INTERVIEW | Ádám Fischer | "The last movement of Mahler's 9th symphony reminds me of the purpose of music"
In conversation with Ádám Fischer
Interviewed in London on 20 February 2019
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| Ádám Fischer, © Szilvia Csibi (Müpa Budapest) |
I.
Young-Jin Hur (YH): Hello Mr Ádám Fischer. It's a pleasure to have you as a guest. Thank you very much for making time. I thought I'd start with a general question. You have recently started touring with the Vienna Philharmonic, where you will be visiting places such as London, Amsterdam, and New York. How does it feel like to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic in London?
Ádám Fischer (AF): We are performing Viennese music such as Haydn and Mahler. To state the obvious, this is something very special. Personally, I feel I have a special relationship with the orchestra. This is because I studied in Vienna and I studied together with some members of the orchestra. In this sense, the orchestra and I are socialised in similar ways. Of course, life is not always fair, so some people had to retire since then. Anyway, even from the day I first conducted the orchestra, I felt that I share many things together with the orchestra.
The Vienna Philharmonic has a very strong personality and it offers so much. Any conductor who conducts this orchestra has the responsibility to find out how the orchestra can play better and to use the existing personality of the orchestra. If you want to fix something that is already there based on some ideas you might have brought from home, this will never be as good as when you allow the musicians to be themselves. So all in all, it is a special occasion to work with the orchestra.
YH: I can imagine this. You mentioned the personality of the Vienna Philharmonic. Do you think the personality has changed over the years? I ask this because you have been associated with the orchestra for many years and so I thought you might have a unique insight.
AF: Yes and no. Certain aspects of the personality have changed, but the core personality is still there. This core personality comes from various factors. This personality may come from how the musicians are socialised, but the personality also comes from the musical background of having played and grown up together in various settings, such as in the opera house. The orchestra has a special focus when playing and members also react to each other instinctively. If you play Der Rosenkavalier or Götterdämmerung, operas that last four to five hours, you cannot expect everything to be planned during the rehearsals. And the Vienna Philharmonic has some of the best soloists that I know of. I do not want to say anything against other orchestras, but the way this orchestra plays is deeply personal and I appreciate this very much.
(AF pauses)
AF: I would also like to say something about how live orchestral playing, in general, has changed over the years. I believe that ever since performances have started being recorded, there is a tendency where musicians are becoming increasingly cautious about their playing. For me, this is a problem because orchestral musicians are too worried nowadays about being precise and being correct. They do not want to take risks because they do not want to make mistakes. Before the advent of recordings, in Mahler's time, it wasn't like this. Therefore, my job is to provide an orchestra with the feeling that they can play freely. Music is not about avoiding mistakes - so I have to liberate orchestras by telling them not to be afraid.
YH: How could one describe the personality of the Vienna Philharmonic? Can one say that the Vienna Philharmonic portrays a certain Viennese sound, a Wiener Klang, if I may put it this way?
AF: I do not think that only Viennese musicians can create this Viennese sound. In the orchestra, we have musicians from all over the world. But once a new member comes into the orchestra, they learn how to play in a unique way. These things are difficult to formulate in words. If you ask, for instance, a second violinist or a violist in the Vienna Philharmonic on how to play a Wiener Waltzer, they wouldn't be able to explain this to you. It is a bit like people using computers without knowing how a computer works on a technical basis (AF laughs). But if these individual members play together as a group, they have a special swing... and it's a totally unique way of playing a Wiener Waltzer. So you do not exactly know how this sound emerges but you can certainly feel that it does.
YH: I suppose that the sound of an orchestra also depends on the acoustics of the location or hall as well.
AF: Yes, we always have to react to the unique acoustics of a concert hall. This is something that any orchestra has to work on. Conductors have to react to this matter as well.
YH: You may have come across Barbican Hall's uniquely dry acoustics. For this reason, would you say your preparation for your concert at the Barbican Hall would differ, compared to a performance you gave in Antwerp two days ago?
AF: I do not think so, but there will be differences. We will have to instinctively react to the acoustics during the performance as well. From my end, if I sense that some of my players are tense or tired, I will have to react.
I started at the opera. For an operatic conductor, it's important to be aware of the breathing of singers, which, in turn, may influence the tempo of a piece. There might be only a small difference in the end and audiences may not even notice it, but this will enable singers to execute certain phrases. It is very similar in orchestral conducting, too. You have to be flexible based on what you have at your disposal and where you are.
YH: Would this conducting methodology of yours differ between orchestras?
AF: My basic approach does not differ, although there will be some variations between orchestras. I do not do these things knowingly - I react to orchestras automatically. What I have learned in decades of conducting is that "service" (sic) is an important element in conducting. Your responsibility as a conductor is to make sure that everyone plays better than their usual selves. You are not there to only realise your conceptions and use your power to do whatever you want to do.
Recently, I have also discovered that a good conductor is not only somebody whom musicians think as a good conductor but somebody who makes musicians think, "oh, I was so good at the concert!"
(both laugh)
YH: Oh, that's wonderful. I've never played in an orchestra before, but I imagine that having a conductor like you would certainly make me feel motivated to play better.
AF: It is my job to encourage everyone to feel better.
YH: I wonder how your method compares to a number of conductors from the past. Many conductors in the past were quite authoritative.
AF: As a conductor, you need to have a certain level of authority. If you ask musicians their opinions, you can have eight opinions coming from six people. That can be a rather strange situation. So you have to convince these musicians. These musicians have to believe that they want what you want. How this can be achieved is the hard bit of a conductor's job, and that is why we are paid.
(both laugh)
II.
YH: So far, we have talked about the Vienna Philharmonic and about conducting in general. I would now like to talk about your repertoire. You perform a very wide range of composers, from Wagner, Haydn, to Bartók. I am curious about how to wish to develop your repertoire for the future.
AF: You mentioned Wagner, and I will start from there. Wagner is an opera composer and in terms of repertoire choice, operas operate differently from concerts. You do not play an opera simply because you want to play a certain piece. Instead, you first see the cast and then you pick your opera. You might think it's the other way around, but I like to keep things this way - I am an old-fashioned opera conductor. If you do not have a [good] tenor, you should never play Siegfried, for instance.
Leaving this matter on one side, I want to concentrate on Viennese music in concert halls. For me, Viennese music starts with Haydn and ends with Schoenberg. I also include Brahms and Mahler here because these two composers are also Viennese in terms of the stylistic challenges they pose.
YH: I am curious how your Hungarian background influences your repertoire choice.
AF: Yes, I am from Hungary and that is why I sometimes play Bartók. I like Bartók very much. But I do not think that I conduct Bartók much better than anyone else. But people associate me with Bartók because I am from Hungary.
YH: I may be simplifying things here too much, but I would like to ask just out of curiosity. Have you ever conducted much Liszt, who is another Hungarian composer?
Anyway, in terms of my repertoire, there is something I would like to say. Whether I conduct Haydn or Schoenberg, I believe I have to conduct using the same fundamental rules. This means that I have to conduct Schoenberg as I would conduct Haydn. Conversely, I have to conduct Haydn as I would conduct Schoenberg.
YH: That is very interesting. Could you expand this last bit more?
AF: Both Haydn and Schoenberg have this chamber music-like quality and they require flexibility. The essence of Haydn's and Shoenberg's expressions is not about how loud you can play. Rather, their expressions are about many other things, such as rubatos and whether some accompanying figures follow the main melody line. So in Haydn and Schoenberg, things are not as fixed as they are in, for example, Verdi.
YH: Since you mentioned Verdi, what is your view on Verdi?
AF: I like to conduct Verdi. I've only started conducting Verdi in recent times (AF laughs). Conducting Verdi in La Scala last year was a huge experience for me. (AF speaks animatedly) In fact, I will say that I want to play more Italian operas with the La Scala because the musicians play Italian music incredibly and that is something I want to experience more.
(both laugh)
III.
YH: Given your experiences in the operatic repertoire and the symphonies of Haydn, have you ever conducted Haydn's operas? They are vastly overlooked and underplayed.
AF: I conducted almost all of his operas in Eisenstadt over the past 30 years. They are very good... very good! His last opera L'anima del filosofo, which was written for one of his London trips, for instance, is a masterpiece. I played it a couple of times and I would love to do it again. We are currently in negotiations to stage a Haydn opera soon in the future.
YH: I would imagine that your experiences with Haydn symphonies would help you understand the opera?
AF: Yes, yes.
YH: Continuing on Haydn, if one reads the letters he wrote during his lifetime, he seems to have been a very practical man. He rarely seems to write about his inner emotions, and he seems to predominantly write about business. Can you perhaps see this side of Haydn in his music?
AF: No. Haydn's music is always full of passion. But of course, he wrote music because he was asked to. And that is a completely special mentality. Both Haydn and Mozart operated on a completely different mentality to composers in the 19th century such as Wagner. I don't know whether this story is true or not, but Mozart supposedly asked Haydn why Haydn never wrote a piano quartet. Haydn's answer was, "I was not asked to write one."
(both laugh)
AF: This is one mentality. The other mentality is Wagner's. His idea was to create something completely new no matter whether he could make a living from his work. When Wagner started working on Der Ring des Nibelungen, he nurtured the idea to have a new, wooden, theatre built that should be used only for performing Der Ring des Nibelungen once and then be destroyed. He even mentioned in a letter his intention to burn the score. In essence, he wanted to do something, make a name for himself. Of course, he succeeded. 20 years later, he had his Bayreuth Festspielhaus built. But to want to reach somewhere through a strong vision was a mentality of the 19th century. In the 18th century, composing music was about doing what one had to do - why should one do something extra without pay?
(both laugh)
YH: Would you say that because of the different mentalities between the 18th and 19th centuries, the emotions portrayed in the music of the two respective centuries also differed?
AF: Essentially, Haydn was asked to compose for someone else. And because some of the requested ideas did not originate from Haydn himself, Haydn would not have wanted his own emotions to be expressed. Still, Haydn's music is so full of passion. His middle symphonies and late masses are incredible.
YH: I agree with you there. Haydn's late masses are some of the greatest pieces ever written in Western classical music.
IV.
YH: How important is it to understand the life of a composer in order to play the composer's music?
AF: Understanding the life of a composer is interesting but there are complexities involved. As a conductor, I have to understand the function of a piece of music, why a piece of music was written, what a composer wanted to express, and what effect a composer wanted to reach with a piece of music. Although the personality of a composer is interesting, it does not always influence the things they end up doing.
I was asked on numerous occasions in the past what I make of Wagner's anti-Semitism. This doesn't interest me at all. Gesualdo, for example, was a murderer but he composed fantastic music. Should I not play Gesualdo's music because he was a murderer? From a human rights perspective, Gesualdo is questionable, but his music is just fantastic.
(both laugh)
YH: And what do you make of Mahler's 9th symphony, which you are playing with the Vienna Philharmonic during this tour? The piece is essentially a meditation on death, possibly Mahler's own.
AF: Yes, but the piece does not express death in the sense of dying per se. I think there is something more.
(AF pauses)
AF: The last five minutes of Mahler's 9th symphony reminds me of the death of my father, unfortunately - it was a terrible story. I do not know anything in music or even literature that expresses what I felt at that time as the last movement of Mahler's 9th symphony expresses.
(AF pauses)
AF: The last movement of Mahler's 9th symphony reminds me of the purpose of music. The purpose of music and, generally the arts, too, is to remind you of strong feelings. Music is also about discovering and reliving your own feelings. If I show you love, jealousy, or hate through the music I conduct, it is not important whom you specifically loved, hated, or felt jealous of in the past. But I have to show those feelings and everybody in the audience has to recognise their own lives in this music. If this can be achieved, I think this is the right way to make music.
YH: That is wonderful. Thank you.
AF: Thank you.
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| Ádám Fischer, © Nikolaj Lund |