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GUEST: Lorin Maazel

RECORDINGS:

Alban Berg Wozzeck [Concluding moments from Act Three] Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Karl Böhm. Geraint Evans, Wozzeck; Anja Silja, Marie. Allegro / Opera D'Obo OPD-1257.
Johann Sebastian Bach The Four Lute Suites, Suite BWV 995 [Final movement]. John Williams, Guitar. CBS Masterworks MK 42204.
Fado Amália, A Minha Canção é Saudade, Amália Rodrigues. Accompanied by Jaime Santos, Domingo Camarinha and Santos Moreira. Musica Latina ML 51101.
Giacomo Puccini Tosca. [Excerpt from Act Two] Maria Callas, Giuseppe Di Stefano, Tito Gobbi et al. Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Alla Scala. Victor de Sabata, Conductor. Musical Heritage Society 524973H.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Introduction]

Kaplan: The appointment of a new music director in any city is always a major event. New York being New York, the Philharmonic's choice drew worldwide attention. Today we meet the orchestra's new maestro, Lorin Maazel, on "Mad About Music".

[Theme music]

Kaplan: He comes to New York after leading more than 150 orchestras, making more than 300 recordings, serving as the music director of the orchestras of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Munich and of the opera house in Vienna. If experience is the criteria it would be impossible to find someone with more. Lorin Maazel, welcome to "Mad About Music".

Maazel: It's good to be here.

Kaplan: So let's start with your appointment. You had done it all. You had said recently that you had no intention of ever being a music director again. There was a highly publicized horse race for this job, you weren't a dark horse, you weren't a contender, you weren't even in the game and then all of a sudden out of the blue you emerged as the new music director of the New York Philharmonic. How did that happen?

Maazel: Well, I don't think anyone was more surprised than yours truly. I had a couple of weeks with the New York Philharmonic and I was just enjoying myself; it's a marvelous orchestra, a very friendly bunch, very professional, very keen, very focused people. And after the last rehearsal at the second week the committee came along and said, "We'd like to talk to you." And I said, "Well, sure, fine". And they said, "Well, would you consider becoming our music director?" Well, I couldn't believe what I was hearing because I had read the newspapers that a contract had been negotiated with one of my colleagues and I was very happy for him and for the orchestra. So, I said, "But you have a music director". "No sir, we don't have one - that's just what you read in the newspapers and would you think about it?" Well, I was really taken aback and then the Board of Directors authorized the General Manager Zarin Mehta to come and talk to me about their thoughts - they were also thinking along those lines. And it took me, well, a good two months back and forth to really sort out whether I could rearrange my life and my life plans as both as an artist and as a private individual to rethink my future.

Kaplan: But when you had decided that being a music director as opposed to being a conductor should be something of the past, there were some reasons for that. What were those reasons and how did you overcome them in accepting the position?

Maazel: Well, I had been administrating music as a music director in one place or another for a good 40 years. And I had finally come to the conclusion that the administrative duty was one I didn't wish to have any more. But it's all in whom you're working with. Zarin Mehta is a super pro - a highly intelligent human being. New York is a very sophisticated city. The Board of Directors is something else again. I mean, these people know - they are world travelers; they're, they're people you can talk to. So it was a whole new scene for me.

Kaplan: Well let's, speaking of doing less, let's revisit those concerts you did before you were approached. Some of the others conductors who were in contention were pressing the orchestra very hard, using every second of the time. You actually cancelled one rehearsal and it led some people to think, well, perhaps you're not going to push this orchestra too hard.

Maazel: There is always a point of diminishing returns. Now the program that week consisted solely of a Bruckner symphony. Now to play Bruckner for the brass and for the string player, is extremely taxing. And if you've gotten to the point where you feel that nothing more can be gained from rehearsing - the feel of the music is there, and that everything has been put into place; and I'm talking about Bruckner, which is a special case. Then what is most important is the energy that the orchestra will have, the playing energy, the fresh lips for the brass players, the rested up bow arms, because there's a gigantic amount of tremolo in Bruckner, which is extremely tiring on a string player and I know that. When I saw we were that far, I thought well, we don't need that extra rehearsal.

Kaplan: When other conductors talk about Lorin Maazel they often describe someone who probably has the most advanced clear technique in conducting - impossible to miss what you want. How does this show up in making the music any better, though?

Maazel: That's for time to tell. But I'm also someone who's very keen to encourage an orchestra to give its best and I think one does that by putting the musicians at their ease technically so that they know where they are at any given moment and not wondering about the beat or they're not confused, or, or troubled on an ongoing basis by what they see, what they're being asked to do. Because a musician put at his ease can then concentrate his energies on beauty of sound, on intonation, on ensemble with his colleagues, matching colors, all the wonderful things that a great orchestra can do given the chance to do it. So that's one of the main jobs of a conductor - to put his musicians at ease. At the same time, to challenge them musically. Not to challenge them by giving them curve balls and they're not quite knowing what to do next.

Kaplan: When you come to New York you have a neighbor across the plaza called the Metropolitan Opera. What's the prospects of seeing you on the podium there?

Maazel: Well, I last conducted there in 1961…

Kaplan: That seems a long time….

Maazel: Which is some years ago. For one reason or another, my opera experience has been in other houses and I've certainly had a lot of it, in fact at one point I was conducting almost nothing but opera, as you know.

Kaplan: But you would welcome an invitation?

Maazel: I love to conduct opera and if the opera is right and it seems - I'm even writing an opera, so you can imagine how much I love it - I certainly wouldn't say no. But you can't invite yourself, can you?

Kaplan: Absolutely not. Well let's come to opera now. Now people who are regular listeners to this show know that this is an exception today - we never have professional musicians on the show. The concept of "Mad About Music" is well-known individuals, famous individuals, who happen to love classical music. So since you are well known, maybe even famous, but you are a professional, I've asked you to think about music we should play in a different category. Music that you don't conduct. Music that you'll probably never conduct and here we come back to opera again because I was very surprised to see on your list the opera Alban Berg's Wozzeck. What don't you tell me why you'll never conduct that? If you do love it?

Maazel: I love it. I've heard it many times in some fine performances, Fischer-Dieskau as Wozzeck for example. But I've always found the last scene so heart wrenching that I don't think I would be able to survive it if I were conducting - conductors have to be able to get far enough away from the material so they are able to lead rather than bursting into tears at the conductor's desk in the orchestra pit. That's not exactly what leaders are supposed to do and I'm afraid I would have done that. I mean, when he's, the last children's chorus is "Ringel, Ringel, Rosenkranz, Ringelreih'n!", you know it's like "Ring Around the Rosey"? And then they notice Marie's son, a little guy, four or five, and one of them in typical straightforward child language says "Du! Dein Mutter ist tot!" ("Your mother's dead") and he just looks blank and in German says "Hopp, hopp! Hopp, hopp!", which is the equivalent of course to "Hop hop" or "Hop-a-long" and that's the way the opera ends and its so totaling devastating. The music of Berg is so inspired at that moment; I don't think I would be able to deal with it.

[Music]

Kaplan: The shattering concluding moments from Alban Berg's Wozzeck, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and soloists led by Karl Böhm, a selection of my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music" conductor Lorin Maazel. You can learn more about Lorin Maazel or hear any of our prior shows, read a transcript, by logging on to our website at WNYC.ORG.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest Lorin Maazel, the new music director of the New York Philharmonic. I suppose I could also have said composer because after all you said it yourself, you're currently working on an opera. As I understand it, using George Orwell's book 1984 as a libretto. Let's talk about contemporary music. Melody - one of the problems I think you'll face at the New York Philharmonic when you talk about new music is finding a receptive audience. There seems to be almost an understanding among contemporary composers that writing an old fashioned melody is against the law and I wrote down a quote from Maria Callas which I think reflects what many audiences think about these days, about that subject. She said, "When music fails to sooth the ear, the heart and the senses, then it has missed the point." Now in your own composition, do you see a role for what I would only call old-fashioned melody and perhaps some of the harmony we associate with?

Maazel: Well, I have no trouble with the challenge of writing a tune, whether I write good tunes or dreadful tunes is not for me to say. But writing tunes I find is, is really great fun.

Kaplan: Many composers have said to me when I've asked this question, that it's simply not possible any more to compete with the great composers who wrote wonderful melodies and certainly in the popular music field nobody would believe that and yet I'm sure you would agree that the idea of a shameless melody, we don't hear in contemporary music.

Maazel: Well, you'll hear a few shameless melodies in my piece, we're talking about a love story: 1984.

Kaplan: Well, your opening concerts for the New York Philharmonic combine probably the best known work in music, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and something new, a new composition by John Adams who, as I understand it, has composed a choral work reflecting on the tragedy of the September 11th bombings.

Maazel: That's correct. We have commissioned John to do just that and we will be commissioning another composer each year to open our season to commemorate September 11. John has used words that were actually spoken on cell phones, by people who knew they wouldn't survive, or quotes from pieces of paper pasted up on lampposts or walls by people looking for loved ones who disappeared that day. It's done with great restraint and great taste and just re-evokes a scene that no one will ever comprehend.

Kaplan: Let's return to the New York Philharmonic as an institution. When it comes to orchestras of this level of ability, there's no point in discussing better or best, but I think different orchestras often have different characteristics and you who have conducted them all, would know this. Vienna and Berlin are often described for their exquisite strings. Chicago - brass is mentioned. The London orchestras are the most flexible - they can sight read almost anything. What can you say about the New York Philharmonic admittedly from your limited experience now?

Maazel: Very limited. I do know that they play marvelously, that they have their own character and at the same time are, I suppose because of the self confidence that they have, very interested in being led, being guided to the extent that they wish to be guided. It's an orchestra that has a very powerful sound, very flexible. And there's terrific enthusiasm exuding from this orchestra. I love that, that sparkle that they have. And it suits my temperament very much and I hope to sparkle with them right through the season.

Kaplan: Well, as you sparkle, I think you know from your previous experiences with many orchestras that sometimes sparkling begins to fizzle and I'm not thinking of anything particular in mind yet - you're just getting started - but you've had enough experience with orchestras to know that the relationship between a conductor and the orchestra is a very tricky one and things do happen which cause those relationships to strain. Without asking you to reveal any personal secrets of what problems you may have had with orchestras or they have had with you, what are the categories where these kinds of things come up?

Maazel: Well, I think the main problem in the relationship between music director and the orchestra he has been asked to guide, is the vanity of the conductor to the extent that it is overblown. There will be increasing friction with his colleagues in the orchestra because that simply doesn't wear well in the long run. And orchestras are also a captive audience - conductors that go on forever telling jokes or explaining what the music is all about eventually become very unpopular and rightfully so. I'm someone who's interested in making music. I get along well with the music I'm making and love to perform and I think I communicate this to the folks around me and I find that it, a good relationship is really based on mutual respect.

Kaplan: But this raises a very interesting point. What happens when a soloist has a very different idea than you do about say something like tempo - what happens?

Maazel: Well, one gets into trouble. Do you remember the Glenn Gould - Bernstein concert? Lenny said, 'you know, we're not getting along and we don't agree,' at the concert, which I in retrospect find absolutely delightful. These things do happen, but I try to work with artists with whom I feel I have a common ground to make music on. So that I'm not taken aback by some, some bit of eccentricity that I don't think I can deal with. I'm quite flexible there - I have confidence the way I make music and I love to deal with concepts that are foreign to me. I learn a great deal often. But if I feel that it's, what I'm dealing with is a capriciousness and that the idea is not soundly based musically, then I will object.

Kaplan: You know, when I was once discussing some of these topics with your late colleague Sir Georg Solti and I asked him whether he was getting bored with these kind of questions. He said to me, "No, what a delight it is to have a conversation about music with someone asking me questions because when I meet with my colleagues all we talk about is money." So I'd like to talk to you for a moment about money. Conductors of course are very highly paid and you have no doubt read in the paper that some journalists like to criticize the level of compensation at a time when orchestras are struggling. Do you feel that conductors are overpaid? I mean, it's a strange question to ask a conductor, but I'll put it in this context: Zubin Mehta once said, your predecessor for the New York Philharmonic, that he thought he was overpaid, and he said that he would be prepared to work for less provided nobody else got more. What is your thought about compensation and these kinds of criticisms?

Maazel: Well, I really don't think about it because it takes two to tango - I don't know of any employer who has ever offered a cent more than he wants to. There is a limit to every budget and so if the question is raised, it should be raised with the employer and not the employee and after all we are employees, all of us, who, all free professionals are engaged by an engaging party, and we can ask for the moon, but we'll get exactly what the engaging party wishes to offer, not a cent more.

Kaplan: All right, let's get back to music then. Now with all the serious listening you have to do for your profession, when you're home relaxing, do you just put music on and have it in the background and having it flow around?

Maazel: Well, we all have weaknesses. My weakness is the guitar, which as a violinist I had always thought that I could learn. After all, Paginini was an excellent guitarist. So was Berlioz, but he wasn't a violinist. And I discovered that I would have had to spend years developing a right hand technique; left hand of course is made to order because of the violin playing. So, I love to hear great guitar playing, we have records of Romero and Yepes and of course John Williams whose renditions of Bach are absolutely stunning.

[Music]

Kaplan: The final movement from Bach's Suite BWV 995 composed for the lute but played here on the guitar by John Williams, a favorite of my guest the new music director of the New York Philharmonic Lorin Maazel. I'd like to turn now to the role of the conductor as an interpreter. And as you know, there is always a debate about how much interpretation is too much interpretation. Where do you come out on this question of fidelity of the score versus your own ideas?

Maazel: Versus? That's an interesting juxtaposition there - you are being faithful to the music only if you identify with it and make it come alive. The score is very much like one of these roadmaps that you get in your car these days on a screen. Everything is there - the roads are there, the direction, how many yards you have to travel until you turn right and so forth and so on. What is not on that screen are the cars in front of you, behind you, on either side, the children running behind a ball - there's real life out there and that's what interpretation is really about. You bring the map into the reality of, of real sound - that's what we do as interpreters.

Kaplan: Well, I have to put you on the spot a bit because I attended a very interesting performance of yours recently in London - you were conducting Mahler's Third Symphony. And as you know at the ending of that symphony the timpani are hitting away but Mahler puts a direction in the score, which I'm sure you've seen, saying that the timpani should fit in, they should be part of the texture and yet you had two hands on that baton and you made them sound as loud as possible - quite riveting, I must confess, but not really following what Mahler said you should do and I'm wondering, did you get caught up in the moment? Did you not agree with Mahler? Did the timpani just get carried away? This was clearly, I think, different from what Mahler wrote.

Maazel: Could very, very well be. But as an interpreter I listen to that inner voice at a performance, I don't think I have ever given so much prominence to the timpani - it just seemed right at the time. I'm perfectly aware of what he had written and I understand what he wanted to avoid -he didn't want a kind of march to the scaffold a la Berlioz, you know, and I may treat those bars differently in the future.

Kaplan: But it was really the mood of the moment?

Maazel: It was the mood of the moment. I've come to follow that inner voice because I'm, as an interpreter I have to have a guide, and that guide is that little man inside that's telling me to turn left and right and forward and slow down and so forth. In not so many words, but it's something that guides me because without that inner voice you are simply an engineer up there getting your orchestra members from one note to the next.

Kaplan: I suppose this varies from conductor to conductor, but another example, not of this type, but of flexibility, I would say, you recently were on a tour with the Philharmonia and some of the musicians who are friends of mine mentioned that you conducted a lot of Mozart and that they felt that each night it was somewhat different: tempos were different, feeling was different, all very interesting to them, but different. And I'm wondering is that typical for you - most conductors say I never conduct anything twice the same way, I couldn't. But are you someone when you're doing four concerts say coming up with the New York Philharmonic, can we expect that each night might be somewhat different from the night before?

Maazel: Well, you can't compare the two situations because in the one case, that is on tour with the Philharmonia, I was doing the last three symphonies, 39, 40 and 41, we were in a different hall every night with totally different acoustical conditions. That's also, I'm extremely sensitive to the time of day. If a concert's very late in the evening I approach that music quite differently than I would if it were a morning concert, perhaps foolishly, but that's the way I'm made.

Kaplan: Well, let's talk about something more serious then, like the way you dress. You used to be looking like a normal conductor: white tie and tails, now I think I've only seen you wear tuxedo and black-tie. When did you change and why - more comfortable? A fashion statement?

Maazel: Well, I'm not into fashion statements at my advanced age. I did finally tire of full dress - those tails flopping around and the white tie. I suppose its because I opened the door at the Hotel Savoy one too many times at 6 o'clock in the morning if I had to catch a plane, and there was the waiter serving coffee in tails and I thought, you know, maybe that's where it should stay. And since then I've been conducting in a very comfortable black tuxedo-like jacket. I feel very comfortable in it and I'm very much at home and also I feel somehow that the tuxedo is dress which is more suitable in today's world to the act of making music. The tails actually was a costume of the servant in court and you feel that. Of course, you're serving the music, but you're not serving a nobleman, you're not there to provide entertainment in order that he better digests his meal.

Kaplan: What about women and dress? With equality of women today I've always thought it a strange phenomenon that women are given more latitude what to wear in orchestras than men. Is this something you would be prepared to tackle? Do you have an opinion about whether women should have the same dress requirements as men, not the same clothes, but the same sort of uniform like?

Maazel: Well, that's an interesting area that I don't think I would be particularly interested in being drawn in to. I really don't see them as men and women - I see them as players. And so the question has really never arisen in my mind.

Kaplan: Some of your colleagues have found another practice of the Philharmonic a bit strange and I wonder what your own reaction is to this. As you know, when a guest soloist comes to play a concerto, during that work the principals do not play and I've never heard a very good explanation for that practice. Someone once said it's because they want to give their colleagues a chance to play instead of them, although they could do that during a symphony as well, and to some extent it's, I would think, it would be exciting to play with some of those extraordinary soloists. Do you have a view about that?

Maazel: Well, in Cleveland and Pittsburgh where I was music director for several years I tried to vary that practice so that the principals were assigned at times to major concerti because I don't believe in the word "accompaniment". You make music together. On the other hand, you have some, many, many players in the orchestra who should be kept challenged and giving them a symphonic work to play from time to time I think is very very important.

Kaplan: We'll come to one last tradition of the New York Philharmonic which, if you can tackle, you'll go out a hero, and that is coughing. I know of no audience that coughs more than the audience of the New York Philharmonic. What's your solution for that one?

Maazel: Well, let's see what happens. I don't wish to make any predictions, but it has something to do with what may be happening during the course of that concert. If you're caught up enough in something, you don't cough.

Kaplan: Will this be a measure of how you're doing then?

Maazel: Perhaps.

Kaplan: All right, let's get back to music then. Is there any other music you listen to other than classical music? Do you listen to rock or jazz or any folk music?

Maazel: Well, I do listen to folk music and I'm very passionate about cool jazz. One of the recordings I listened to as a youngster - this is 50 years ago - was something called "China Boy". That was right out of New Orleans 1913 and of course Jelly Roll Morton was one of my heroes. But the pop ballad or folk music is something I'm very very fond of. Especially the Russian gypsy music and the Portuguese Fado, which is Portuguese tradition which I was introduced to the first time I went to Lisbon - that's also some time ago and then I started to hang out in these small little clubs they used to have and listen to the great Fado singers tearfully recount their childhood and how they miss their mother and the lyrics are so wonderfully sentimental, we would call it "corny" or "kitschy" today. But this is really pure sentimentality.

[Music]

Kaplan: A Minha Canção é Saudade, a Fado song, a sort of Portuguese blues, performed by Amália Rodrigues, an artist and a musical style especially enjoyed by my guest today on "Mad About Music" the newly appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic Lorin Maazel. Make sure you mark your calendar now for Sunday, October 6th, at 9 PM, when my guest will be award-winning architect Richard Meier.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel. You've had so much experience conducting yourself and influencing others, I wonder who are the conductors, though, who most influenced you?

Maazel Directly influenced, was I by the greatest of Italian conductors, Victor de Sabata, Whom even Toscanini admitted was one notch further along. A monster musician, a superb composer, marvelous pianist - concert pianist - and a conductor beyond all belief. Total recall and total mastery of the score and the wildest fantasy, musical fantasy I've ever encountered. And it was he who introduced me to L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, the opera of Ravel, which he gave the first performance of in the presence of the composer, Maurice Ravel, and oh, the Verdi Requiem and Beethoven Nine and Brahms Two and the Song of the Nightingale of Stravinsky, 16 programs, absolutely amazing, stunning, and the recording that we all believe is the definitive recording of Tosca was with Maria Callas, was conducted by Victor de Sabata. And I got to know him quite well years later. He was kind enough to invite me to conduct at La Scala where he was artistic director; and I asked him how he made the strings sound so stupendously powerful at the moment right after Scarpia's death. That F-sharp minor section when they play in unison. And he said, "Well, Lorin," he said, "I just thought that they would make an incredible sound if they were to record standing and so I had them stand up - we cut." Because you know that Scarpia is there dying and Tosca is screaming at him "Die a damn death!" ["Muori dannato!"] and when he finally collapses and expires she says very succinctly, "Or gli perdono!" ["And now I forgive him!"] and then this crashing F-sharp minor chord [sings tune], one of the most staggering moments in opera literature, all played on the G-string, and this is the sound he made.

[Music]

Kaplan: The concluding moments of Act Two from Puccini's Tosca with soloists Maria Callas and Giuseppe Di Stefano and the orchestra and chorus of La Scala under the baton of Victor de Sabata, a conductor who greatly influenced my guest on today's "Mad About Music" Lorin Maazel. Toward the end of his career, Georg Solti was asked, "What's left to do?" And his reply was, "I just try to get better every day." So to begin with, let's not talk about the future, but today - how are you different as a conductor today say than you were 20 years ago? Have you gotten better?

Maazel: Well, we all flatter ourselves that we improve. And I was convinced that I would never suffer that delusion, I would never impose that upon myself, but I'm afraid that I have come to the conclusion that I am really a better conductor technically because I followed Georg Solti's advice without knowing that he had offered it, or had described his own motivation, in keeping going. Indeed, I try to get better with each performance without trying to achieve perfection, no one can. So I think I'm technically better; but you know people age differently, some people become very bitter and nasty and short tempered, whatever, and others become mellow and laid back. And that seems to be my case - I'm very fortunate to belong in that category. I've just become a lot more mellow than I was 20 years ago and I'm enjoying my life enormously and enjoying music making a lot more, I think, because I'm freer to and I think I communicate that, or so I'm told.

Kaplan: Well then I'd like to just ask you one final question and it concerns musical legacy. Your own legacy. Conductors are often described for either their contribution or their approach and I can think of Herbert von Karajan standing for perfection of sound; or Toscanini extreme fidelity to the score; Leonard Bernstein.