Roger Mastroianni/Cleveland Orchestra
I am not likely to forget the early hours of September 8 this year. There’s me about to post a birthday piece for Christoph von Dohnányi, turning ninety-six on that day, and staring at me from the inbox is a message from the Cleveland Orchestra advising that he’s died. (On a par with the LSO’s email received early-evening one Sunday in April 2013, simply headed Sir Colin Davis; it didn’t need to be opened to know that he’d passed away.) I’d interviewed Sir Colin several times, always a pleasure, as was talking with CvD. I can’t give you a year, but it was when he was conducting at Covent Garden (I don’t recall the opera, and he led several there as a guest), and I was with him for the the Philharmonia Friends’ magazine.
I usually get anxious before interviews, self-doubt being the biggest concern. Are my questions better than banal? Will I understand the interviewee’s responses and be able to develop them? I was due to meet CvD at the Savoy (it being near the Royal Opera House). So, having arrived at the hotel (closely associated with Gilbert & Sullivan operettas) and made contact with the maestro, I kept my eyes on the staircase for those on a short stay. He must have come down the Residents’ one, for I looked behind me one moment and there he was with a broad smile, seemingly waiting for me to be surprised. If any ice needed breaking, it just had been.
We found a quiet place to talk (in the tea room for want of a better description) and proceeded to converse. He was very interesting regarding ambiguous markings in Schubert Symphonies: accents or dynamics? How to attract the audiences of the future. About rehearsing properly. I’d been told it was strictly thirty minutes maximum for the interview due to CvD’s opera-rehearsal schedule, so when that time was up I offered him thanks for talking to me. In response: “no, we can continue”. We did, another half-an-hour, during which he started to interview me! Had I been at the Vienna Philharmonic concert (then a few days ago, Mozart 29/Bruckner 9)? Yes. What did you think? Rather disappointing. The trouble with conductor X, CvD said, is he doesn’t rehearse properly. CvD went on to be critical of another big-name conductor in this respect, yet much praise was afforded to Lorin Maazel in terms of his preparation. And it was gratifying to learn that CvD thought Michael Gielen “a great conductor.”
I ended the article I wrote with CvD saying, regarding concerts: “I’ll do anything to ensure a full house – except compromise.” There was humour in the voice to mediate the seriousness.
There were numerous London concerts conducted by CvD, invariably with the Philharmonia, and also the occasional visit with the Cleveland Orchestra, one being a BBC Prom, 1994, of Ives’s Central Park in the Dark, Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony, and Birtwistle’s Earth Dances (in that order); and another at the Barbican, Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre and Brahms’s Second Symphony, with Bartók’s Violin Concerto No.2 between them, Gil Shaham somewhat overshadowed by the Clevelanders’ immaculate, honed to the nth degree, playing. And from CvD’s Philharmonia collaborations, a rehearsal, the dress for that evening’s concert of Bruckner Eight, played through complete and uninterrupted at ten in the morning, quite magnificently. The concert itself, however good, didn’t repeat what had transpired just several hours earlier. A reflection of meticulous preparation.