“Conducting Mahler the rubato is essential”

Maestro Honeck, the first question is always the same – do you remember when you heard the music of Gustav Mahler for the first time?

Honeck: I remember it very well. I was a member of the Austrian Youth Orchestra and we went to Berlin to participate in the Karajan Competition. Several youth orchestras from all over Europe were taking part and I heard the German Youth Orchestra ‘Junge Deutsche Philharmonie’ performing Mahler’s 1st Symphony. I was extremely impressed right away, not only by the big sound – other symphonies also have a big sound – but what impressed me very much was the way Mahler treated the darkness and also the special meaning of his music, for example in the third movement. It might have something to do with my own experience because I lost my mother. She was the mother of nine children. I took part in the funeral, of course, and the way this funeral was conducted reminded me a little bit of this music. It might have been connected to this. I must have been 13 or 14 years old at the time and it was remarkable for me. It was probably one of the most important moments for me. I was almost shocked that this can happen with music, that it came into my life and into my heart. Since then, Mahler has been a part of my inner heart.

So you would say that Mahler’s world opened up immediately to you?

Honeck: I would say so. I didn’t understand it, really. I only learned that later on. But I already felt the world of Mahler and his way of expression – that he could go very deep into the darkness, deeper and darker and wider than any other composer I had experienced before. At that time, it was like a modern film that I saw for the first time; a programme that, as a young kid, I couldn’t understand. Now I understand the story, hopefully [laughs]. But at that time, it was very new for me. How he treated the brass, how he treated the lower instruments and how he conveyed his message through Volksmusik [folk music]. I love Volksmusik very much, but I didn’t understand the background or, as Mahler put it, ‘what is behind the music because this is much more important than what I have written’. It’s more important what he did not write. I felt this immediately, but, at the time, I didn’t fully understand it.

We are here in Vienna where Mahler enjoyed great success at the Staatsoper. At the same time, he was attacked in a way composers rarely are. He faced such struggles. Where did these conflicts come from?

Honeck: Well, it was partly his personality, for sure. He was an extremely professional conductor and he wanted everything to be perfect – he demanded this from himself and also from the musicians and singers who he worked with. So, in a way, he was very radical. And the other thing that always amazes me when you go back to the time in which Mahler lived is what happened to the symphony. The symphony was still the Holy Grail – Beethoven, the hero, of course Mozart and Haydn, Schubert and Schumann, Brahms and Bruckner – they treated the symphony as a whole and as a ‘Heilige Kunst’, a ‘holy art’, so to speak. And now there was a composer who started to write music that one hears in a salon orchestra. We have to bear in mind that at this time, and also later on, many of the musicians of the Vienna Philharmonic, of the ‘Hoforchester’ [Court Orchestra], spent their free time in wonderful summer retreats, playing in salon orchestras. There they played music by Johann Strauss, transcriptions of ‘Tannhäuser’ for example, all the marches, gallops, polkas, waltzes, everything. When they came back from holiday and played once more with the Vienna Philharmonic, they suddenly experienced a composer who put all these elements into his compositions. So you can image that the musicians at the time thought that this was something cheap and trivial, unlike their holy art. They probably didn’t understand what kind of a connection he had built with the society, with the way people lived their lives, with the holy art and the Volksmusik. Nowadays, we understand it, but at that time they didn’t. And even now, when I was playing in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, some members told me that they didn’t like Mahler because they found his music too trivial. They found it too normal.

That’s a very interesting story about Gustav Mahler and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. As you said, you played a lot of Mahler with the Vienna Philharmonic – can you tell me about the experiences you’ve had with different conductors and about who influenced you?

Honeck: Well, when you play in a wonderful orchestra like the Vienna Philharmonic, you have the opportunity to watch all the best conductors in the world. And it’s true that you can learn a lot from all of these conductors, no matter how different their approaches might be. I still remember wonderful concerts, and especially rehearsals, with Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Carlos Kleiber and also with Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado and other great conductors, including James Levine. There are a number of conductors I could mention in this context. Almost all of them treated the music very seriously, within their own means of expression and of conducting orchestras. It was very impressive for me to observe that, in order to make music and to bring across a message and the content of the music, you have to believe in the music. I was always amazed watching Carlos Kleiber conduct because I always felt that he believed in what he was doing. I should probably also mention Nikolaus Harnoncourt, he knows exactly what he is doing and believes in it, just like Leonard Bernstein did.

I also had the wonderful opportunity to talk with Leonard Bernstein personally when I was offered a job with the Zurich Opera House. I asked him ‘What do you think about this? Should I leave or should I stay here? What is your opinion?’ And we talked for a whole hour after a rehearsal. This was amazing for me, how this great conductor treated musicians. He was always the kind of person who wanted to help others, especially young people.

Do you remember any specific Mahler experiences during your time as a musician in the orchestra that were important to you?

Honeck: I played Mahler’s 6th Symphony under the direction of Leonard Bernstein – that was very impressive for me. I also played the 7th Symphony under Lorin Maazel’s baton and he has an exceptional love for Mahler’s music. Then there was also Claudio Abbado’s love for Mahler’s music that impressed me tremendously. I had the opportunity to organize the first concerts of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in my capacity as Claudio Abbado’s assistant.

So I’ve had many experiences with the music of Gustav Maher that I would not want to miss.

Can you compare these different approaches to Mahler and also compare them to your own?

Honeck: I think that it’s like a puzzle that you have to put together. First of all, you have to understand his music; you have to concentrate on the score and try to figure out the background and the meaning of the music – what kind of atmosphere and mood prevailed when Gustav Mahler composed his music, what the circumstances were. And also what the difficulties are – we have the great privilege that Gustav Mahler was a conductor himself, so he wrote down a lot of things. But I would say one of my approaches, after I heard all these different interpretations and played and conducted Mahler myself, was that I developed an increasingly strong interest in the old Austrian Bohemian Volksmusik. I was forced by my father, who was a very simple music lover and did not have a big knowledge of music, to play the zither – an Austrian folk instrument. I didn’t like it very much, but because my father wanted me to, I played it. I spent two years with a teacher who could hardly read the notes. I had already had lessons at the Hochschule [University of Music and Performing Arts] in Vienna as a violinist. So this teacher always wanted me to play in a certain way and I protested ‘But it doesn’t say that in the music’ and he persisted ‘You have to play it in this rhythm’, and so on. So we had this little battle going on. I played all the minuets, all the marches, all the waltzes on the left hand, learned how to produce the sound on the zither, the bass and to accompany too early or later. He was very stubborn, this teacher. He said ‘That is our tradition!’ So after two years, I stopped. Later on, when I was working and studying Mahler’s scores, I was back in this world and I realized that these two years had been very important for understanding Mahler’s music. Because the Viennese way of playing is very different sometimes to what we hear and experience even here in Vienna. You don’t play what is written in the score, but you mustn’t improvise too much either. So how does one do it? What I had learnt was the art of rubato playing. And this is also in the music of Gustav Mahler! The way that musicians a hundred years ago played in the salon orchestras – it was natural for them because they were trained in those salon orchestras to play the waltzes of Johann Strauss in a certain way; they didn’t have to write it down. And neither did Gustav Mahler. He wrote a lot of things down in his scores that are very important, but this he didn’t because the musicians played it anyway.

So for my interpretation and my understanding of Mahler, this is very important. Recently, someone told me ‘Your recording of Mahler’s 1st Symphony sounds so extremely modern and new’, and I said ‘No, it’s not really new. I was simply trying to go back a hundred years and to think about how the rubato was to be played.’ To our ears, a hundred years later, this actually sounds new and modern, but it’s not really modern.

Taking about different interpretations – Leonard Bernstein, who made Mahler very popular, is often blamed for overpowering Mahler’s music and for showing his own emotions too much. On the other hand, there is a kind of school that plays a very humble and dry Mahler. Where does your way fit in?

Honeck: I always try to work out the meaning of the music. The music tells you what you have to do. I am a big fan of chamber music, I have always loved it. I grew up with chamber music; Haydn quartets, Schubert and even the Bruckner Adagios – this is great music for listening to each other and exploring the depths of the music.

When Mahler asks for a certain dynamic and a certain way of reading the music, you have to always think of chamber music, in my opinion. How can you make an explosion, how far can you go? If everything is loud, then what is left? If everything is soft, what is left? So you have to point out the climaxes, and, just so that there is no misunderstanding, climaxes don’t equal loudness for me. Climaxes can also mean softness. And there are hundreds of moments in Mahler’s music when you have the climaxes in the silences, which is great. And I would like to work this out. In the first movement, for example, it’s not only the beginning; it’s not only like the third movement in the trio which describes a countryside idyll, it’s also in the last movement when the first moments of the first movement are suddenly coming back. But they come back as an idea, like a memory of things that happened in your childhood, so it must sound like it’s far away. This is one of those incredible moments – the softer you get it, the better it is and the stronger it is. On the other hand, some of these explosions that describe his desperation also need to work out. Or the beginning of the second movement of Mahler’s 1st Symphony – this cannot sound rustic enough because he wanted to establish a heavily rural ländler in this music, so I would not feel that it is light and joyful circus music, rather it has to have a deep understanding of the ‘Lederhosen-sound’ that we experienced in the old salon music.

So this is the way I see it and this is the way that I think Mahler’s music should be treated. But Leonard Bernstein is one of my heroes and he was so honest in his music-making, he felt it like that. And it was always convincing, I think. It was great.

Would you say that Mahler’s complicated personal life influenced his music?

Honeck: Definitely, because Mahler was honest himself. He brought all his different emotions to his music – his desperation as well as his feelings of exaltation. You will feel his childhood experiences everywhere in his music. For instance, in the fourth movement of the 4th Symphony, with the angles and ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’, the boyish element in it …

So all these childhood experiences are there in his music – his disappointment with love, his first loves as well as a sense of desperation. Also, he was thinking about the meaning of life, at a time of transition, at the turn of the century, when Vienna played a very important role, also politically. There was this feeling that the world would be destroyed, this apocalyptic view of the future. But he also incorporated a feeling of being in heaven; he put everything into his music that was in his heart, in the heart of someone I would call a great human being. But then again, he demanded so much that he could also be a little bit arrogant and nasty to other people. But what a thinker! My personal view is that he loved humans very much and he demanded a lot from them.

He, together with Anton Bruckner, anticipated the entire 20th century. What we experience now, in 2010 and 2011 which are both Mahler years, with our problems with nature and with the environment – isn’t there something of this already in his music, all these apocalyptic elements? I think so, and I find that this is what makes it so modern and I think that this is what’s so fascinating in his music, what makes it sound so recent, even though it was composed a hundred years ago.

So you agree with Bernstein who said that Mahler anticipated the catastrophes of the 20^th century …

Honeck: … and the beauty of the 20th century – we must not forget this. The catastrophes are very important because they create this sort of effect, but the beauty is also there. I myself was born after the war; there has not been a war, isn’t it great? But many people experienced wars. There was probably no time in history that was as terrible as the 20th century. But in the second part of the 20th century we have experienced the beauty of life – a great life with its technological advancements and developments.

What would you have asked Mahler?

Honeck: That’s a very difficult question, but I would probably have asked him to compose more music, especially for soloists. I would like there to be a Mahler violin concerto, or cello concerto or a piano concerto. Or better still, an opera by him – we know that he loved opera very much and that he conducted a lot of opera. He was the director of the Vienna State Opera, so why not compose an opera?

On a more personal note, I would have asked him what he thought about the meaning of life, about death, about what happens after we die – this would have been a very interesting conversation, I think. He already gives a lot of answers in his music, but answers that we first have to search for.

Let me ask you another question that might be difficult to answer – what did Mahler want?

Honeck: Well, first of all, he describes his own life in his music, which has led some people to think that there was too much of his own ego in his music and that he didn’t write for the people. I don’t think that this is really true. He was so honest to describe his own feelings. He wanted, and he probably needed, to write down what was in his head, like all great composers, just like Beethoven described it. All great composers wanted to impart a message to the people – Mahler wanted to have people share his own experiences and he also wanted to give an answer to problems people might be experiencing. For instance, how many people tell me that they start to cry when they listen to the 2nd Symphony, the ‘Resurrection’? Why do they cry? Because Mahler was able to create an atmosphere of heaven, an expectation of a glorious life after death. The same thing that Mozart described once in a letter to his father ‘Don’t be afraid of death. Death is my best friend. I never go to bed without thinking that I might not wake up again the next day.’

So Mahler was extremely interested in these questions and he probably knew that every human being was born to ask these questions. There is no person in the world who does not ask these questions at some point in their lives. But a lot of people don’t want to give answers or look for the answers. And I think Mahler realized that he could give answers through his music and that’s what he wanted to present to the audience. And he knew that at the time in which he lived, people probably wouldn’t understand his music, so he wrote his music not only for himself and the people that did understand him, but also for future generations.

He knew that we would understand him. And don’t we understand him now? We understand a lot. To me, he is so wonderfully close when I am studying the score that it feels as if he was sitting next me.

‘My time will come’ as he put it [laughs] …

Honeck: [laughs] Yes, exactly! ‘My time will come’.

Which side of Mahler can you most relate to – the bombastic Mahler or the more refined Mahler?

Honeck: I just conducted Mahler’s 4th Symphony and I am very impressed by this piece because he reduced the orchestration – he didn’t use any trombones. His approach to it was like Haydn’s style, in a neoclassicist way. I was so impressed that he could convey the same message with this reduced orchestra as he was able to do with the 8th Symphony or his impressive 5th Symphony or with the 2nd Symphony or 1st Symphony. The climaxes have this very bombastic sound; they don’t have to be bombastic, but they can be. And I am very impressed that he could convey his message through this simplicity. And it also shows that there is always something behind the music – you just have to listen to the second movement where he tuned the solo violin one tone higher, creating a new colour, where he used the upbeats of Volksmusik in a way that you feel it’s not true that it’s simple, cheap salon music – you feel that there is something more sinister, describing the world of devils and the world of angels, like in the last movement. This is also the reason why I use a sort of boyish voice for the singer because it says ‘Des Knaben Wunderhorn’ as opposed to a woman’s Wunderhorn. I wanted to use this because the innocence of a child’s voice creates a stark contrast to this sharp Austrian traditional music.

These moments are incredible for me and if it’s possible to work it out, then it can be a great experience.

Of course, the ending of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony – who would like to miss this ending, this climax? Who would like to miss the climaxes in the 5th Symphony which he goes on to destroy again and again, when you feel he couldn’t find the answer? Everything in Mahler’s music is there for a reason. The climaxes need to be there, but the simple music, or the not really simple, but rather very chamber-music like passages, have to have the same quality as the impressive and loud music.

What is the biggest technical challenge for a conductor performing Mahler?

Honeck: Conducting the rubato. We know that conducting, for instance, ‘Parsifal’ or other music by Wagner – although it has many challenges, don’t get me wrong – can be much easier than conducting Johann Strauss. Strauss is extremely difficult because you have to move a hundred people at any moment in a different direction, and if you make a mistake, it results in an unnatural and artificial interpretation. I think that the same is true for Mahler’s music. The challenge of conducting rubato is immense with Mahler’s music, but it also gives me the possibility to give the musicians a certain freedom, and also to allow myself to maybe find another way in the very moment that I am conducting a concert, provided that I find the right way to play and conduct the rubato. This makes Mahler’s music an extremely great adventure, if you can do this.

Of course, you can rehearse everything and you don’t need a conductor, so to say. But then it is rehearsed and the audience will probably hear that it is rehearsed. In my concerts, I would like people to feel that everything is coming naturally and feels very Viennese or Czech or Hungarian – like the old Austrian tradition. It’s true in the moment and it’s right to do it, but it takes a lot of effort.

Do you think that the sound of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra influenced Mahler?

Honeck: I am sure that it did because they were a great orchestra. We know that Mahler was in Kassel and had another orchestra in Germany, in Hamburg; that he also heard the Czech Philharmonic and that he came to Vienna and worked with the great musicians of the time. I am sure there were many moments when he was thinking about certain Viennese instruments that we still have today. But we also have to bear in mind that he worked in Amsterdam and in New York, where some different instruments were used. So I am sure that Mahler’s main interest was to get out the message in his compositions.

By the way, he probably needed to rehearse a lot more than we do today because nowadays, musicians are technically much more advanced than they could have been at that time. I think Mahler would have been overjoyed with the standard of today. That might also be a reason why he sometimes got a little bit angry during rehearsals or attacked individual players in the orchestra personally. It was because he could not get the result that he wanted. If somebody didn’t use the whole bow, he attacked them.

There is one other thing that is very important to me personally which has nothing to do with the interpretation – the set-up of the orchestra. For Mahler I use the original set-up, how he would have heard his symphonies, with the second violins on the right hand side and the celli and bassi, together with the first violins, on the left hand side. It’s fascinating how Mahler’s music becomes more transparent because of this. He once wrote in a letter ‘Why don’t the second violins play more? I have composed it in this way’. This means that if you sit in the audience, you will have a stereo effect, with the first violins on the left side and the second violins on the right side, so if they enter into a conversation with each other, the music will come from two different positions. This is very interesting, especially for Mahler’s music. This set-up changed after the 1920s or 1930s into what we know today. So I think to hear Mahler in that way might also be a very nice experience.

One last question – why did it take so long for Mahler’s music to become popular?

Honeck: I think that it definitely has to do with his Jewish background. As we know, anti-Semitic sentiments were growing in Vienna at the time. And during the terrible time in the 1920s and 1930s, there was no way that Mahler’s music could have grown in popularity. We have to be really thankful to Leonard Bernstein and especially to Rafael Kubelik – we must not forget this wonderful conductor who started the Mahler renaissance even earlier than Leonard Bernstein.

The second reason is that his symphonies were misunderstood. They still have this reputation of being trivial, of not really constituting high art or of containing too much Volksmusik, as I described before. This probably prevented some people from loving his music, especially in the German and Austrian cultural society where Beethoven was revered as a hero, and Schubert, Brahms and Bruckner were those who created symphonies. Gustav Mahler went too far in their opinion. That was a big misunderstanding, but good music, particularly the best music, will have its time, and this time was in the 1960s.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler
Transcript: Agnes Vukovich
25.5.2010, Vienna
© Universal Edition