Great conversations: the conductors: James Conlon / Eugene Istomin [video recording]

EUGENE ISTOMIN:

James Conlon, welcome to our project. I'm delighted that you're joining us for this project, the Library of Congress, the subject being the influence of Europe on our music and vice versa, its effect on Europe in return. With a rather long career already behind you, no one certainly would dispute your world credentials as a symphonic conductor, as a director of an opera company. Tell us how it all started. How did you begin?

JAMES CONLON:

I grew up in New York City. I was born in Manhattan; I grew up in Queens. I come from a family of five children, of which I'm the fourth. And I'm the only known musician to come out of that family since the 1890s, where both of my maternal grandfathers were musicians: one an Italian immigrant from southern Italy, and one a German immigrant from southern Germany. So I don't know why I became a musician, except either a gene that skipped several generations or it was just meant to be. And I spent my first ten years without any awareness of music whatsoever, at least as far as I remember. And I went to the opera when I was 11 years old, and that changed my life radically within a few months. So my best friend's mother started an opera company in Queens.

ISTOMIN:

How wonderful.

CONLON:

And she was a German immigrant. She had come over with her husband and their daughter-- subsequently, my friend was born here in the States-- and was very shocked at two things: that, first of all, every city in Germany, as far as she was concerned, had an opera company. Since she lived in Queens, she considered Queens a city. And then she was shocked at the fact that opera wasn't in English, because in Germany, when she grew up, everything she saw was in German. So she started out with two concepts, and said: "I'm going to start an opera company." And she did that. And the opera company was born in 1961, and lasted, actually, for five years, and performed in Queens College in Colden Auditorium. Now, her son, who had to practice the cello and hated it, told her that he didn't want to go to the opera. And she said, "You have to go to the opera." And coming from a very Teutonic family, he was supposed to be obedient and say yes. He said, "No, I didn't want to go," unless he could bring his friend, unless he could sit in the front row.

ISTOMIN:

You were the friend?

CONLON:

He came to me and he said, "My mother started this opera company, and I don't want to go, but if you come with me and we sit in the front row, I'll go." So I said yeah, that was fine. Because my mother and father always talked about having been to the opera a few times before they had five children, and how much they had liked it and so forth, so they decided, they bought tickets and sat in the back of the balcony, and I sat in the front row with my friend Walter. And that was a revealing night. I, of course, fell in love on the spot. And several months later, the second production came along, and the first production was La Traviata, ¹ and the second one was The Barber of Seville. ² And within the first four months, I had seen those two operas, plus Don Giovanni ³ and Die Fledermaus. ⁴ So by the time I reached my twelfth birthday, my whole world had changed within a couple of months. All I wanted to do was hear music. I asked: Could I play the piano? Could I have piano lessons? I started playing the piano. By the end of the school year, I was so obsessed that that's all I could think about. Basically, I've never changed. A year later, I started playing the violin. And by the time I was 13, I had already decided I wanted to conduct. Now, you could ask what would make me do something like that.

ISTOMIN:

Well, that's a very good answer.

CONLON:

I wanted to sing the opera when I grew up, and I wanted to sing -- I couldn't decide which roles I really wanted to do, because I wanted to be a baritone and a tenor. And I was in Carmen, ⁵ I was in the children's chorus of Carmen, there in Queens College, in the Colden Auditorium, and I thought the tenor part was so great, I wanted to sing Don Jose. And then I really said, "Well, I really want to do Escamillo." And then I said, "But you know, the, really the best part to sing is Carmen." And I realized when I grew up I couldn't do that, so I used the kind of logic that, you know, only a child can employ. I said, "The only way to do it all is to be the conductor. That's what I want to do. Because that way I can be a part of all of it." And it was very clear in my mind from that time on. From that time on, I wanted to conduct. So I continued my studies in piano. I continued playing the violin for about four years, just to have some familiarity. But it was always focused on becoming a conductor. So from that time on, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. And that is still true today. That's exactly what I want to do.

ISTOMIN:

There have been great conductors, as you know, who were great masters and never conducted opera at all, and vice versa. And you have also this dichotomy between the fellow that stands up and conducts over here, has control over the whole stage, and which is more or less what the French call à peu près, more or less hold the whole thing together, and this is a great accomplishment, a great mastery. But the kind of detailed, subtler kind of playing music through the instruments themselves rather than controlling the entire, the entire 250 people, which is, a different kind of a beat is involved than when you're conducting the Schubert Fifth Symphony ⁶ or something. I wondered -- did you get that bug? Was it the opera that you wanted to conduct, or was it generally that you wanted to conduct music?

CONLON:

It's very clear in my mind that opera just happened to be the first experience where classical music spoke to me, and therefore it was, you know, as if it were, the portal through which everything, which I entered and which everything opened up. Immediately, it opened out into interest in all classical music. I mean, I fell in love with symphony almost immediately afterwards. It just took a spark. To me, it's not important that any individual conductor do one or the other. What's important is that you have to follow your muse, you have to follow what you are moved to do. I can tell you 15 reasons why I think that if you want to be a really great conductor, there's a great reason to do both. And I have split my life more or less 50/50. Some years there's more of a weight on one than the other. But over several decades, I have tried to maintain that balance between the two, because I think they both add something-- there are aspects of conducting that you only learn in one area and are applicable to the other. In other words, for me it's very clear when I see a symphonic conductor conducting an opera, if I know that they do not know, they don't know the nature of theatre, and they don't know the nature of the voice, they don't know the nature of the art form, you can tell in five minutes. Similarly, you do-- there is a phenomenon of opera coaches who become conductors, or at least can conduct operas, and you can see, when they're conducting symphonic repertory, that they're basically playing the piano with an orchestra. In other words, you can tell that the nature to understand and to feel and to sense the sonority of an orchestra has come through a piano. But to me, the question isn't really: Is one form better than the other? To me, that's a non-starter as a question, because what we're talking about is: These are all cultural products that were born out of the same cradle. How would you possibly choose -- if you love Mozart, and I don't think there's a musician in the world who doesn't love Mozart-- how could you possibly choose between conducting The Marriage of Figaro, ⁷ Don Giovanni, ⁸ and conducting or playing the piano concerti or conducting the symphonies or doing the Requiem ⁹ or the C minor Mass? ¹⁰

ISTOMIN:

Absolutely.

CONLON:

Or playing his chamber music.

ISTOMIN:

Yeah. Well, that's one of the very perfect examples of that. Mozart is... whether you're playing the piano concertos or chamber music or whatever, there is an element of the opera in everything in Mozart. But that doesn't apply to Beethoven, it doesn't apply to Brahms, it doesn't apply to a lot of other repertoire. However, I take your point, I take your point very well, and I think that we have very similar roots in the sense that my first experience with music was as a child, quite a bit earlier than yours, but was listening to opera, because my parents were singers. So the first music that I heard were great singers at the Met. I went to the Met and sat, you know, and then cried, went off in the corner and cried when I heard about the scenario of Traviata and all that sort of thing. That was the first-- the idea of singing is what music still is to me, the fundamental thing in music is singing. I got that from the human voice, and the opera. And now, here you are. And it really is, as Dante says, "il mezzo del camino," ¹¹ you're really at the halfway point, barely, of your career. You've got the same, at least the same amount of time that...to go.

CONLON:

I think Dante meant 35 years old.

ISTOMIN:

[laughs]

CONLON:

But I, it was a shorter lifespan in those days.

ISTOMIN:

Yes. So I want to ask you, not where do we go from here, but what is your feeling about the direction that music has taken in our time?

CONLON:

First of all, I would start by saying it's very hard to judge as an artist where music in general is going, or, because so much is dictated by our own tastes and our own predispositions.

ISTOMIN:

But who better than an artist with ears? Would you rather leave that to a critic or a musicologist with no ears?

CONLON:

[Laughs.] It's a risky business to make predictions. I don't like to make predictions, but I do have certain senses. First of all, I look at my, my life-- that, since you referred to Dante, the half that's supposedly behind me and hopefully the half that's in front of me...

ISTOMIN:

The best half. The best is still to come.

CONLON:

Well, I certainly hope that. I look upon music making and classical music as a way of life. To be honest, I hate the word "career." I hate -- I don't even particularly like the word "professional" or "profession." What do we denote by that? That somebody makes a living by what they're doing, and therefore the level of how they're doing it is presumed to be high enough or expert enough in order for you to employ it or to be employed in it. So -- but neither of those words, to me, really convey enough of what classical music means to me, and how it's, how it's shaped my life. You know, as I described how I started to you, this was a kind of a Saul falling off his horse and becoming Paul. I mean, it changed my life in that it gave me, it gave me some kind of starting point to live a life which is very practical on the one hand but transcendent on the other hand. To me, the first thing that struck me about music was the spiritual power that it has to shape our lives, to form our lives, to inspire us, to help us overcome our own smallness and our own pettiness and our own problems. I don't think I could have articulated this at 12 years old, but it was very clear to me that I was drawn to this in a way that was just beyond, you know, practicing scales. You have to practice scales, you have to learn how to play an instrument, you have to learn about the nuts and bolts of music. But to me, the way of life, the fact that it becomes an intellectual and a spiritual form of orientation, was important to me all along, and it is just as important today as it was then. This is what I feel I would like to communicate to more people in the future. Because I think that the values that are associated with classical music are very, very important for the maintenance of our civilization, and what is the best in our civilization. And I think that some of those things, precisely the things that are, that I associate with classical music, are exactly those things that are in danger of being lost in our present civilization. Now, you know, we're talking, it's March of 2003, we're living in a very dramatic moment of history. We don't know what is going to happen. But I sense that art, classical art, classical music, classical literature, classical thinking is absolutely vital, more vital today than ever. If I have any mission in the United States, it is to open the door to many, many, many more people to give them the opportunity to love classical music. I'm not talking about making more classical musicians. You know, probably we're the country producing more wonderful instrumentalists than probably any other. We're producing more great orchestras than any other country. Opera has grown in America at a phenomenal rate in the last 25, 30 years. Where are we lagging behind? It's that we're, we have now, in a way, more supply than demand. You know, you've been involved with education also for many years. You know how many wonderful young pianists there are who don't have careers. They can all-- and they can play very well. One could say, "Well, you know, we haven't produced the great, great, great artists or those great..." but on the other hand, we have produced a level...

ISTOMIN:

Enormously high level of mediocrity, as a great pianist friend of mine said.

CONLON:

Well, there's something to be said for that! I would rather have, I would rather have a higher level of mediocrity than a lower level of mediocrity.

ISTOMIN:

That's right! That's true.

CONLON:

You know? So I'm against the idea that, you know, everybody has to be Horowitz ¹² and Rubinstein. ¹³ Sure, it's great if there's Horowitz and Rubinstein. But I think that the thinking is wrong. I want to see many, many, many more people profoundly affected by and devoting their lives to music, whether it be as somebody who plays, or whether it be as somebody who listens passionately. Because passionate listening to classical music is a very, very vital element for the survival and the thriving of classical music. We are, to some degree, a minority interest. And I think that we as artists have to play a much larger role in attracting people and telling them, first of all, don't be afraid of this. This is not the sancta sanctorum. This is not a temple for...

ISTOMIN:

Esoteric...

CONLON:

...people. Yeah. There are esoteric people in them, and so be that, that's fine. But that's not what music is all about. Music is about touching people's hearts and their emotions and their minds, and drawing them into something that is so fascinating. I mean, you've spent your entire life doing it. I spend my entire life doing it. There is an infinite wealth of humanizing experiences that are brought, that are brought to the human person through classical music.

ISTOMIN:

Well said. But what we're doing is we're speaking across generations. A hundred years from now. Because these conversations will be in the archives, and they'll be available through the Internet or through clicking onto something. Everybody whose name we mention, all those things will be available to the viewer wanting to know what's it like to be a conductor, and what is the role of a conductor. I would like you to answer, or at least to listen to a couple of questions along the way that I would ask you about your young years and how you developed them. First of all, when you began to conduct, did you have role models? Did you have people that you had tremendous admiration for and you wanted to be like or to get somebo...something from? What were you striving for?

CONLON:

Well, I think every child has role models, and every young musician benefits enormously from them. Did I have role models? Sure. They came and went. You know, I'd see one conductor, and you watch, and you say, "Yeah, that's how to do that, and boy, when he waves his arms that way, something really special happens, and when he waves his arms that way, it's a disaster." You know. So that, you start developing vision. Then of course, living in New York, of course, I had the opportunity to see many great conductors. And that, of course, was very inspiring. I was growing up in the great Bernstein ¹⁴ years. That was great. I remember seeing Karajan ¹⁵ for the first time. That was a very, very, very important moment for me. I saw George Szell. ¹⁶ I saw many, many of the great conductors. I was particularly mesmerized by the whole Toscanini ¹⁷ legacy. Of course, I hadn't seen him. I had enormous admiration for Karajan, which actually grew later when I actually watched him work, when I was already in my 20s. I mean, my admiration for him grew when I saw him rehearsing and conducting Tristan ¹⁸ and Rheingold, ¹⁹ and preparing the Osterfestspiele ²⁰ in Salzburg with the Berlin Philharmonic. That was a very, very, very deep impression. And I think role models are very important for a while, but at a certain point, I think as you grow into adulthood, the importance of the role models should diminish, because you no longer need that kind of inspiration to give you an orientation. And you find your own way, and that way leads you. And that way, I think as an adult, it has much more to do with your search for music of your own orientation, the kind of music you want to make, and how you want to come to make that music. That doesn't mean that today-- even today I go to concerts, I go to see colleagues, but I learn from everybody. I learn from pianists, I learn from violinists, I learn from singers, I learn from orchestras. So in a way...

ISTOMIN:

As any serious artist would, and does. Sometimes people come up to one, I'm sure they've come up to you as they have to me and others, and have said, "Which are your favorite composers?" And my answer to that has been rather, the composers that I feel I cannot live without, even some composers that I have played relatively little. For example, I can't live without Bach. I've played some works of Bach, but Bach is God to me. And it's not because there's an argument between older instruments and in Baroque and all of this stuff. To me, Bach is a very living, passionate composer, just as the Romantic composers are. But I have played very little of that. And that is true of some other composers that I have played a great deal that I cannot live without.

CONLON:

I can't live without Mozart. I can't live without Wagner. I cannot live without Mahler. I can't live without Verdi. But even that is not sufficient. I see to it that none of those composers, a season goes by that I don't conduct something by one of them. Now, it's a little harder when you're organizing operas, and Wagner is a little harder to organize than other things, but the fact is that they never leave my consciousness. But even that list is far too restrictive. What I really come down to is: It's not that any one composer can be singled out and say: That's it, or that any one of even many composers can be said: I can't live without them. I cannot ever imagine outliving my desire and my need to hear and per...maybe perform. I could outlive my need to perform classical music, but I could never outlive my need to hear it and to live with it on a daily basis. Nothing has changed from the day that I first heard that opera when I was 11 years old, except to say that now that I know so much more repertory, and I've heard so many more things, I can't imagine having enough time in life to listen to it, to perform it again and again and again. I just did Falstaff, ²¹ I counted up over to 50 times, and I did Boris Godunov, ²² and I was up to 60 or 67 times, something like this, in my life. And I feel sad on the last night of a series, because I say: I miss, I'm going to miss this. It's like a friend that you love.

ISTOMIN:

How would you compare the leading post-World War II American orchestras, soloists, and composers to their European counterparts? I guess the question really is: How do today's organizations stack up against what you heard when you were a youngster? How do these organizations compare with those of the past?

CONLON:

Of course, when you say post-World War II, I was born in 1950, so my world doesn't go back that far.

ISTOMIN:

This is, therefore, it's not a fair question.

CONLON:

I have, I have notions, but they're based on, they're based on nothing.

ISTOMIN:

Yeah. Yeah.

CONLON:

Yeah.

ISTOMIN:

It's an important subject to me because I think that the technical excellence of so many organizations is higher, better, and yet the identity, the signature, the style, the way of these orchestras, as well as soloists, has become standard, standardized. Whether it's the factor of recording and having a kind of perfection which is controllable and redoable-- whether singers, and whether the pianists and violinists and conductors take the kind of chances that they did in the days when music was not immediately recorded and taken down for posterity? It's true that there's a time difference between what I was referring to as the post-World War II orchestras. I could tell the Philadelphia Orchestra in a second. The Boston Symphony had its great beauty and opulence, but it had another characteristic. You could tell the Concertgebouw Orchestra. You could tell certain English orchestras in a -- you probably can still today, as being different. But--

CONLON:

Yes, that's all true. And I don't think we need to look any further than the rest of our lives to discover that that can gradually be said a little bit of life in general. I've lived in Europe for the last 20 years -- there's an enormous amount of discussion, and particularly in France in the last years, about globalization, about multinationals. It is something, it's a phenomenon where, because certain things are to be found everywhere, in all countries, they are beginning to affect life to such a degree that many countries are afraid and concerned about losing their own cultural identity. But look at countries, for instance, where language has changed radically in the last 50 years. In Italy, there were over 2,000 dialects. I had a grandmother who spoke a dialect, and when I tried to use those words when I first went to Italy, everybody laughed, because they came from a particular region that even people several hundred kilometers away wouldn't understand. Now, those have started to disappear in Italy. Why are they disappearing? Because, since the time that there's the RAI [Italian public television] and there's, there is standardized education everywhere, and there's television, and everybody is listening to the Italian that they hear on the radio and on television, very slowly those dialects are disappearing. That, in my opinion, is a great shame. And I think that that's also expressed itself in classical music in the sense that because there is so much recording, and there has been so much recording around now for 75 years, and increasingly so, that since everybody's hearing everything, they're reacting and interrelating to what they hear, and there is a standardization or a, of expectations, and there is a loss of those very peculiar, very peculiar sounds that only belonged to this orchestra or that one. But part of the reason they remained that way is because they lived in isolation. I mean, back in the 18th century, there was reference to the Mannheim School. ²³ The Mannheim School, they had a special way of playing, and we don't know exactly what that is, because there are no recordings, but we know that it was completely different from anywhere else, even another German city that was maybe today would be a half an hour away, or an hour away in a train. But that's because they lived in isolation. We no longer live in isolation. I take the attitude that what I'm really after is, to me there's a sound for Mozart, then there's a sound for Debussy, there's a sound for Mussorgsky, there's a sound for Verdi, and I, in my head, am going after that sound. So ultimately, I'm not concerned about producing my own sound, and I'm not concerned that perhaps an orchestra in England sounds like another orchestra in America or that sounds like an orchestra in Germany. It's, I really want Mozart to transcend all of that, and I want Wagner to transcend all of that. So for me, this is a fact of life. Just as a painter will have certain colors and pigments and-- maybe he can modulate them, maybe he can't, but he lives with what the materials that you have, and you try to mold what you come into contact with. And the only danger is not so much in classical music, but I think in literature, in journalism, and in philosophy and thinking, it's when millions of people think alike just because they've heard it, and they don't use their own minds, and they do not think for themselves. They don't take responsibility for their own attitudes, and they don't take responsibility for their own, for the welfare of other people, simply because they are repeating back by rote what they have been taught or what they have heard, or maybe not even what they're taught, what they arrive by osmosis. I think that television, modern television, and perhaps now Internet play an enormous role in forming people. I see it with my children. And to me, that's a great thing. They will know more facts and have more at their disposal than we did when we were children. But at the same time, I see the danger of a lack of individuality in each of these human beings who substitute the information coming to them over the Internet or over the television for actual creative thinking. On the question of individuality, and you haven't asked it yet, but I'm sure somewhere or other it's -- you know, I'm sure that you were faced with the same questions, and you're touching on them now-- is the argument between subjectivity and objectivity, which was a very big discussion when I was a student, my days at Juilliard. There were always articles or thoughts: Well, you know there are objective conductors like Toscanini and subjective ones like Furtwängler or Bernstein. I mean, this, of course, is nonsense. This is an oversimplification and a reduction of the greatness of all of those individual musical giants, but also a reduction of the phenomenon of music. Because, of course, you can't put it in categories that you're objective about this and subjective about this. But there was one part of this discussion that I found to be nonsense at the time of my education, and, just because of stubborn instinct, I wasn't having any part of it when I was 17, 18, 19 years old. And I'm glad about my stubborn instinct, because I still hold to that today, many years afterwards, and I feel that it, there was a lot of wasted time. And what was that? It was a lot of people saying: "You know, you must find your own voice. You must find your own way of seeing this music. You must find your own interpretation. It may not be like anybody else's." To the degree that they would say: "You should not even listen to other people's performances." I wasn't buying any of this. I thought this was nonsense. Because I thought to myself: You know what? I know what I feel. I know what I think. . I don't have any doubt about what I think and feel. What fascinates me isn't what I think and feel. What fascinates me is the work. In other words, there was so much emphasis on: What do you think about Schubert? What do you feel about Brahms? How do you feel about Stravinsky? To me, it was completely self-evident how I felt and how I approached it. What was more important for me to know was: What is Stravinsky? Who is Stravinsky? What is in that music? What did he say about that music? But what, also, is the music itself? And I took the attitude, is: You should put, really, all of your energy into knowing the Other, the Other with a capital O. And the Other is, in that case, the piece of music. And that the subjectivity that was being spoken about is so self-evident that it didn't seem to me that it needed any effort. For instance, you and I would see the same piece of music differently, because you're Eugene Istomin and I'm James Conlon. Just that alone is an enormous difference. So we might both look at the same Mozart sonata or the same Mozart symphony and say: This is what I see and feel. But we'd be feeling and seeing different things, because we're different individuals. And you could line up 10 people, 10 artists, and you'll get 10 different viewpoints on any one piece.

ISTOMIN:

Which, I think you're referring to something that in literary, in other terms is called deconstructionism. It's where people say the actual text is whatever you make of it. You do with the score what you'd, you express yourself, your individuality. There is no such thing as the, the mind and the heart and the ear of the composer. That, once that's been done, now it's what you make of it and -how it is.

CONLON:

The mystery and the marvel of all of this was that I found that by doing, taking my approach, surrendering my ego to the composer and the composition, I actually found myself. I -- my own subjectivity, which was, which governed the search, also grew along with the rest of it. In other words, it was, the best way to become true to yourself is to lose yourself in these other compositions and these other composers, and by the way, by extension, by all of our human contacts: by our contact with our friends, with our loved ones, with our families, with literature, with everything you do. To the degree that you are able to surrender your own ego at the moment that you come into contact, you are actually open for the fullness of whatever that object is-- both a person, a work of art, a piece of music-- to come back into you, and you actually find yourself. As classical artists, I think we have a contract with the work, and we also have a contract with the longevity of the tradition to which we are living with. By tradition, I don't mean laziness, I don't mean mindlessly accepting the past. But I also mean that innovation is necessary, but it should not be confused with substance. The fact is about the music making. And if it happens to be fashionable or not -- sometimes I am proud to be out of fashion

ISTOMIN:

What do you think, say, the next 50 years will bring from Japan -- which, it already has a tradition of Western music -- Korea, China? Where we have so many musicians now coming to play, soloists, conductors and players and so forth. How do you view that?

CONLON:

Fifty years? I don't even want to say what's going to happen in five years. And, you know, as history proceeds, the rate of change and the, the ability of the, of yesterday's unperceived fact to radically change our lives has increased. So I'm, I will stand by my determination to make no predictions. What I do hope, I can talk about my hopes and what I...

ISTOMIN:

Well.

CONLON:

What -- that's different. I am happy to see that classical music -- and of course we're talking about classical music, we're talking about, basically a European tradition, and I include Russia as a European--as a--

ISTOMIN:

Well, yes.

CONLON:

You would know more than I would. The United States was perhaps the first major point of export and the next place in which that tradition grew. After that, in recent years, Japan, Korea, and now China are in a similar situation, where they are in the first enormous explosion of the new classical music. I speak of the last 25 years, last 30 years. This is good news. Why is this good news? Because to me, I would like to see, and want to see, classical music played and loved and listened to over the entire globe. It hurts me to see that American pop music, much of which I don't particularly care for, has conquered the world, along with technology, and is to be heard, and has influenced the entire globe. I would have been much happier had that been Bach and Brahms, Beethoven and Mozart. Be that as it may, I see every element of growth all over the world as a positive thing. We have to compete with a big world that is bigger than we are, and which, if we want to continue to have our voice heard, we have to do more to reach out to a greater population. Otherwise, we will just simply become too small, too irrelevant, too marginal, to really have any influence on that world. This cannot be done by lowering artistic standards, and it must not be done by lowering artistic standards. But I do think it has to be done with more openness to realizing that we have to go back to touching people who are not predisposed to come to concerts or to hear. We have to find ways in order to break down barriers, social barriers, educational barriers, that keep people away from classical music. In my own experience, I find that in many, many, many cases, it is simply a lack of opportunity, often in childhood, to have heard music in a non-confrontational, non-judgmental atmosphere. If there was any education at all in a lot of schools, it was called music appreciation. Somebody would often lecture about why you should be appreciating Tchaikovsky or appreciating Brahms. Then it was put away, and then, maybe a month later, they would come back, and then we'd be lectured to again, told, "You're supposed to appreciate another composer." I think that this is a very ineffective way to open the beauties of classical music to young people.

ISTOMIN:

Have you, have you heard about this organization called Young Audiences, Inc.? You've been away...

CONLON:

I've been away for too long. You'll have to tell me about it.

ISTOMIN:

It's-- they arranged to have musicians, very good musicians, go into the public schools, speak about the music that they were playing, and this, it seems to have had a very salutary effect. Well, I don't have to tell you about Lenny Bernstein's ²⁴ genius for communicating that to young people. But still, somehow, there's a stage where the wall comes up, and that's the wall of commerce and information. That is to say, what people see when they turn on the television set. That I find very discouraging. I don't quite see how your desire, which is my desire, which is one in which basically we are expressing the same kind of love for our fellow human beings, and the desire for them to, to experience these wonders, these marvelous wonders that are not just, just a quick fix and not a quick--- there's more to being a human being than that. Much more. And the people that are the same victims to this sort of marketing stuff are human beings that are far more human beings than some of these marketers think they are. But how do you get to them? How do you get that message to them through this wall of information, mass information?

CONLON:

Artists, by their nature, want to be performing or practicing their art. What is important for me in addition to that is to feel that more people would benefit so much from that same force that I felt as a young person, and that I continue to feel. I'm not an evangelist, I'm not a missionary. I am, I am brought up in a religious background, but I'm a sort of freelance monotheist, but I, I'm not, I'm not promoting religion. What I am saying that classical music and art and literature is a very important part of our spiritual lives-- secular spirituality, if you so wish. And it is endangered. It is endangered by the overwhelming power of commercial interests. And I have no illusions, we're not going to change the world, but I want to be able to find a way that this little corner that we inhabit gets a little bit bigger with every generation.

ISTOMIN:

How do you feel about the new music, today's music? What do you feel about the compositions, now, let's say over the last 25 years? And sometimes the pieces need 95 rehearsals, and you don't have time to give it, because of their complexity. But what do you feel about where that is?

CONLON:

You know, I have no idea if the music that interests us today or that we're doing is going to be there in 50 years or so.

ISTOMIN:

No. But what interests you today?

CONLON:

But you know--well, I enjoy, I enjoy a lot of it because it's new and because it's fresh. In a strange way, it also helps give you some insight into what you're actually doing with all those composers of the past. What interests me is to see the mind of a composer when you say: "You know, we have a practical problem here. This doesn't work very well. What do you think if...?" And sometimes he says, "Oh, yeah. That's not important. Sure, of course you can do that. That's a very good idea. I should have thought of that myself." And then sometimes he says, "Oh, no, no, no. You can't change that interval, because it means..." And what you realize is that every composer is so specific and so special. I could not tell you why it was okay to change that line and to change-- for instance, one line didn't work for the soprano because it was too low, and she said, "You know, if it was up a third, I could do it." So I said, "If this were up a third with the..." "Yeah, that's fine," he said. Then I wanted to change, change -- and said, "Well, you know, she doesn't have -- this particular note is too low. Could we put that an octave up, and then have her descend from the C to the D sharp?" He said, "No, no, you can't do that! No, no! Because look, the material is this..." It was completely clear in his mind. At the same time, he was completely open to another change. So that fascinates me, because it makes us, it makes me realize, on the one hand, you don't really have access to the mind of a composer, because they see things in very special ways. That's what makes them composers. On the other hand, it's just interesting to see how open he was to the practical difficulties of performing his music. He didn't say, "You have to do it no matter what." He said, "Yeah, that doesn't work." And that, the process of coming to a performance was very important to him, that certain things be changed in order to produce them. I think that's important to remember with those composers who are long since passed away and with whom we cannot converse: to remember that that myst...there's a mysterious mix between what is on the paper, and lest we become too rigid about serving the piece of paper-- and to realize that music must live in its live performance, and that every time we are obligated, it's our job to make it live. And sometimes, we even go outside of what's on the paper in order to find us a solution. So that in fact, we're almost obligated to do that.

ISTOMIN:

But you haven't told me whether, how many times you have performed, after a première of a work, how many times you have conducted it a second time or a third time?

CONLON:

That's an excellent question.

ISTOMIN:

Those are the practical, horrible, vulgar things of the profession of the marketing of music today. What works have you done, and premièred, that you feel should be done again, and should be done not only by you, but other, other conductors and other orchestras? And if they're not done because they really don't serve the purpose of the society, and all the effort that goes into rehearsing them, because it's already been news, it's not going to be a media event. How do you try to get out of that boat, box? Or don't you?

CONLON:

I believe very much in second performances and third performances. To me, there is one function that you have by commissioning works or by saying, "We're going to do a work for the first time." It is actually to give the stimulus and the opportunity to a composer to create another work. That is terribly important. Because if composers don't continue to produce works, the long part of this tradition is in danger. And I think we need to spend much more time selecting out works and saying, "I like that, that's important, we're going to do it a second time." If a piece needs to be listened to once, it needs to be listened to a second time, a third time, and a fourth time. I do, I agree very much that emphasis has to be put on the second, third times around, even if-- and particularly, especially because-- they're not news. It is no news to conduct the Beethoven Fifth. ²⁵ It is no news to play the Pathétique ²⁶ sonata. It's no news at all. But you know what? It's terribly important that people play it and play it well. It's good news that that's, that is, that they're being performed. Did I answer your question?

ISTOMIN:

The answer, the answer is good, and it's true, but...

CONLON:

But?

ISTOMIN:

What makes the world go around is, unfortunately, is publicity and information, and it's, I think that the battle is much more deadly and mortal, how to deal with, with the newspapers, with certain newspapers which, their critical staff, music in general, occupies one of the lowest rungs of interest now. And their writers on music, the pressure of having to put on something that hasn't been for the first time or that is news, is so great on them that they-- the idea that a conductor will conduct a magnificent performance of the Beethoven Fifth and a violinist may play a magnificent, or a pianist may play a magnificent performance of the Brahms Second Concerto ²⁷ --

CONLON:

It's not fashionable because...

ISTOMIN:

It doesn't get write-ups in the paper, because news--you have to have a certain news value. Playing something or conducting something beautifully is not enough. There's much more--much more attractive to a media information-giver if something is different, never, never before. So, "what I would like to write about is the latest music--- music that's half silence, half music, half this, half that," but it's a mixture of all kinds of different things: street noises... we have that -- that gets more copy in the paper. Of course, it doesn't help bring people into the concert hall. But still, it's a fact of life. There's a temptation to the artist to, not to do what has been done before. His manager or his representative says, "You've got to put on a program which is, has new things on it." It's that kind of thing that's, bothers me, because it gives an equivalence to certain things at a certain time-- to, with, to some of the ineffable works of music. It's like saying this little hill around the corner is the equivalent of Mount Annapurna.

CONLON:

You know my comment about this? Everything you say just reminds me of the fact that artists and art in the entire history of civilization have had to find their way to express themselves because of or despite their surroundings. I mean, every time I look at a Renaissance painting, which I happen to love particularly since I love Italy so much, and I see the patrons who are always in the side on their knees with their hands folded in prayer, I think: What must that have cost the artist to have had to include the patron in the painting, you know, looking like a saint? I'm sure that's not what they really wanted to do. And yet they did it. And they very often did it in such an artistic way that it becomes a part of the work of art. There's an art to compromise, and compromise can also lead to art. I mean, Stravinsky, ²⁸ for instance, said, he said, "I sometimes artificially create limits to my composition in order to challenge my brain to come up with solutions." In other words, he'll say: It will only be a certain length, or a certain instrumentation, or I preclude any chord that includes these notes. Or I didn't want to use that note-- that can also be challenging. I was not willing, and I'm still not willing, to sacrifice certain very important parts of what I consider to be my integrity as an artist and a human being to somebody else's idea of what it means to be a successful conductor. Too much of our educational system, not just in music but in education, is designed to prepare you for the job market. I find that obscene. The idea that you take a young human mind and you say, "Succeed in your education so that you can be higher in the job -- to get a better job which pays more money" --to me, is to deny the absolute infinite power of the human spirit. You know, in a-- I say America in 2003, we live in a society which is obsessed with celebrity; with celebrities, first of all, and by extension, the concept of celebrity. You know, I think that in Zen you learn that, when you do archery, you're supposed to, you're supposed to seek the target. You shouldn't be paid for seeking the target, because then you have two goals, and when you have two goals, you confuse the real goal. You have to choose the goal. If the real goal is celebrity, then you can't have your mind totally focused on excellence. And I must say, my years in Europe taught me and showed me -- and particularly Germany, which is a country that I admire enormously for its devotion to classical music -- people in Germany go to hear music. First. And perhaps also to hear somebody who is a famous artist. But you couldn't have all of those cities with all of their opera companies, with all of their chamber music series, with all their organ recitals in churches, with all their chamber orchestras and their big orchestras, going to hear stars, because that's not how it-- there are not enough stars to go around. Those are people who are going because music is still a part of their lives-- they listen to music metaphysically. They need that. If, by becoming a celebrity, you can foster that-- that, to me, is a great thing to do. If, however, it's the opposite, if by basically riding on the music, you want only to become a celebrity, I doubt you'll make beautiful music all of your life the same way. As you said earlier, you know, there are problems with the environment in which we need to make music. I think it's important to be lucid about that environment, and to use it or ignore it in order to remain focused on the substance of your musical life, and your musical expression. And that requires discipline, intellectual honesty, humility, and a great deal of, I would say, philosophy and wisdom.

ISTOMIN:

Well, you've given everybody great reasons to admire you and to thank you for this wonderful time that we've had together. I know that you, the next part of your life will be brilliant and successful in your terms. So thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. So much. I'm very proud, very happy that you've been able to be with us.

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FOOTNOTES:

1 La Traviata. Opera by Giuseppi Verdi. Back to transcript

2 Il barbiere di Siviglia [Italian, The Barber of Seville]. Opera by Gioachino Rossini. Back to transcript

3 Don Giovanni. Opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Back to transcript

4 Die Fledermaus [German, The Bat]. Opera by Johann Strauss. Back to transcript

5 Carmen. Opera by Georges Bizet. Back to transcript

6 Franz Schubert, Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major, D.485. Back to transcript

7 Le nozze di Figaro [Italian, The Marriage of Figaro]. Opera, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Back to transcript

8 Don Giovanni. Opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Back to transcript

9 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Requiem, K.626. Back to transcript

10 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Missa Solemnis in C Minor, K.139. Back to transcript

11 "Nel mezzo del cammin [di nostra vita]" [Italian, "In the middle of the journey if our life."] The first line of Canto 1 of the Inferno of Dante Alighieri. Back to transcript

12 Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989). Russian-born pianist. Back to transcript

13 Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982). Polish-born American pianist. Back to transcript

14 Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). American conductor, composer. Back to transcript

15 Herbert von Karajan (1908-1989). Austrian conductor. Back to transcript

16 George Szell (1897-1970). Hungarian-born American conductor. Back to transcript

17 Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). Italian conductor. Back to transcript

18 Tristan und Isolde. Opera by Richard Wagner. Back to transcript

19 Das Rheingold. The first opera of Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner. Back to transcript

20 The Easter Festival. Back to transcript

21 Falstaff. Opera by Giuseppe Verdi. Back to transcript

22 Boris Godunov. Opera by Modest Musorgsky. Back to transcript

23 Refers to the music created in Mannheim, Germany, at the end of the 18th Century. The style is characterized by a uniformity of player's technique and discipline as well as a uniform compositional approach. Back to transcript

24 Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990). American conductor, composer. In 1958, he initiated the TV series "Young People's Concerts." Back to transcript

25 Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 67. Back to transcript

26 Ludwig van Beethoven, Sonata No. 8 "Pathétique" in C Minor, op. 13. Back to transcript

27 Johannes Brahms. Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat, op. 83. Back to transcript

28 Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971). Russian born French, later American composer. Back to transcript

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