Mariss Jansons “With Mahler you have to give everything”

kern_mahler_en_DRUCK.indd 5 07.11.12 09:45 132 Lorin Maazel “I would never have asked him anything” 140 Zubin Mehta “I would love to ask him a thousand questions” 150 Ingo Metzmacher “Mahler is my point of reference” 158 Kent Nagano “Mahler was a pioneer – not only a radical” 166 Andris Nelsons “Mahler wanted to show the world: I have a problem!” 174 Jonathan Nott “Frozen for eternity in death” 180 Sakari Oramo “Mahler controls chaos” 188 Sir Antonio Pappano “Mahler wanted to live, that’s the whole point!” 194 Josep Pons “Mahler is more contemporary now than in 1910” 202 Sir Simon Rattle “Mahler is the reason why I’m a conductor today” 212 Esa-Pekka Salonen “Mahler embraced everything that exists” 220 Michael Tilson Thomas “Jump! Cut! Bang!” 228 Franz Welser-Möst “Mahler was like an earthquake for me” 234 David Zinman “Mahler is a universe in itself”

241 Conductors’ biographies 247 Gustav Mahler – short biography 249 Index of names

kern_mahler_en_DRUCK.indd 6 07.11.12 09:45 Foreword

In 1960, public interest in the 100th anniversary of Mahler’s birth was at best moderato. There were performances, but Mahler was still a marginal figure in the repertoire. “One forgets how off-centre Mahler was at the time”, recalls Simon Rattle. Musicians struggled with Mahler rather than play his music gladly. Alfred Einstein (1880–1952) exemplifies the situation: “ … out of emotion grew more and more exhibition: at the end of the century, exhibition as strong as with Tchaikovsky or Gustav Mahler.” Mahler was relegated to a period of decay; even the post-war avant-gardists found no approach to him for a long time. At an earlier date, Pierre Boulez numbered Mahler among those “minding the shop of passé Romanticism … adipose and degenerate”, ripe for “apoplexy due to excess expressive pressure”. Zubin Mehta recalls how even students of musicians who had played under Mahler told him when he was a young student in Vienna that Mahler had merely copied from others – epigone art, not worth talking about. But now, more than 50 years later, things are fundamentally different; es- teemed as a seismograph of the century, Mahler developed into a virtual cult. He became acceptable to the masses, the number of performances of his music vying with those of Beethoven. There are some who wish to defendBeethoven against Mahler, recalling how uninterruptedly revolutionary he was in pon- dering the conditio humana, the circumstances of the individual and of society. So what happened? This book attempts to find answers based on interviews with the great Mahler conductors of the present day. Originally, the intention was to ask all conductors the same five questions – but the topic of Mahler soon turned out to be an emotionally charged one and a wealth of stories and experiences emerged that are worth keeping for the record. Questions were deliberately repeated in order to make room for comparisons: When did the conductors hear Mahler for the first time? Was his world immediately acces- sible to them? When did they begin to conduct Mahler? Issues such as subjective espressivo versus objective structure, Romantic tradition and utopian vision loom larger with Mahler than with any other

kern_mahler_en_DRUCK.indd 7 07.11.12 09:45 composer; how do they rehearse Mahler? Where do they place the main fo- cus – and why? Which positioning of the players is most advantageous? Are there particularities in terms of practical performance? How did the Mahler renaissance develop in different countries? Unease, feverishness, inner con- flict shortly before World War I broke out: Are the Mahler clichés aiming into empty space or did he in fact anticipate the catastrophes of the 20th century, as Leonard Bernstein believed? This question elicited exceedingly contradictory responses. Which role did anti-Semitism play? Does Mahler touch a nerve in people today with his loneliness and deraci- nation, his search for meaning and yearning for a long-gone paradise? Does Mahler provide a release for Weltschmerz and the feeling that life is fractured? Is that what Mahler wanted? Is that why he is so hugely successful today? And what about his sense of irony?

Mahler’s scores are densely strewn with agogic markings and other performance instructions. Did he burst open the door to the 20th century in compos- ing that way? How much influence did he have on Schönberg and his circle? – and, conversely, how much did Wagner and Bruckner influence Mahler? Finally: Who was this “foreign confidant” exactly? Is his music an aural bio graphy? What would the conductors have asked Mahler? Such questions can of course never be exhaustively answered. The intensity of some of the interviews was astonishing though, as were some of the contra dictions, which will hopefully prove illuminating to the reader. One thing has become clear during the conductors’ imaginary discussion: Mahler will continue to occupy us well into the 21st century. I am deeply indebted to the conductors for being so generous with their time and for offering an unadulterated view of their work.

Wolfgang Schaufler

kern_mahler_en_DRUCK.indd 8 07.11.12 09:45 “The company does its work in grand style” – Gustav Mahler and UE

By Reinhold Kubik

Dear friend, A company here is taking over the publishing of my three symphonies – they’re also printing the entire (!) orchestra material. What about the plates of the C minor Symphony? I was so bold as to declare them my own. Just now, the publisher told me to cause the plates to be delivered to Röder. And it occurred to me that I would still have to ask my two patrons about it. Therefore, dear friend, would you be so kind as to take the necessary steps with friend Berkan and Röder? – and, incidentally, what do you say to all of this? [ … ] Yours, Gustav Mahler This letter, which Mahler sent to his friend Hermann Behn from Vienna on 13 January 1898, is the oldest known record of his collaboration with the Vienna publishing industry. It requests the engraver’s plates of the 2nd Sym- phony, stored at the Röder company in Leipzig and paid for by Mahler’s friends Hermann Behn and Wilhelm Berkan in Hamburg. Of course, “a company here” does not refer to Universal Edition (which was founded in 1901); the firm in question is the music engraver Eberle & Co. [Vienna] VII, Seidengasse 3, about which Mahler writes in a letter dated 21 January: The company does its work in grand style; they have already printed all of Bruckner, they are going to print all of my stuff and even have piano reductions made and engrave the orchestra parts. Eberle & Co. are just an engraving firm à la Röder, with colossal operat- ing capital (stock corporation for improving Austrian publishing), which chooses its own publishers. Döblinger [sic] will probably get my works. Propagation is being done in grand style. However, the 2nd Symphony was published by Weinberger, not Doblinger. Josef Weinberger had founded a publishing house in 1890; Mahler had already signed a contract with them on 27 September 1897 for the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen [Songs of a Wayfarer], followed by an agreement dated 12 August 1898, on which basis Weinberger presented Symphonies 1, 2 and 3, as well as Das klagende Lied [The Song of Lamentation] as of 1899; Doblinger initially received only the 4th Symphony (1902).

kern_mahler_en_DRUCK.indd 9 07.11.12 09:45 In 1976, Alfred Schlee sketched the founding of Universal Edition this way: Universal Edition was born into the 20th century as a true child of the German industrial boom of the 1870s. Specialists in the music-printing business considered it the nation’s duty to wrest classical music born and bred during the Imperial and Royal Monarchy period from foreign publishers. It was not until a few years later, when the prematurely an- ticipated success had not yet materialised and the founders had passed the enterprise on to a young, enthusiastic layman, that UE gained the profile now known throughout the world. The “specialists in the music-printing business” included publishers who had released Mahler’s early works: Waldheim (Josef Stritzko), Weingartner and Doblinger (Bernhard Herzmansky Sr), all of whom were founding mem- bers of UE; all of them ceded rights, engraver’s plates and printed inventory to the new publisher (including Mahler’s first four symphonies andDas klagende Lied). Thus, UE was able to amalgamate Mahler as part of its catalogue at a time when actual collaboration between the publisher and the Court Opera director had not yet begun. The ultimate cooperation was thanks to a “young, enthusiastic layman” named Emil Hertzka (1869–1932), who was elected to UE’s Supervisory Board in 1907 and named its director in 1909. In June of that year, Hertzka signed an initial contract with Mahler, acquiring the rights to his 8th Symphony; the publisher acquired the 9th Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde [The Song of the Earth] the following year. Thus, UE initially handled Mahler’s early works from other publishers and, as of 1909, the late pieces which UE acquired through Hertzka’s initiative. In the meantime, Mahler was obliged to look around for other publishers; the 5th Symphony went to Peters and the 6th and some important Lieder to Kahnt (both in Leipzig), the 7th to Bote & Bock in Berlin – apparently UE was not interested in acquiring new Mahler works between 1906 and 1909. But that changed when Hertzka arrived, resulting in respectful, close and even amicable contact between publisher and composer; that is the only explanation for the riders which UE agreed to add to the publishing contract with Mahler regarding the revisions which exclusively concerned the composer’s artistic wishes (not the publisher’s commercial interests): […] regarding my aforementioned four symphonies, you have agreed to undertake to enter the changes which I have made to them since they were published, at your expense, into all plates of the full score[s] and orchestra parts, and to align the inventory material destined for sale or

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Universal Edition Printed in Hungary, PR 11 / 2012

Printed Printedin Hungary,Printed in Hungary, PRin Hungary,11 / 2012PR 11 PR / 2012 11 / 2012

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