“Mahler came out of nowhere and what he wrote was shocking.”

Do you remember when you first heard the music of Gustav Mahler?

Maazel: The first time I conducted a movement of a Gustav Mahler Symphony was in Tanglewood. I was a young conductor – I was 20, I think – and I conducted the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, and that was my first contact with his music.

And when did you hear it for the first time?

Maazel: When did I hear it? Well, some time in my teens, rather late I would think. I was a member of the Pittsburgh Symphony for three years: I played in the violin section, first as a 2nd and then as a 1st, and I do not remember ever having played a Mahler Symphony during those three years. Possibly we might have, because I was doing a great number of things at that time: I had a string quartet and was studying philosophy at university, so I can’t remember every programme that we played, but I don’t believe that we ever played Mahler. Mahler was extremely unpopular at that time; no-one was really interested in him after the Second World War, despite a great deal of effort on the part of Bruno Walter to try to popularise his music, and also on the part of several other conductors. Toscanini conducted some Mahler and Barbirolli was a great Mahler fan. I remember going to concerts conducted by these great conductors as a youngster, and – this was at one of the first concerts I ever heard – I remember people walking out of Carnegie Hall during a performance of a Mahler Symphony with Barbirolli. I think I was 17 or 18, so this was after the Second World War. People just walked out; by the end of the performance there was nobody there. So, “Meine Zeit wird kommen” [My time will come] – he was right, but it took a long time.

Did the Mahler world immediately open for you?

Maazel: No. I enjoyed the challenge of each new experience of a Mahler movement, but it was a challenge. It was very difficult for me to get to grips with the music and to meet the challenge of it; it was a world and a mentality completely foreign to me. Like everybody else I had grown up with Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and so on, and I was also interested in a certain amount of contemporary music: Alban Berg, Webern. So it isn’t that I was behind Mahler, because I was very happy with the music written up until his birth and after his death, but that whole period was foreign to me. It took me a long time to understand his music, movement by movement, Symphony by Symphony, and I was already in my mid-40s by the time I finally got to grips with the entire Mahler repertoire – very, very slowly. I am glad that it took so long, because it gave me the opportunity to get into his music movement by movement, slowly and thoroughly. I think there is a lot of confusion about his music: each movement in each of his Symphonies, to my mind, is a world unto itself, a separate world. For example, I conducted the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, but I didn’t understand the 2nd movement and when I came to it, it turned out to be very difficult for me. Now I don’t understand what reservations I could have had – just ignorance I suppose, a lack of exposure to other movements in music. I was very slow in responding to each new challenge, but when I did, I got it, because I am an intuitive musician and if there is music behind the notes, I will eventually find it.

From a technical point of view, what is the biggest challenge when conducting Mahler?

Maazel: From a technical point of view?

Yes, when conducting, how do you bring his music to life?

Maazel: Well, I think the first thing one needs to do is not to have any preconceptions about Mahler, his person and what he was trying to express. There are many conductors who bring literary conceptions to another language; music has nothing to do with literature. There are literary overtones, there are philosophical dimensions explored by the music in the language of music, but coming to Mahler and saying, “Here is a person who was born to weep and every phrase must be a tragic spirit” – nonsense! Mahler was, like all composers, interested in composing music firstly. What that music might mean was important to him, but first and foremost he was a composer, a technician who wrote music. He was interested in sound, in balance and sound combinations, and all this has little to do with philosophical connotations. Much of his music has been done injustice by conductors, and some of them rather good conductors, who had this preconception of Mahler being x, or y, or z. Mahler was x, y, and z, and a lot more; like all of us he liked to laugh, he liked to smoke a cigar, to tell a good story, to go for a walk, liked to conduct other people’s music. He was a normal human being with his foibles and his weaknesses and his strengths, and he was a marvellous composer. Strauss was a great fan of Mahler and conducted his music – I don’t think he was thinking about the philosophical bent of Mahler’s mind, he was interested in the music. Not that we should close our minds to the overtones, the implications, the connotations, the “philosophical whatever” of any composer’s music. It’s very important because there is a kind of soundscape in which one’s mind moves, in the world of truly inspired, great music, that’s quite true. But to verbalise that and to turn it into an interpretative approach is a very bad idea, it is very limiting, and does the composer an injustice.

Do you think there is a connection between his life and his music?

Maazel: Well, how can you disconnect anybody’s life from the music he writes, or the words he writes, or the paintings he paints: everything is autobiographical in that sense, but not necessarily specific. People tend to be so specific: ah, Beethoven was in love with Therese when he wrote a, b, c. Well yes, but keep in mind that a composer is a composer first and foremost. He writes music and very often what he manages to express with that is coincidental; he may be in a mood and not even know that he’s in that mood.

And then, with all due respect, great composers write music by taking dictation: I think every poet, every great author, every great composer will tell you that. The whole process of sitting in front of a blank page and not having a clue what it is you want to write and then ten minutes later you’re writing and composing furiously and can’t keep up with it – where does this come from? Yes, it comes from education, it comes from your background, it comes from your musical bent, but there is also a stream, a stream of consciousness or whatever, that particularly sensitive people tune in to, and they are fed from this. And what they are fed from this then goes through the whole refining process of this person: the life he has led, his thoughts, his age, his romantic interests, whether he’s the father of twelve or one or not at all. That stream must then be found, and it becomes much more personal. But, without wishing to sound metaphysical or mystical, there is no question in my mind that that stream is there and that we somehow tune in to it, its vibrations or whatever one may call it. I hate to use all these words, because verbalisation of this subject is always very suspect; I’ve always laughed at all attempts to verbalise just what I’m trying to verbalise. But, having composed a good deal of music myself, I became part of that process whether I wanted to or not. It’s very sobering because most people, and especially talented people and executive-minded people like myself, think we are totally in charge of our lives: we’re not [laughs]. I and so many other people like to think so, but I’ve been humbled too often not to say thank you when things do go well.

Talking about the stream of consciousness, Leonard Bernstein is quoted as saying that Mahler anticipated the catastrophes of the 20th century. Would you agree?

Maazel: Well, there was that period before the First World War when every sensitive person felt that there was a tsunami in the making: things were too quiet, things were too peaceful. If you look at painting at that time, there was a kind of unease, that calm before the storm, and Mahler, being an extremely sensitive person, undoubtedly felt that as well as many other things. He wasn’t just thinking about all the catastrophes of the 20th century when he wrote his Symphony No. 4. Yes, there are nostalgic and rather reflective, perhaps sad moments in that Symphony, but basically it’s a very happy work. What about the last movement of the Symphony No. 5? So many people hold it against him that he had the nerve to write a Rondo, a happy piece of music. Well, he had every right to be happy too, and the reason he wanted to write something like that was that, purely from a compositional point of view, he needed a counterweight. He had said all that he wanted to say about tragedy and irony and conflict, nostalgia, Sehnsucht [longing[, and so forth, and now, when the smoke has cleared, there is a happy and glowing statement. It’s a compositional matter, marvellously put together, and it is supposed to be just that. He wanted to write a Rondo, and why not? You see that’s what the problem is with people – preconceptions: ‘Ah well, that’s one of his weaker movements.’ Not at all, it’s one of his best movements, both philosophically and compositionally. It brought a kind of balance and equanimity that you need. If you’re really going to grasp the tragedy of life, you also need to be able to love life and enjoy it, appreciate the joys that it has to offer, and then in contrast, what man does with his destiny and how he mistreats his fellow humans and has been doing so for 35,000 years, which is really quite devastating when one thinks about it. And it goes on and on. Look at the world around us today, the so-called peaceful world, and there are trouble spots on this Earth where absolutely horrible things are happening, and it lies in human nature. And I think Mahler probably saw this very clearly, being an artist, and so many other people did too, it also lies in certain literature.

Is there a danger of overpowering Mahler when conducting his music?

Maazel: Well, many conductors go on ego trips when they conduct and they eventually think that they themselves wrote the music, and the results are really pitiful. We’re not there for that purpose: we are servants, we are serving music, and yes, we identify with it because it’s part of our bloodstream, but we have to respect the composer, and what we must give of ourselves a good deal is our talent to integrate the musical stuff, what the music is made of, into our physiological and psychological beings. And during that process we don’t become the composer, we become his music, and therefore we are able to bring that music forth with conviction and passion, without distortion. Distortion comes when the conductor thinks in terms of ‘this is me conducting’, and the natural flow of the music comes more when one accepts that one has been turned into a vessel, a means of communication.

Did your approach to Mahler change over the years?

Maazel: Well, everybody’s interpretative approach to all music must change over the years, unless you fall into the unfortunate habit – and this is also true of many performing musicians – of becoming an imitation of yourself. Then you just go on and on doing the same thing over and over again, in love with what you’re doing, in love with yourself, and not allowing yourself to grow and in the process of growing, to see the music that you’re performing, conducting, or singing, or playing, in an ever-changing light. You see it through the vista that one hopes one will gather as one grows older; it’s like a prism, refracting light in different ways. And certainly in the many years I’ve been performing music, my perception of it – and I don’t think this is self-deception – my perception of it has broadened and deepened. It’s not that I try to become wiser or broader or deeper, it’s just an inevitable process: I keep my eyes open as I grow older. Quite the contrary, I never enter denial, when I grow some white hairs I say ‘I’ve grown some white hairs’, so what? I mean it happens to everybody and as long as one is leading a full and rich life, one has every reason to be joyful and happy that one’s still alive. So gradually one comes apart, as the great French philosopher Montaigne wrote, ‘I have never met anybody who didn’t eventually come to a bad end’, meaning [laughs] if you live long enough that’s what’s awaiting you. Very interesting, because Montaigne was not only a great writer, he was a judge, a judge who sat in judgement for 20 years. He was on the bench for 20 years, so he knew people, and he was also a great writer. I often think of this remark because it is very, very apt.

So indeed I don’t think I flatter myself when I say that my music has grown in depth; the occasional musician will come along and say, I’ve played with you for 30 years and I think you’re better than ever. I’m immensely gratified by this because I’ve always tried to turn every performance into a learning experience – the next time I try to make a slight improvement here or there, where I felt that, technically, or architectonically, or in terms of phrasing, I could improve on it, that I could make it better, at least according to my own criteria. I’m always listening, but without being one of these artists who stands away from himself, or herself, and observes everything that’s happening as if it was being done by someone else. I don’t believe in that; I’m a visual performer, I put my energy into what I conduct and hope that I get it right. And whatever I don’t get right today I try to get right tomorrow.

Mahler wrote instructions for conductors in his scores, like “ab hier Halbe schlagen” [beat in two from here]. Do you follow these strictly?

Maazel: Oh, he was a marvellous conductor and he knew exactly what he was doing. I don’t always agree with what he writes, but then he probably wouldn’t always agree himself. I write music myself, and I think that I have prepared it perfectly with a foolproof orchestral score, and then when I start to conduct it, I begin to make changes. Today I was rehearsing a piece with the Vienna Philharmonic that they commissioned many years ago, called Farewells, and I saw a 5/8 bar followed by either a 2/8 or a 3/8 bar. So I decided it was just badly written and right on the spot I came up with a better idea, and so it’s been put in the parts and I had to relearn how to conduct those three bars, but why not? It is just a small edit to a rather well-written piece, and one does make changes. Sometimes I’ll write little notes like piu mosso, let’s move this tempo here, and then I’ll discover that it’s not a good idea. I wrote it because somehow I became impatient – composers are always impatient when they conduct their own music, and this is borne out of embarrassment, they want to get on with it. I’m always rushing through my own music, and I’m trying to stop that practice because I’m doing my music a disservice. It has its own speed and I should accept it and not fight it.

To get back to the question you asked about following Mahler’s instructions, I’m sure that he himself, when conducting his music, would not always follow his own instructions, which is right. Sometimes there are acoustical questions: something in the Symphony No. 2 would work very well in the Musikverein, but will not work in Avery Fisher Hall in New York – it just doesn’t work. And many times have I done the same piece with different orchestras, and I always adjust to the reality of these different orchestras, to the acoustics. And so I find myself making changes, subtle changes – very rarely major changes – but changes. And it is fascinating to me as a conductor that when I conduct my own music I find myself having to make changes, and Mahler did the same thing. Take his Symphony No. 5 – he not only made changes, but he re-orchestrated it, as if he hadn’t written four Symphonies before that, which were fantastically well orchestrated. So he was still learning on the job, though it’s hard to believe. But he was so right, I compared the two orchestrations and he was right in every instance. It did need improving, but what I ask is why he didn’t get it right the first time because his changes are very clear – they had to be made. It’s just that it was a new world, and he just felt that certain things had to be changed and he was quite right. So it’s a learning curve, and the sign that you’re a good composer is that you’re willing to learn and willing to change; the bad composers never change anything and suffer the consequences. I don’t want to imply that composers have to change their music: I don’t think Bach changed a note, he didn’t have time to change anything, I mean, with his 21 children and 2000 compositions he was a busy man. He had to come up with a new Prelude and Fugue, or whatever, every week. And I don’t think Mozart changed very much because he composed everything in his head anyway, and so he was simply taking dictation, he just couldn’t go fast enough. It was all there, he never stopped.

I just ask myself, had Mahler lived to be 100, what would he have written? He would have gone past Schönberg undoubtedly, because he was already writing twelve tone rows. You wouldn’t know that, but there is a twelve tone row in the woodwind if you look at the last movement of the G minor Symphony.

Where would Mahler have gone next?

Maazel: Oh well, he was well on his way. I mean look at this 10th Symphony, what there is of it, it’s yet another leap forward: there was no end to this man’s potential. Thank God Verdi lived as long as he did, because we got Otello and Falstaff – we would have had the equivalent from Mozart and from Mahler undoubtedly.

How would you describe the influence of Mahler on the Second Viennese School?

Maazel: Oh, a great influence indeed. Yes, they all knew their Mahler, yes indeed, a great influence. But then great composers go their own way. Look at Sibelius, he came so many years after Mahler and was totally uninfluenced, as was Benjamin Britten. They were geniuses, they had their own road to follow. Being influenced stylistically isn’t a good idea, one shouldn’t be influenced stylistically by any composer, but to be influenced by his vision or by his capacity to integrate so many elements, that’s a very good idea. But any composer worth his salt writes his own music after his own fashion and any similarities are really coincidental: between Mozart and Haydn they are really coincidental; between Beethoven and Mozart, very coincidental.

If you agree that Mahler was a modern composer in his time, where would you say his modernity came from?

Maazel: Well, what does modern mean? Of one’s time? Very few people live in the time they live – mentally, spiritually – because each one has his own rhythm and especially a person of great talent, like da Vinci. Where was he in his mind? 500 years ahead of himself. But he may not have been when he was doing a crossword puzzle (if one did crossword puzzles at that time), or when he was playing chess or whatever. He was a super-genius and so he was ahead of his time. Some people are born with their minds and their faces turned towards the past. So I think Mahler had many faces: he was looking forward, looking at the world around him, looking over his shoulder at the past. That’s what makes his music so amazing, because everything’s there, and in short he was a visionary. But I don’t think that was his main concern, I don’t think he tried to be modern, because basically, when you try to define it, the word doesn’t mean anything. Of today? Well, what’s the difference between contemporary and modern? Contemporary means ‘with your time’; modern means that what you’re doing seems one step ahead, but in what direction? Are there steps forward that one can take? Is there a point at which one’s supposed to have arrived? What does forward mean? Forward where, where are you going? All these words, if you really examine them, are very hollow and need to be used with caution. So when you say ‘modern’ I pull up short and ask you really what you mean by the word modern, because I’m not quite sure what modern means and I don’t think anybody else is. So many people have different interpretations of what modern might mean. Modern art museum, that’s a museum where you put modern art, but modern in what sense? It has to be really looked at, and I think these questions should be examined a bit more carefully.

The use of words in the world of art is very suspect and can lead to all kinds of misconceptions, and this very often acts as a substitute for what really needs to be done in order to bring art forward into the light. In terms of music we’re talking about performance; music does not exist except in performance so it needs to be brought back to this. They say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and despite all the CDs and DVDs that are out there, people continue to go to concerts. Why don’t they sit at home and listen to the so-called definitive performance of the Beethoven? They like to listen to their records two or three or four times, and then they have to go and hear it done again: why? Because it needs to be renewed, since there is no such thing as a definitive performance – and I say that with some regret, because I would like to think that the 300 CDs and LPs and DVDs that I have made could then be considered for eternity as definitive! Well, they were definitive that day. I myself never listen to my own recordings except out of curiosity [laughs], and some of them are damn good. And I’m certainly proud of everything I’ve done, but it was that time, that moment, definitive for the moment. And so we have to go out and make music all over again and by God, we do, because there are new audiences, new players, new acoustics, new halls, new circumstances, new everything. Because man is not only totally self-destructive but he also tries to renew himself, and if we go on this way eventually there will be nothing left to renew, but we keep trying, don’t we? And if we were to give up trying to renew ourselves – that is, to perform again and to have new ideas or other ideas, or to devote ourselves to constructive action – then the folks who are out there thinking only about destruction would of course win the day. So we have to hold off as best as we can, each one in his own way.

Why did it take so long for Mahler to be really accepted?

Maazel: Well, because his music has a very personal quality. Mahler is unmistakeable – you hear three notes and you know: Gustav Mahler. It is so personal that there is a lot of jealousy about; most people want to hear a rehash of what they already know, they want to feel comfortable. They don’t mind hearing just a little bit of pepper and salt there, something a little different, but basically it’s a repeat of what they’ve already heard a thousand times. Mahler – and this was my problem as a young musician – came out of nowhere, in a way he was saying things that no one had ever said before, and very boldly, with great self-confidence. This is very shocking for a professional musician, or someone who is going to be a professional musician, so I can’t imagine what it meant for the average listener. But gradually, thanks to great artists who believed in him and continued to perform his music, people began to recognise some of the tunes. And then if they could come to like one Symphony – like the Symphony No. 1 became quite popular and No. 2 with this fantastic chorus at the end – then the point was made and people began to lower their defences against this monster, this original. You know, ‘how dare you write music in a different way’, and it was jealousy. If you only knew what a role envy plays in art and also, I’m afraid, in politics. I think a professor wrote a book interpreting history only through night – that’s the name of the book – and day; forget the religious wars, and the political wars, and everything, it’s all envy. A group of people over here had a certain amount of corn, and the people over there had more corn. Oh no, we can’t have that, and the people with less corn attack the people with more corn. It sounds very primitive, but if you look at it carefully, that’s more or less what it boils down to, and that’s certainly true in the arts. God help a young artist who comes along, who’s original, who’s an interpreter or composer; he will instantly have an array of enemies in front of him.

If you read a book called A Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicolas Slonimsky, a fantastic musicologist, he has collected all the criticisms that have been written of masterpieces. For example, Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony was termed, by the leading music critic in Moscow, the ‘mad splutterings of someone in the last throes of the paresis of the brain’, that is, syphilis. Look at what was written about Carmen. However, there are two letters which are rather interesting. One letter says, ‘I believe this opera will become, in time, the world’s most popular opera’, signed Pyotr Tchaikovsky. And another young man heard the opera and wrote, ‘I have heard Bizet’s Carmen 20 times and I think it’s one of the most remarkable efforts ever made’, signed Johannes Brahms. The people who know music were always very objective and very honest; it’s the people who don’t know who are out there, and it’s not that they are completely ignorant, it’s that they’re jealous, envious. Anyone of value who comes along is torn to bits by all these folks, and I don’t know how any of us have survived this onslaught of envious and vicious attacks. It requires a lot of courage. Many, many people, especially performers, have come to grief when they’ve played the recital of their lives and been torn to shreds by the local, envious critic. Some of them have blown their brains out, some of them have quit, they’ve lost motivation, you know the story. And only the hardiest have survived which doesn’t mean that we’re the best, we’re just tougher than other folks, we’re either philosophical or get aggressive or whatever, and we just push on. Or maybe we have children to support and have no other choice [laughs]. Fighting back is often motivated by the same silly reasons that one is attacked for. So yes, I think this was caused by envy, not to mention the racial problems, which played less of a role than one might think. At that time, being Jewish or having a Jewish background was a factor, but not the main factor, because after all Mahler was given the position of Music Director of the Vienna State Opera. He had many opportunities to perform, so that was just one other factor but not the main factor, it shouldn’t be blown out of proportion. He was a genius and people are envious of geniuses, and it took a long time.

You were in the same position as Mahler was in the State Opera, you faced a lot of struggles too. Did you sometimes think that you where facing the same difficulties and conflicts that Mahler did?

Maazel: I would never have had the incredible nerve to compare myself to Gustav Mahler. That would have been the height of arrogance. I never really took any of this personally, because by that time I was in my early 50s and I had already begun to learn what all of this was about. And it didn’t take me very long to discover that we were basically talking about very, very few people. I worked in an opera house with several hundred people and from the first day I was there to the last day I was there, I had nothing but love and friendship and support from everybody, the entire Vienna State Opera. So it was the rank and file of the press, or the Culture Minister at the time, who insisted that I engage his wife and I refused to, so he said ‘you will pay for this’ and of course I did. So I paid for being an honest administrator, because in the contract for the Vienna Operndirektor the autonomy of his position is guaranteed, and no-one, not even the Culture Minister, may tell him whom to engage or not to engage. The opera director has to be protected, otherwise he may be victimised. During my first year I had [Fred] Sinowatz as Culture Minister who was not re-elected with an absolute majority, so he gave up the portfolio of Culture Minister and gave it, unfortunately, to Minister [Helmut] Zilk, who said that he was the ideal choice because he had never set foot in an opera house – a perfect Culture Minister! So we’re talking about two people: an angry music critic and a Culture Minister who was henpecked by a wife who wanted to sing with the Vienna State Opera, and I stood in her way, but we’re not talking about the public. When I left, there were bumper stickers saying ‘I love Lorin’ all over Vienna. So I had nothing but love and friendship here, and in many ways these were the happiest years of my life. It was very, very rewarding and very tiring; I worked 18 hours a day and ended up about 35 pounds lighter. I got up at 6am in the morning and I was conducting Falstaff at 9; constantly under pressure, constantly being whipped in the breast by one critic, Edgar, for reasons of his own. And I don’t think that disturbed anybody in Vienna, because Vienna has always been a hotbed of contention and so everybody kind of thrives on it. I was always treated well and felt very good here, so I never compared myself to Gustav Mahler for any reason because my life was quite marvellous here.

I finally left Vienna because of Zilk; I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. I was getting tired and I thought, as the Italians say, “chi me lo fa fare?”, why am I doing this? So I went back, and the day that I left Vienna, after my last Turandot performance, I had some concerts in La Scala, and the day after I was offered the position of artistic director at La Scala – the very next day. And do you know what I said? I said ‘I will never walk into another opera house for the rest of my life’ [laughs]. This is a great honour and so forth, but don’t do this to me, I can’t bear it, I just can’t live with it. And rightfully so, because I would not have been happy there. Valencia is quite different, because it is a new opera house, which I built from scratch, the musical aspect of it: orchestra, musicians, I chose one by one from all over the world, and it’s turned out to be absolutely amazing. I will leave in a little more than a year; one more season and that will be five seasons. But that was a work of love, and that was creating something completely from scratch. And yes, I’m going to China where I will be helping them to build an opera life in Beijing and Guangzhou, but I am staying away from opera houses, mainly because I wouldn’t have the energy to work 18 hours a day. These people are forever snapping at your heels, and I just don’t have any patience with it. Let them snap at somebody else’s heels.

Mahler conducted the Vienna Philharmonic so many times, do you think he was influenced by their sound, and also by their repertoire, especially by Wagner? He was a marvellous Wagner conductor. Do you think this experience influenced his work?

Maazel: Well it is interesting that he never wrote an opera; he conducted so many operas. There are many explanations for that which have been offered by greater minds than my own, but I rather think that, simply because he was so involved in the world of opera, he felt that he had integrated the Kunstform, the artform, into the way he looked at music. Though he used vocal elements, and though he often thought theatrically, I think the decision was a wise one. I don’t think he would have written the kind of opera that you would expect a genius to write. I think he felt too limited by his subject matter, because all the words that he chose, for example for his Symphony No. 3, they’re words that create situations, contexts. These words are frame-forming, but in terms of action – A doing something to B because of what C said to D, and E is there waiting with a knife, and F is there with gun – this wasn’t for him, it’s too specific. And coming back to your question, therefore, his conducting the Vienna Philharmonic must have had an enormous influence on him. Though curiously enough he was, like all pianists, I suppose, less interested in strings. Having said that, you will probably ask me, what about his Adagietto, or the last movement of different Symphonies where the strings play such an important role, or for that matter the first movement of his Symphony No. 10, and he wrote for strings fantastically well. Still, his concept was more cosmic, and the Vienna Philharmonic was always noted for its fantastic strings. So I don’t think it was that particular aspect of the Vienna Philharmonic that influenced him, but their wonderful music-making, their intelligent way of phrasing which they still have today – I think that probably had a major influence on him because Mahler is all phrasing. If you look at a score, you’ve got all these fortes and pianos and crescendos, accents, rubatos, and so forth: it’s all what I call the music behind the notes.

What would you have asked Mahler?

Maazel: What would I have asked him? Probably what his favourite cigar was, he loved cigars. I don’t know, I’m always very embarrassed to ask any composer any question because I am instinctively against verbalisations. I’ll ask him about a note; I once asked Stravinsky about a note in The Firebird. I showed him the score and it was obviously a mistake, and he said, ‘Oh, don’t bother, it doesn’t make any difference.’ Strauss was always saying the same thing: “Es ist mir wurscht – Fis, F, na, spielt keine Rolle” [I couldn’t care less – F#, F, doesn’t matter]. You get these ridiculous answers because composers need to be asked questions anyway, I mean good composers. So I don’t think I would have asked him anything, and I think I would have been very embarrassed to have him hear any of my interpretations of his music, as he was embarrassed when interpreting his own music. I don’t know whether you know that recording of his Symphony No. 4, on the piano. Yes, I mean it’s awful, it’s so indelicate and unfair – he certainly didn’t think that way. There is an explanation that he only had five minutes and he tried to record it as quickly as possible, that’s quite possible. And that’s not because he would ever have wanted to conduct his music that way, because that’s not possible; it’s just that he was embarrassed. Composers, great composers, are embarrassed by their music, as opposed to mediocre composers, who love their music. The more you love your own music, the worse you are as a composer. I mean of course you’re embarrassed, because it reveals too much about you. Everything you could want to know about Gustav Mahler is in his music. It’s like looking right into his soul, and that would embarrass anybody. Who wants to walk down the street and be transparent? People could look right into your heart and your mind, and that’s what you do when you listen to his music. So I have respect for his privacy; I would never have asked him anything [laughs].

Wonderful. This question sounds very simple, perhaps it’s stupid, but: What did Mahler want?

Maazel: What did he want?

To express, to achieve with his art?

Maazel: Well I think, as I said, he’s a composer, he had musical ideas, and he felt compelled to put them together, in the course of which his life experience, as he grew older, and the person he was, fed a lot of information into the notes so that the whole became much more important than the sum of the notes. After all, he changed a great deal between his late twenties and his late forties, because by the time he reached his late forties he knew that he had this infection in the lining of his heart and he knew he was going to die. That is something that could be cured today with one shot of antibiotics. It leaked out from his tonsils, probably, into his heart and that was it. And this is very depressing, to be 49 and know that you have two more years of life. No one had loved life more than he did, but it would depress all of us, even then when people didn’t live as long as they do today. So he was a different person, and by that time his music had taken a darker turn – well, wouldn’t it? He didn’t have the luxury, as Verdi did with Falstaff, of saying when it was all over life is just a joke, and man is the biggest joke of all. And yet, he wrote this incredibly transparent, light-hearted music, he wrote it at peace with himself, and shortly afterwards he died. He was at peace with himself and he lived long enough to have that luxury. Mahler didn’t. A dreadful tragedy, for him, and for all of us.

To answer your question, I think he would have wanted something very simple, something very prosaic. He just wanted to find the best way of putting the music that he heard in his mind together in the most effective way, and being true to his own state of mind at that time. He would, as you know, go off to his property and work in his pavilion and close himself off for six months of the year, and each summer was another work and another world which he entered into. And when you think of it, what a luxury – six months conducting Wagner, six months writing Mahler – what a life he had, one denied most mortals. So he was a remarkable human being and also a very tender human; very well-educated, his letters are masterpieces full of German grandeur. Astonishing – a very intelligent, well-read person. I’m not very fond of Alma as a person. And the way she later put all her husbands together in one book is not my cup of tea, and I’m rather sceptical that she wrote his music for him as she claims; a pretty arrogant person, highly intelligent, but he was much too good for her.

Did you meet her?

Maazel: No. I would not have wanted to.

Some say that a lot of his works are simply love letters, it’s all about her. Would you agree?

Maazel: Well, you know a man in love does use his art to express some of his passion, it’s true of everyone I suppose. Thank God he was capable of love; being able to offer love is a gift that is not given to everyone. You have to have passion and so many people, especially in today’s world, are born without passion. They are walking laptops, wearing earmuffs, or plugging in a pop tune or whatever. You look around and you really sometimes wonder, are these people still people? The human race is gradually being so corrupted by this noise and this dreadful stuff out there that passes itself off as music. It’s really pitiful. But not everybody is this way; I think the renewed interest in classical music on the part of young people is fantastic, totally wonderful. And they respond to a passionate performance of something, and they respond to music that has pulse and drama, and they want to get away from the world of rock and pop – give them a really viable alternative and they will.

Maybe the Mahler renaissance has to do with the way he expresses the feelings of modern human beings?

Maazel: Well maybe, and also the musical language that he found is, in a sense, timeless – I hate to use that word, I swore I would never use it, but there it is – very much like Beethoven or Bach, and to a lesser degree Mozart. Mozart is always incredible, fantastic, genius, but you can still see the wig, the clothes, the livery and buckles, and so on and so forth, whereas these spaces in Bach preludes are just cosmic. They just go on and on as if they’re not connected with any culture. And also Beethoven, especially in his last string quartets, is also cosmic, and a lot of Mahler’s music is of that nature. When talking about cosmic music, one should also not forget Anton Bruckner, who is not always referred to as a visionary. I consider him a visionary, because of these spaces. If you listen to his music as I do when I’m conducting – I rehearsed his Symphony No. 3 again today – it’s astonishing. You hear wonderful, cosmic sounds; very modern, very far ahead of his time. I think he’s very underestimated by folks who, because of the power and originality of Mahler, and his modern feel, tend to categorise Anton Bruckner as being post-romantic, maybe visionary, and certainly Mahler liked it.

Mahler conducted Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6. I think he was the first conductor to conduct the entire 6th Symphony, so Bruckner probably had an influence on Mahler.

Maazel: Mahler recognised the visionary quality of Bruckner.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler
Transcript: Flora Death
10.2.2010, Vienna
© Universal Edition