Congeniality and self -will

In a large phenomenon, everyone sees his own and chooses his own, often and not trying to cover the whole. At the recently ended in Berlin, the traditional large music festival "Music" (it took place under the sign of the 450th anniversary of Claudio Montveiredi, the scenic opuses of the composer L'Orfeo, L'enorno di Poppea and Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria were heard in the concert performance) I would especially highlight many of the impressions. These were the concerts of the post of two new main conductors in Berlin: the new artistic director of the RIAS choir (the radio in the American sector is a sign of memory of the American occupation of part of Berlin after the war and the work to restore cultural life), the Englishman Justin Doyle and the 45-year-old Vladimir Yurovsky born in Moscow as a chef as a chef in Moscow Rundfunk-Sinfonieorcher Berlin -the Berlin Radio Orchestra.

But first I would like to share the impression and experience of a special kind. Before performing the fifth symphony of Malera, the concerthaus orchestra led by Ivan Fisher, the public, together with the orchestra, who was sitting on stage, led by the leader, listened to the “mechanical piano” by the first part of the symphony performed by the author - Gustav Maler. Yes, such a technique that reproduced through the perforated tape all the nuances of pressing the keys by the performer ... transferring listeners more than 100 years ago, when the composer sat down on the piano, is not comparable to nothing, was popular.

So, two entries. Justin Doyle was carried by the choral works of Claudio Monteverdi in "two -part" concerts - played with a small break in two nearby halls: in the Cathedral of St. Hedwigs-Kathedrale and in the new recently entered operation of Pierre Bouleza. Both of Missa In Ill Tempore and the Massa In Illo Tempore Messa and indicating the development paths of Martiensper, which was first performed at the court of Mantuansky’s court in 1610), were addressed to the Virgin Magari. The choir, soloists and accompanying performance by the musicians Capella de la Torre were beyond praise. At the festival, several violins of Antonio Stradivari, who have been living for more than 300 years, sounded.

I managed to talk with Vladimir Yurovsky, and, like six years ago , this musician pleased with the brightness of thinking.

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Vladimir Yurovsky in the program "Cultural Diary" "

- Entering the post of chief conductor of the symphony orchestra of the Berlin radio - what does this mean for you?

- Berlin is my home for the past 25 years. We moved to live in Germany, and for the first two years I lived in Dresden, and in 1992 I moved to Berlin to study. I live here. Here he began his creative biography at the Komisch Oper Theater as a full -time conductor ... But then I left the Berlin orchestras for a long time, becoming the chief conductor of the festival in Glaind Born , and then the London Philharmonic Orchestra, but continued to live in Berlin nevertheless. For all these years, starting from the 2000, when I left the Opera Komisch, I had only 4 concerts in Berlin, two of them with the Berlin Philharmonic in 2003 and in 2011. And all. A few years ago, I began to gradually return to Berlin, taking part in the production of Schounberg’s opera Moses and Aaron in the “Opera Komisch”, and made a record for the Pentaton company just with the radio orchestra of the third symphony of Schnitsky. We recorded it and played at the Festival "Music Fest-2014". And then unexpectedly and early in the middle of the season, on December 31, 2016, the head of the Radio Orchestra Marek Yanovsky left his post ...

- And the orchestra invited you. How many orchestras do you now lead?

- At the moment, three.

- Are there conductors who led more than three in the history of music?

For me, returning to Berlin is a significant return, because my house is here

- Yes, sure. This was what our contemporaries of Paavo Yarve and Andrei Boreiko also happened. But you understand that we begin and end the cycles of work with different orchestras at different times ( the main conductors under the contract are carried out with their orchestras for two months a year. - Yu.V.) . And over time, something disappears. I am now heading the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Moscow Svetlanov Orchestra and the local. But with the Svetlanov orchestra I have a contract until the fall of 2019, we will watch further, and with the London orchestra I already announced that I would leave after the summer of 2020. I will tell you: for me, returning to Berlin is a significant return, because here is my house. Here is my family, here I took the roots, and I wanted to spend more time at home after 15 years of wandering around the world. I have a wife and children here. And my parents live here, and I just want to have a little more to have normal in quotes of life and at the same time do a good job. The radio orchestra gives me this opportunity. Because this is an orchestra of certain class A, but life in it is much more measured and calm than, say, from the London Philharmonic ... or from the state order in Moscow. I probably could spend much more time with the State Core, but for this it would be necessary to live in Russia, and this question never got up for me. More precisely, I got up, but it was initially clear to me that this was impossible ... primarily because of the family, well, for my personal reasons, too. That is, I really like to work with them, but I can’t live in Russia - I live in Berlin, and I believe that a person should work at the place of residence as much as possible.

“You mentioned Alfred Schnita.” I know that you love his music and more often than other conductors, perform it. The popularity of his music is now significantly less than once. Was that popularity very politically motivated? Or is it still for you that he still remains a very large composer?

- Schnita is a very large cultural phenomenon. But, it seems to me, it is normal that after the death of the composer a certain period of oblivion passes, that is, the period of oblivion comes and then he passes, and the best that the composer left returns. So it was with Shostakovich. So it was, by the way, with Schounberg, it was with Maler ... Therefore, I am convinced that some works by Schnita, of course, will enter the Golden Fund of music of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Something will disappear ... Now a similar story is also happening with another author of my very beloved-this is Hans Werner Henz, who died in 2012, and now such a period of a cool attitude to his music has come ... I am convinced that he will end after some time ... The senior contemporary Schnita and his mentor at some period of his life Edison Denisov ... I have happened to him just one of those performers who are trying to return it to him. Denisov’s music on concert platforms, and people, when they really begin to listen to this music as an uncomplicated face, find the music really wonderful ... Therefore, as in the case of other immigrants from the Soviet Union, it seems to me that their admirers just need to gain patience, and we, performers, continue to play what we consider necessary. Of course, the hype around the name passes at some point, this is a normal phenomenon. Well, then true recognition comes, but there is still too little time ... The next year it will be only 20 years from the date of the death of Schnita. I think that it should still pass for ten years, and then the music will begin to return.

- Sergiu Chelibidak said that in every conductor he was sitting, a dictator is hiding, even, perhaps, a tyrant ... He, however, added that it is good, that this is happening in such a field as music ... Can you confirm this? Does the dictator sit in you? Do you like power?

There should not be more dictatorship in the conductor than it is present in the composer himself

- No, I really do not like the authorities. She is actually indifferent to me, and in places even disgusted. But power is necessary in order to achieve something in art. This is not power over people, this is the power given to us over a certain creative group, as they say, under the contract, as it is given to the director, say, over the theater troupe. And according to these contract relations, the orchestra team obeys the creative, I repeat, the creative will of its leader. I believe that there should not be more dictatorship in the conductor than it is present in the composer himself, who took the mission to combine sounds freely floating in some imaginary space in musical space, which is every musical composition. Here the composer, taking on such courage, also behaves in relation to sounds as a tyrant. Such a tyrant was called Beethoven's Modern performers. Because he typed the performers, he typed the vocalists, he typed the instrumentalists, forcing them to do inconvenient things ... and his famous phrase, which he said, seems to be the accompanist Mestovsky: "What is the matter before your unfortunate violin when I talk to the Almighty!" This is a typical example of composer tyrant. So, the conductor, who is the performer, the lawyer of the deceased or still living composer, he runs his or her, if the composer is a woman, will. And in this, of course, he should be provided with a certain free field for action, because otherwise we will not come to anything. There are known cases of orchestras that played without a conductor, not only chamber, but also large, for example, Persimphans in Soviet Russia, and there really were results, but these results were achieved by very great efforts, a huge number of rehearsals. And often, due to the lack of a single creative will, the execution was determined as a result of the leveled nature of the interpretation: people, trying to combine efforts and bring them to some common denominator, came to the fact that everyone compromised. It seems to me that a compromise in art is certainly inevitable, but here the question of a measure of things. And therefore, until people want to listen to big symphonic music, even if they are very disgusted by the function of the conductor, they have to put up with the conductions. Because without a conductor of this big symphonic music, not only in technical terms. But it will not be in the sense that there will be no unique interpretation that makes the work truly exciting for listeners during performance.

- You performed Beethoven's fifth symphony at the festival in the processing of Mahler. How did he attract you?

Perhaps we see Malera today behind the conductor's remote control, we would have to shut our eyes with shame repeatedly, it would have seemed to be affected or mannered

- Mahler, as a conductor, performed Beethoven all his life, and he tried to provide him with the same help that Mahler provided himself as a composer, relying on his conducting experience. That is, he made the so -called retouching in the scores: changes in the nuances, speakers and some changes in instrumentation so that the musical structures planned by the composer would best reach the listener. In addition, Mahler made his arushes of Beethoven's symphonies at a time when Beethoven was accepted to play very large compositions. Then everyone played in large compositions. This tradition has come from the time of Beethoven himself: at the end of his life in Vienna, very large orchestras began to gather, and Beethoven, by the way, liked it. But the instruments for the time of Malera changed very much, and the balance between the string and brass groups was no longer achieved as easily as it was achieved during the time of Beethoven, therefore, in order to identify certain musical structures, a conducting invasion of Beethoven was needed in modern instruments with a large string composition. And Mahler added doubling, but this did not mean that everyone was playing from the beginning and to the end together: in some places he left the usual “paired tree”, like Bethugus’s, but somewhere he added a doubling: instead of two Goboevs-four, instead of two flutes-four and so on ... But somewhere he did more subtle invasions in the score: that is, he changed strokes, he changed the phrasing phrasing, he changed the phrasing, He changed the articulation, added some instruments, added notes to them that they did not play at Beethoven ... But he did it not just as a craftsman, a dropmer interested in the maximum success of his concert. He did this with great respect for Beethoven and with all the skill of the great instrumenter, which he was. Therefore, for me, this historical excursion, which is the performance of Beethoven's symphonies in the Maleovsky edition (four such symphonies, by the way, are four: 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th, and the orchestra and I are performed by all these symphonies this season)-this is a kind of necessary cover exercise when mastering the music of Maler himself and his followers, composers of the Novovenian school. And since we play a lot of Malera, Schounberg, Berg, Weberna in my first season, it seemed to me necessary to supplement this experience with the performance of Beethoven's music in the way that the Mahler himself heard her.

-Have you met with the impression of anyone or from anything, where something would say in you: "This is brilliant!"? Does it happen, can there be a brilliant conductor? Or is it still secondary profession?

- She, of course, is secondary, and therefore for me the most brilliant conductors, whom I really perceive as geniuses, are those that are approaching in their approach to composers. That is, many of them are composers if you look, for example, at people such as Wilhelm Furtwengler or Leonard Burnstein. Both were composers. And now it's not about what level their own music is. This is not important. And the bottom line is that their executions were approaching (even if they seriously changed the structure of the essay), not just to the tracing of the recreation of the already written score, but as if to the act of a new creation of it. This performer, apparently, was Mahler himself. We have no evidence of his conducting art, because he died before they began to make sound recordings, but according to the description of his contemporaries and even according to the notes that he made in Beethoven's symphonies, for example, it is clear that he was not only a brilliant composer, but also a brilliant performer. So for me the genius of the conductor is not when he manages to perform a well-known composition in some completely unheard of, and when you hear an essay in the performance of such a conductor and understand: yes, the music was just so conceived and you can’t play it otherwise.

- Congenal!

- Congenal. Here, I think that the conductor can be congenial to the composer.

“Have you ever heard a legend or gossip that a young Hitler, being at concerts where Mahler conducted, was so impressed that the score of Malera’s conducting movements absorbed himself and that she was visible in his plastic speaker, in his gestures.” Has not to hear about this?

When I hear Shostakovich’s symphony performed by Mravinsky, even today in old not very good quality notes, I feel that this music should sound differently and in any way

“ I haven't heard that.” I know that Hitler was in performances in the Vienna opera when Mahler conducted there, in particular, he was on the Wagner opera of Tristan and Isolde. But I have never heard this about gesticulation, but I know that Mahler’s gesture was very characteristic-there are cartoons on him, caricatures of that time, and it is possible, probably, if you compare them with the movements of Hitler himself ... The fact that Hitler had some kind of creative ambitions is already clear. The fact that he was an artist-loser is a well-known fact. But it is also known that he was very attracted to classical music, first of all, of course, the music of Beethoven, Wagner and Brookner, and probably could not but attract the profession of the conductor, this is also clear. Therefore, it is quite possible that, today we see Malera behind the conductor’s remote control, we would have to shut our eyes at shame repeatedly, it would seem so affected or manner ... But it seems to me that the main thing in the conducting profession is not the way that looks, but what the sound result is achieved. And, apparently, what Malera managed to achieve from their musicians in living sound was completely unique ... People, telling many years later about these impressions, did it with tears in their eyes, and their voice trembled ... I was in my life on several such performances that impressed me with complete congeniality, and I had a feeling of emerging a miracle. I remember one such execution in Moscow at the age of sixteen: I heard Bernstein with a youth orchestra from Schleswig-Holstein. They played Shostakovich's first symphony. And I had an absolute lump in the throat. I wanted to scream, at the end I wanted to beat my head against the wall from the despair that the music awakened in me. But I heard this music before performed by many good conductors, and she never aroused this desire in me. But Bernstein did it, and now I can’t listen to this music otherwise. Притом что Бернстайн во многом, так сказать, шел якобы и против воли композитора, и очень много отсебятины в его исполнении было, но он все-таки подходил ко всему именно как композитор. Но дело даже и не в этом. Еще одним таким конгениальным исполнителем Шостаковича, а также и Чайковского для меня был Евгений Мравинский, хотя он не был композитором. Но тут работал его подход, почти научный подход к музыке, что, кстати немного похоже и на подход Челибидаке. Мравинский феноменологическим образом воссоздавал дедуктивно то, что композитор создавал индуктивно, то есть он от конечного результата уводил обратно к изначальной искре вдохновения, которая подвигала композитора на создание сочинения, и, когда я слышу симфонии Шостаковича в исполнении Мравинского, даже и сегодня в старых не очень хорошего качества записях, у меня ощущение, что эта музыка должна звучать так и никак иначе. Но это, конечно, просто сила таланта. Даже если он во многом нарушает как бы букву, оставленную композитором, главное, что в вопросах духа он остается с ним. Таким же исполнителем, безусловно, был для меня и Карлос Клайбер, тоже человек, в исполнении которого у меня возникало ощущение, что музыка написана автором и рассчитана им именно на такое исполнение и никакое другое, и что нигде не было ощущения исполнительского своеволия.