Lorin Maazel

For reasons that puzzle me, it seems everyone...
be he/she a carpenter, multi-national CEO, a surgeon,
has the ambition to conduct an orchestra...at least once.
I've never met anyone who doesn't.
I remember a middle-aged business executive confessing to being a "closet conductor",
rising in the dark of night to creep into an acoustical nook at home
where he "conducted" the recordings of the world's greatest.
(Said the mogul to me once in confidence: " Last night I conducted Toscanini's Beethoven Nine. Made it better".)

No one, pro or amateur, ever seems to ask whether the 85 highly-skilled and experienced musicians
wish to conducted by the carpenter, the CEO, the surgeon...or for that matter,
a good number of my colleagues.

As for me, I love making music...doodling at the piano or on the clarinet,
playing professional violin.
The act of conducting itself...and it's taking place in front of a jury of skilled musicians
who scrutinize every movement,
challenge inwardly every musical statement made...in no way appeals to me.
I manage to overcome this aversion every time I conduct a rehearsal or a concert
by saying to myself: "just listen to the music...and smile."

I try to fuse with every note...and share my passion for the music.
The gathered music lovers at a performance rightfully expect to be levitated out of the
tawdry detail of their quotidian lives.

As I often say to young conductors: when conducting and trying to mold a phrase,
set a tempo or balance a choir,
think about all of life, about everything that is relevant, everything except yourself.

On every musician's work schedule, there's the occasional FREE DAY in capitals.
When on tour, it's a day to dread.
The adrenalin, the joy of achievement or the agony of failure, are not there to get you through.
You can run a mile, watch tennis on TV, catch up on your mail, read a book...or continue writing one... 
whatever...you're flat out.
It's a space in which one floats between
yesterday's fatigue and tomorrow's challenge.

This week on my free day, I took a walk by the sea.
The cresting waves, the fervent wind from the west,
the moored sailboats evoked images of Fiji, St. Barth's, Phuket.
I suddenly yearned to be back sailing....anywhere...
to hear once more the squishing sounds of the sudden squall.

Why did I have to be given a day off?

I'll be alright.
Soon as I hear Tannhauser in Udine with the Munich Phil in two day's time,
I'll smile again and say a silent "thank you."

Arriving by car in Praha yesterday (Prague to non-Czechs), we got lost looking for our hotel.
Fortunately.
I had forgotten the breadth and depth of the Inner City's splendor (it's been forty-three years).
Incomparable splendor.
1100 years in the making.
All intact, the Gothic, the Romanesque.

 

In the evening, from the podium facing the orchestra,
I glanced up at an enlarged likeness of the composer Smetana (after whom the concert hall is named)
trying to imagine how his tone poem "The Moldau" must have coursed through his bearded cranium.
Seeming also to haunt the hallowed space were the legendary icons of culture and wisdom who enriched the city...
Mozart, Kafka, Dvořák, Albert Einstein, Edvard Beneš (co-founder of the League of Nations)
and the novelist-turned-President, Václav Havel...

Janine Jansens again played Prokofieff's Second Violin concerto...
more touchingly than ever.
She's the real thing...no grandstanding, no artifice, just phrasing that comes from the heart.
What a rarity these days.

Our Brahms Second Symphony found yet another home on this tour with the Munich Philhatmonic.
The Smetana Hall differs from Vienna's unique Musikverein but is
stunning in its own way.... what richness of sound-tapestry, what interlocking textures.
The symphony seemed re-born.

That I am privileged to continue in my profession and have such joys is truly humbling.