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Conductor, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra
In conversation with Kevin Starr , California State Librarian Emeritus
Kevin Starr: Maestro, I have a very obvious question: How do you do it all? How can you be in so many places?Kent Nagano: In real life and practice, the way the calendar works is through a series of residences. I have a Berlin period, I have a Los Angeles period, I have, of course, a San Francisco/Berkeley period. But because of that I do spend an awful lot of time studying and not enough time at home just doing nothing. I'd really love to boost that equation a little bit more.
Starr: Where is home, Maestro?
Nagano: That's a good question. My wife and I ask that of each other often. I don't mean to quote our former president Clinton, but it depends on how you define home. Our daughter goes to school in Paris. She is in kindergarten this year, so you can define that as home. We have a home there, an apartment in Paris. My principal symphonic activity, where I give an enormous amount of concerts, where my musical identity is very much defined and linked, is Berlin. So you might call that a home. In terms of the most calendar days, I suppose it would be in Los Angeles. One might call Los Angeles home.
But where, psychologically, I maintain the most honest and truest ties, that would be here in the Bay Area. It's where I grew up. After having the privilege of seeing so many wonderful cities, I still feel in my heart that San Francisco, Berkeley, Marin County - this whole Bay Area - is the most beautiful place on earth. If one feels that, then certainly that has to be called home. We keep a home here in the Bay Area, where I have since my student days in the mid-'70s.
Starr: I think we've suspected that, Maestro, in as much as to spite all your other commitments, you've maintained a steady relationship to the Berkeley Symphony.
Nagano: I have. That relationship began in 1978. In those days, if I'm completely honest, I had no idea what I was doing when I stood up on the podium. The orchestra was so kind and so forgiving and so positive. I suppose somewhere between what I refer to as "sweaty, windmill movements," they saw some potential. To give an idea of how supportive they were, instead of being really angry and impatient with their only quasi-competent conductor, they would oftentimes come up to me with helpful suggestions: "You know, Kent, a downbeat is supposed to go down"; "Kent, you know maybe if you just don't try so hard it'll go better." Little hints like that. They were awfully tolerant and, as I say, very, very encouraging.
I look back - it was essential; I really needed the orchestra. I had no prior experience. Later, as I began to develop a little bit more experience, I could become a more effective leader for the orchestra, not only from a musical point of view but also with ties to the community - leadership as a community figure and to supply a more effective artistic vision that would have some resonance, or at least a bigger meaning, to raise the orchestra's profile both nationally and internationally.
Today pretty much the same group of musicians whom I began with in 1978 - the orchestra still has a large amount of those original members. The orchestra has been a unique ensemble in that we've always been a first platform for young musicians when they come out of college, conservatory or university - sort of a first introduction into the professional world. It's been a wonderful pool for the more talented freelancers in the area. Also, unusually, it's been a wonderful place for professionals who reach retirement age - that of the San Francisco Symphony, the Oakland Symphony - and are faced with mandatory retirement but love music so much that they're searching for a venue where they can still express themselves artistically and musically. So they come to the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra.
The combination of great masters, young debutantes and the core of very, very talented freelancers has always formed a very unique chemistry within the Berkeley Symphony, which ironically is the old European tradition. This is what we see in the Vienna Philharmonic. There you see the great masters, say a principal horn player who reaches retirement age and decides that rather than try to hang on till the very end he will step down into the position of fourth horn or fifth horn and from there train the new, young first horn how to play in the style of the Vienna Philharmonic. These wonderful and great artists that we have from the San Francisco Symphony are teaching the young generations how to play.
Starr: Why is it that most major U.S. orchestras continue to select European conductors for open positions? Do you see this changing in the near future - you representing, of course, the reverse paradigm of that?
Nagano: The same question has been asked in Germany: Why is it that all of the major posts go to foreigners? If you think about Berlin, the two most visible posts are the Berlin Philharmonic and the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. And they have a longhaired English guy named Sir Simon Rattle, and they have a longhaired Japanese-American, Californian, leading the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester. There have been articles written about this, for example, in the city of Munich, which will soon become my adopted home. There were three major posts: the Bayerischer Rundfunk, the Münchner Philharmoniker and the Bayerische Staatsoper. The Bayerische Staatsoper has had Maestro Zubin Mehta, an American. The Münchner Philharmoniker had James Levine, an American. And the Bayerischer Rundfunk, the great radio orchestra, has had Lorin Maazel, and Lorin is one of our great Americans. Three Americans in the city of Munich - this created quite a bit of ink.
Starr: So there is an internationalization of conducting that is occurring. I was very intrigued that you brought Schönberg's "Moses and Aaron," to Los Angeles, because Schönberg wrote that in Los Angeles in the last part of and right after World War II and had difficulty having it produced. It must have had a wonderfully triumphant quality to have finally produced it with such backing in the city where it was written.
Nagano: Yes, it's very true. Schönberg finished the piece "Moses and Aaron" in Los Angeles. He tried to get it performed and somehow it was so problematic. The public still, 130 years after his birth, has a resistance to accepting his music because they really don't know it very well.
When Placido Domingo and I were speaking about what we would like to do when we came to Los Angeles and took over the opera company, one of the things that we really felt was establishing the great European masterpieces in the Los Angeles Opera's repertoire, pieces that until now have not been heard in Los Angeles: "Lohengrin" or "The Ring" or a number of other surprising omissions. We felt it was also important to include an influential chain of world premieres. We established ties with Luciano Berio, who wrote pieces for us; also once with Chen, several other American composers who we wanted to have involved. But for the first season it was too late to engage someone to write a piece for the opera company, so we thought, What would be an extraordinary premiere to give in our first season? That's when "Moses and Aaron" came to the floor. It's such a famous work. It's been performed and is performed with great regularity on virtually every major stage in the world, except Los Angeles. We felt it was time to give Los Angeles its premiere of "Moses and Aaron."
Starr: As someone who attends the Los Angeles Opera with some regularity, I find the productions there have a great theatricality. Am I just being a booster, or is there something to say about the productions there?
Nagano: When we were discussing whether or not we would come, Mr. Domingo called me up. I remember this very well. I was in Europe at the time, and he said, "I'd like you to join me as my partner when I take over the Los Angeles Opera Company, as my music director." I said, "As much as I'm flattered to receive this offer from such a great artist whom I respect, I'll have to decline because I'm too busy." So Placido said, "Okay." A few weeks later I received a call from Domingo saying, "You know, Kent, I've really been thinking about it, you should just come and join me as my musical partner in L.A." I said, "I'm very flattered, but I'm afraid my calendar's just too busy. I'm not going to be able to accept your kind invitation." Placido said, "Okay." A month later I got a call. This went on five times and finally the sixth time he said, "Look, I know what you're going to say, but why don't we just meet?" and I said, "All right." We were both at the Salzburg Festival. We met and I had to explain to his face that I'm afraid I'm too busy, I'm not going to be able to accept coming to L.A. He said, "Okay." A month later he called me up and I said, "Okay, you win. I'll come to Los Angeles, but only under these certain conditions."
We met and talked with great open hearts about what it is we felt the opera world needed and what we could honestly bring - something new and fresh to Los Angeles or to any opera house. We decided to uncompromisingly focus on standards and quality. That includes, of course, the level of productions that you're referring to. Placido Domingo, being one of our greatest living performers, has such an instinctive feel for quality on stage and such an instinctive feel for whether an artist has that extra "Y" or "X" factor that makes a stage performance brilliant and exciting - special for the moment. His partnership with me was to try to elevate the support, the orchestral sounds, to the same level of excellence, and there we found ourselves at a very exciting overlap. We both wanted the same thing in opera. We still have a lot more work to do, but if you've been able to feel that sense of passion and that sense of quality coming off the stage, at least we've made a good beginning.
Starr: Oh, I think so. In "Lohengrin" when you turn just briefly to the audience, I thought, Something is going wrong, and then suddenly the entire theater erupted in trumpet - it was really very dramatic, very, very beautiful. Speaking of trumpet players, or musicians in general since you move in so many different venues, are there comparisons and contrasts to be made between American-trained musicians versus European-trained or Asian-trained, or is the music world more interchangeable?
Nagano: That's a very good question, and it oftentimes comes up within the context of preconceptions. We all know it is awfully inefficient and sometimes even dangerous to make stereotypes or to make blanket, all-encompassing statements - American musicians are like this, German musicians are like that - because just as every human being is different, every musician is different.
This past summer I was honored with the privilege of addressing the Friends of the Salzburg Festival, who every year invite one guest from the festival to speak to them. They had just heard, with great fear and trepidation, that I was going to bring a concert of Mozart to the Salzburg Easter Mozart Festival, and they were terrified to see what this crazy Californian would bring. The question was: "Mr. Nagano, as an American-born Californian with a Japanese heritage, what do you think you can bring to Austria and tell us about Mozart?" I thought about it. Fortunately, the night before was a significant historical event, so I was able to respond elegantly. I said, "One of the great advantages of living in our world today is that we have the opportunities, if we're lucky, to benefit from cultural exchange. For example, last night Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California. We are hoping in California that an Austrian can…" In short, it really depends on the person. In my own case, my first professor was European- and Munich-trained, ironically enough. So my introduction to music had a very different beginning to it than some of my colleagues and friends who were purely American-trained.
Starr: Is there a masterpiece or an unrecognized major piece of music that you've been thinking about bringing forth or that you've been contemplating for some time?
Nagano: There are three things that come to mind. I've become, recently, extremely excited and devoted to the study of the symphonies of Franz Schubert. The Schubert symphonies, when even I was a student, were much more often performed than they are today. They, for some reason, kind of disappeared from the concert stage and for some time now, maybe 20, 25 years. They occur occasionally, but if you think back, when was the last time you heard the First Symphony of Schubert performed, or the Second, or the tragic Fourth or even Third? We tend to hear more often the Fifth, the great B Flat or the great C Major Symphony, but the other ones have fallen off. This has become a keen point of interest for me, and the Schubert symphonies appear over and over again on the Berkeley Symphony season.
Two other works that I've been concerned needed to be re-examined - because I felt that the content within them was much more than at least the public was recognizing. One of the pieces was from our own American composer, Leonard Bernstein. He wrote a piece which was extremely controversial for the opening of the Kennedy Center called "Mass." It was controversial partially because I think my former professor and someone whom I look up to very much, Maestro Bernstein, would oftentimes create a situation where controversy couldn't be avoided. In this case it was taking the "Mass" and re-examining its social meaning, taking it apart and putting it back together. There was so much written that sometimes one had the feeling that what was being written about was more the controversy than the content of the music itself. If one sits down and carefully looks at what's in that score, at least in my case, I found that there was some of the greatest music that Leonard Bernstein ever wrote.
We made quite a large audiovisual strong point on this piece. We did a number of performances in Berlin, brought in a San Francisco chorus, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble, to sing some of the particularly idiomatic passages, combined it with the great Berlin Rundfunkchor - that was quite a cultural exchange. Actually it was a very, very happy one. At first, all the San Franciscans were looking at all these former East Germans and going, "Wow!" And the former East Germans were looking at the San Franciscans going, "Wow!" But they ended up really having a wonderful time together, and we recorded the "Mass." It will be printed and released in September. I'm hoping that people will get a fresh and new look at the piece without the sociological brouhaha that went around its premiere.
Another piece which has been released was, for me, one of the most beautiful spiritual works of Arnold Schönberg, a piece that's been overlooked because some of this composer's other great masterpieces, like "Moses and Aaron" or "Gurrelieder," because of their length and the fact that they use so many diverse forms of material - stage machinery or dances; or in the case of "Gurrelieder," an orchestra the size of two orchestras and three choirs and a number of very challenging soloist's roles to fill. The piece I'm referring to is "Jacobsleiter," Jacob's ladder, taken from the Old Testament. It happened to be at a time when Schönberg was rediscovering religion, and it has meaning within his own life and also rediscovering a beautiful sense of lyricism, somehow tempering his new language, which we call dodecaphonic, or 12 tone, into one that becomes very lyric and expressive. This work, as meaningful and as beautiful, was somehow getting lost. We did release the recording about six months ago. We've been very lucky that people have said to themselves and to each other that this is a masterpiece within the Schönberg canon.
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