“Mahler is my point of reference”

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

Metzmacher: Oh my God. No, I don’t. I think the first time I heard Mahler was when I was conducting it, or maybe just before. I did the Rückert-Lieder first you know: it was long ago and I was very young and it was with Margaret Price. Let me think – that’s probably not true. I think I heard Mahler earlier in the context of Ives, which I was always very interested in, because there’s this story that when Mahler came back from New York he had an Ives score in his suitcase and wanted to bring him to Europe, and then unfortunately he died. Because there are some connections between Ives and Mahler, and I think I first encountered the music of Mahler through Ives. I think so, and I think it was most probably the 1st Symphony

We are already deeply into the subject of what Mahler means to modern music and how it developed? But maybe first let’s go back to your first experiences. When you started to conduct Mahler, what was the big challenge for you to deal with?

Metzmacher: Well, you know when you’re young you don’t think of challenges so much, you just do it. I was very intrigued from the beginning by the melodies, by the simplicity of the melodies. You always had the feeling that he took the melodies from what he heard around him. I had a book by Blaukopf, this famous book about Mahler, and what interested me most at this time was the description of when he went to the Jahrmarkt [country fair], this festivity. He describes at length how it felt for him to hear the different types of music around him as he went through the Jahrmarkt. He could hear a waltz here, a polka there, a brass band there. He could hear it all at the same time, but the perspective changed as he walked of course, because he was nearer to one source of music than another. And there is a quote in that book which I have been trying for years to find again, because I never forgot it. It said that he was very interested in that, in the Gleichzeitigkeit, that is in this simultaneousness in music. And I think the perspective in his music, the way certain things come out and others go back in very quick succession, is part of this. And this also interested him in Ives’ music, because Ives had the same idea and he really did it in his music.

There is this one place in the 1st Symphony where there are two things on top of each other, and I was very intrigued by that. I think that’s the first thing I remember with Mahler, that he brought different music together, with really, completely different things on top of each other, also like that place in Petrushka. So that interested me most in the beginning, because my Mahler experience came through Ives. I came to it through Ives because Ives was really my first experience of modern music, and I would say that Mahler is modern music; he is my point of reference I used to say.

So, did the door to Mahler open immediately for you?

Metzmacher: Yes. Yes, I would say that. I mean as a young conductor you dream of conducting Mahler. I think the first symphony I conducted was No. 5, years later, and then I worked my way through the whole catalogue. I think it’s different today; today I think it’s a little bit frightening, because there’s such an enormous amount of information and conflicting ideas and you need a long time to understand what is happening.

So the more you know the more difficult it gets?

Metzmacher: I think so, yes.

Were there Mahler conductors who influenced you, who you used as a point of reference in matters of interpretation?

Metzmacher: Well, of course I listened to Mengelberg and I listened to Bruno Walter – you know it’s a very general question, how you approach music. I think the advantage of Mahler’s scores is that he was a conductor himself, so he really made sure that everything was in the score. And I like that, but the question that goes on top of that is how much liberty you have beyond that, I mean how much did Mahler know about his own music? Of course, because he was a conductor the conducting is also described in his scores, much more than in others, but the question still remains: Where is my space? How do I approach it? And when you listen to these old recordings you are amazed by how different they are; nowadays we take the text really very literally, and I am afraid that you sometimes lose the mystery of it.

So I think there’s an ambiguity here: he describes everything in detail – for instance, even when you have to do a long upbeat, it always says this in the score – and you need to follow that, to be faithful to that on the one hand; and on the other hand you know that you have to find your own approach to it, because you have to open it up for yourself emotionally. And sometimes, like in very modern music, all these descriptions and indications can hinder you in doing that, because you’re so busy fulfilling what is asked of you that you may only come to the point where you feel free of all these ‘orders’ at a much later stage. So I think that is how I would describe my state of mind concerning Mahler.

I also like Symphonies 2 and 3 especially, because they are very long: I think it’s visionary to write symphonies that last longer than an hour and have two or even three parts. And then he asks you to be silent for five minutes, which nobody does actually – maybe one should do that. So I like the architecture of these enormous symphonies, especially No. 3.

I think he referred to No. 3 when he spoke about this Jahrmarkt scene. Maybe he never went further than this in his earlier years towards creating his own world. After the first movement you are simply struck by it, because it’s so powerful. As a conductor, do you require a special technique to organise these forces? You are a conductor who has experience of music that deals with these kinds of techniques.

Metzmacher: I think the biggest challenge with these big pieces is the organisation of time, or how to get the architecture right. I think that’s always the biggest challenge, and I personally like that very much; I like pieces that last an hour or longer, because in these the conductor really has an enormous responsibility. The piece really has to be built up with great economy because otherwise it will not last an hour, the tension will not last, and that is always a big challenge for me. And maybe I learned this with Nono, because I came to this from Prometeo, and there you have nearly two hours of music. It doesn’t really help you either because there is no development, there is just a being, so ever since I did that I have been interested in economy of time. And I think with  Mahler’s big symphonies you need that – I mean you need a lot of detail and expression and all that, but also you need a basic idea of how the whole piece will work. Take No. 3: in No. 3 you have this huge first movement; and then you have these very precious second and third movements; and then what I usually do is four, five, six, without interruption. And then you have this enormous Adagio at the end; I love to have an Adagio at the end, I like all the symphonies that end on a slow note. It has this very, very typical shape and a very special shape, and I like it more than the symphonies which have the usual Allegro; Scherzo; Adagio; Rondo form. I like the concept of Behauptung [affirmation], you know, as a composer you say: “Why should the symphony only have four movements? Mine has six, and I’ve put in a huge first movement and then I’ll put in a boys’ choir…” and with all these things you’re expanding the idea: I like that.

You spoke about emotionalising the music, on the one hand you have the aesthetics of, let’s say Bernstein, who really put himself into the music, and on the other hand you could conduct it in a dryer way. Would you say there is a danger of overpowering Mahler?

Metzmacher: Well it has to do with economy, as we mentioned. That’s my perception. Of course, I’m known to be more analytical. Myself I feel that at the heart of it there is the song, and how do you sing a song? And the song [in the 3rd Symphony] comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which is not particularly expressive in one sense, but in the German language it has more to do with the sense of inner emotion. For me it has to be more like Schubert, that sort of expression, so I hesitate to be too exuberant with the expression in Mahler. I think you have to find the song inside it. Of course after Symphony No. 4 – you know, 5, 6, and 7 – it’s a little different; these three symphonies are different because they are instrumental symphonies. But even then, the Adagietto is the famous example, where you can stretch it and make a big thing of it; or you can make it rather fluent and not so stretched out like Bruno Walter did, and people say that Mahler himself also did. You shouldn’t make it too big, because it is actually much bigger if you keep it more silent.

So to return to the question, there are two extreme ways of conducting Mahler: to bring your own emotion into the music; or to be very faithful to the text and to make it rather dry.

Metzmacher: You can’t really make it dry. I think every conductor brings in his emotions anyway, and the question is always, how do they fit with the emotions of the music? Is there a link? But basically I would say that if you say the song is at the heart of Mahler’s music – at least in the beginning, with the first four symphonies – my understanding of it is that it is more like singing inside, and so it shouldn’t be too much. You know it is a Volkslied (folksong) that comes from very simple, honest sentiments, carried for centuries. And I very much like this tone, even in the poems on their own, and there is a simplicity about it. I think Mahler was criticised a lot for using very simple tunes, but that is what I like. And there again you can put it into context with Ives, who used very simple tunes in his music, structurally they were very complex but the tunes were simple. You could even say that of Nono – if you think of the internationale and all that – that he sometimes uses very simple tunes, the structure remains very complicated but at the heart of it the material used is the simple song. I think the simple song contains much more true emotion than, I don’t know. I love Schubert, so in my opinion it is great anyway because I think Mahler is very connected to that.

And how do you see the relationship between Bruckner and Mahler? Would Mahler have been possible without Bruckner?

Metzmacher: For me they are completely different – completely. I’m not sure if there was any personal relationship, but I see it as two completely different worlds. I think Bruckner is all about the organ, and about sound in space and so on. Mahler is much more detailed, much more refined you could say; Mahler uses much finer material. When I hear Bruckner I always think of stones and rocks and mountains, not so much churches, but nature and big statements; I would say that Mahler is closer to the human soul.

Mahler also took his inspiration from nature and rural scenes …

Metzmacher: I know, yes, the bells. I’m not in Austria so often, but when I am and I go up the mountains and hear the dingalingaling of the bells, I always think of Mahler and of the loneliness which you walk into when you go up the mountains. The other day I was walking here, near to Salzburg on a very high mountain, and I was completely alone and it was very still. There were just some sheep and their bells were ringing, so I had to think of Mahler and of Webern.

In what way Webern?

Metzmacher: Because he also uses, the Herdenglocken [cowbells].

We’re deep into the discussion of how much Mahler’s music was influenced by his personal life. How do you see this relationship?

Metzmacher: I think obviously every artist is influenced by his personal life, but I don’t think I know his life well enough to comment, and for some reason I always distrust musicologists who say things like, “Because he met this beautiful woman he wrote this” and so on. Of course there is always a context, but I think an artistic mind has its own dynamic. I’m more interested in the fact that Mahler writes his 4th Symphony, and then at the end of the 4th Symphony has this incredibly beautiful song about going up to heaven. It’s like it’s a farewell, I always think of it as a farewell song to innocence, which he used to have or could afford to have until Symphony No. 4, and now he’s finally grown up, so to speak, he has left this all behind. And then he writes these incredible Symphonies, 5, 6, and 7; No. 8 I don’t know so well, I can’t talk about No. 8 because I never did it; and then No. 9, and Das Lied Von Der Erde, that is really a farewell. Bernstein has said wonderful things about it – you know this video where he speaks about several things, and I think he speaks about Das Lied Von Der Erde or Symphony No. 9.

So I’m more interested in this aspect of it, because in the end you only have the music and the music holds the story, it holds the things which are the most important to remember. The music is why a composer composes; his life is secondary to that. I’m inclined to believe that composers leave behind secrets for us in their music, and because they’re not in words it’s even more challenging to detect them. I strongly believe that they leave something in their music, which I wouldn’t tell anybody. I don’t know what that is in the case of Mahler, I’m not sure. The more enigmatic it is the more we keep guessing.

For example, in Symphony No. 6 in the last movement you always think, “it should be finished by now and it’s not”. And I’m sure that Mahler was completely aware that the last movement was very long, but still he went on and on and on; there is something which made him believe it should be that long. I find that fascinating, that he didn’t care that people would say it’s too long because he felt that it needed to be that long, so we have to find that urgency when we perform it to convey the understanding that it needs to be that long. There must be a reason for that, other than that he was just having fun writing a long symphony. I always feel with Mahler’s symphonies that there is a story behind them. It’s interesting of course that, in no. 3 for example, there were titles at first but then he wanted to get rid of them, because he didn’t want to be perceived as a musical storyteller. But in a certain way there are stories here.

Do they help you in your conducting, of No. 3 for example? If you know the title Pan erwacht [Pan awakes], would that help you?

Metzmacher: Well, that’s an association you know, you can feel that something is coming out of despair. Some people have also said that the symphonies are actually a continuous story: there’s No. 1, that’s the hero; and then No. 2, that’s the funeral; and No.3, I don’t know and so on. Maybe we will discover it in 2010 or 2011, when Mahler becomes the focus of attention.

What also intrigues me is that he is the first composer who really uses the orchestra ‘in perspective’. Usually an orchestra has one dynamic – they all play piano or they all play forte – but in Mahler’s music every single line has its own individual dynamic, so it all comes out. That is why I refer to this Jahrmarkt experience. I think that he very much wanted this Relief of dynamics, that is what he was dreaming of, that suddenly you would hear this or that like a camera zooming in or out on the orchestra. And I think this is often not exaggerated enough, if you think how important it was to him to have these dynamic markings in the score – they are like pop-ups, as we would say today in the internet culture. They create wings to really lift the instruments, not visually, but so that it creates a directness in the sound with all these effects. This is what I really like and I think, as a conductor, it’s a big challenge to bring out those different levels of dynamics in the orchestra. An orchestra is usually trying to do the same thing at a given moment, but that is not so in Mahler; they are forced to play pianissimo while their neighbour is playing fortissimo like mad [laughs]. So he brings a kind of individuality into the orchestra, in terms of the dynamics at least. And the more exaggerated that is, I think the livelier the performance will become, especially in the Durchführung [development] parts.

Would you say that in this sense he is an ancestor of modern music?

Metzmacher: Yes, absolutely. When I was music director in Hamburg I opened every season with a Mahler symphony, and I do that in Berlin too, because for me Mahler is the point of reference. My father was born in 1906 and I think he might have said that his point of reference was, I can only guess, but perhaps Beethoven or Bach. And of course I know about the enormous importance of Bach and Beethoven, but I would always say that Mahler is my point of reference. To explain, when you are a child you know your grandparents as you are growing up and this relationship spans the period of history that you can still feel, because you know the people. I think my grandfather was born in 1892 and my paternal grandfather was born in 1856, so he was older than Mahler, so that’s why I feel that way I think. I feel that the music I really understand as part of my history starts with Mahler. I would also like to understand the music that came before this and I think I do, but I would say that it feels more like history in the sense that, as a person, I have no connection with it at all. So I would say that Mahler is the first composer that I really feel directly connected to, and that’s my point of reference. And that is also because, as you said, modern music really starts with Mahler; I would definitely say that. So everything comes out of him.

So he expresses the condition of the human being and communicates it?

Metzmacher: I don’t know exactly what he did, but I think he opened up the doors. I mean look at the Adagio of the 10th Symphony for example; there you can feel the way he might have gone if he had lived longer: this enormous chord, the enormous complexity of the harmonies, the tonality of that piece. It is completely different to, say, the harmonic system of Tristan. And so he made the music of Schönberg possible; without Mahler, I don’t think you would be able to find a direct link between Schönberg and Wagner. I think Mahler is the composer who really moved things forward, or perhaps made it possible for the people who came after him to move forward as dramatically as they did in the 20th century. I feel that Mahler is the crucial figure there.

You directed a festival in Berlin on the subject of the crucial year of 1909 [“Breakthrough 1909” with the DSO]. How does Mahler relate to this?

Metzmacher: Well, you know the last programme featured Das Lied Von Der Erde. The programme was in this order: first Das Lied Von Der Erde, then the interval, and then Erwartung. They were written almost at the same time, so you can see Mahler looking back and Schönberg looking forwards. I would say it was a very important moment in musical history.

How do you see the influence of Mahler on the Second Viennese School, in terms of technique?

Metzmacher: I think the person who is influenced the most is Berg, in the way he writes his chords, and in that sense I connect Schönberg more to Brahms. I would say that Berg is the true successor to Mahler, also because Berg wrote operas, which I think Mahler would have loved to do. I don’t know why he didn’t because he conducted so many. And as for Webern, I always feel as though he takes the concentrate, the distilled essence of Mahler in a little bottle – I mean every single motif, every little melody in Webern reminds me of Mahler.

And there is also someone else we should mention, who learned a lot of Mahler and whom I consider to be a very important link into the 20th century, and that is Hartmann. Especially in the slow movements, in the Adagios, there are many, many moments that I would call a Mahler moment, especially in his Symphony No. 8. There is a wild second movement and then suddenly at the end the violins, completely alone, play this incredible line, very much up in the air, and it always makes me think of Mahler. It is a way of looking back, in a very painful way actually, because it was written in the 60s. I think that’s interesting; there are secret lines in music history, and they are like rivers in that you never know where they will pop up or where they will show again, and where they go on to, or if they will dry up and so on. And I think in Hartmann and of course also in Henze after that, there is something kept from Mahler.

Not forgetting Rihm …

Metzmacher: Of course, absolutely. And Nono, although Nono is a solitary rock anyway [laughs].

Did you talk to Nono about Mahler?

Metzmacher: No, he spoke about Verdi, not about Mahler, but that may have been because I unfortunately only knew him for a very short time, at the end of his life.

You said that in the 60s Hartmann was referring to Mahler, and we can see that the Mahler renaissance started in the 60s. Before that there were Mahler conductors, but it was not really in the repertoire. Bernstein went so far as to say that after the Second World War we were ready to understand Mahler’s obsession with suffering and redemption. Is it too speculative to say that Mahler could only speak to us after we had experienced the catastrophes of the century?

Metzmacher: I don’t know, because those of us who didn’t experience these catastrophes only know about it second-hand. I mean this might apply to Symphony No. 6, maybe, but other than that I don’t quite see that point. I don’t know enough about the reception of Mahler’s music. So did it really dry out during the 30s, or what happened? Was it played before? It was forbidden of course, and did it then not come back after the war?

Not immediately.

Metzmacher: Yes, but then you can also say that about Schreker for example – I think it’s more complex than that. I wouldn’t dare to say anything because I haven’t really thought about it.

When I spoke to Boulez about Mahler, he said that when he has had enough of the “bombastic Mahler” he really likes to go back to the refined Mahler. Is there a side of Mahler that you feel especially close to? You said you hadn’t touched the 8th Symphony so far.

Metzmacher: No, and I’m not sure if I ever will. It’s interesting that Boulez said that because I think that the most refined Symphony is No. 4, you know, because there are no trombones and it’s very light. I always felt very close to the 4th – it’s the most lyrical of all. It’s like Mahler took a step back. I really think that the last movement of No. 4 is a farewell, it’s a kind of cradle song, and it vanishes into this low E in the harp at the end and it really, really walks away. Morendo: something is dying there, I feel that very strongly. And then comes No. 5 with these big statements, but No. 4 is very close to my heart.

Adorno said it’s an als ob [as if] symphony. Do you feel that way too?

Metzmacher: You mean that it’s not really a symphony?

More that the gestures are ‘as if’. You know at the beginning, where people say it is close to a Schubert theme, he just pretends to write in this style. Every phrase is ‘as if’ he is writing like that but he does not.

Metzmacher: I don’t know, it’s too sophisticated for me [laughs]. I think that No.4 was actually the first symphony that I conducted

When you look back on your history of conducting the Mahler symphonies, are there any tricks you have discovered?

Metzmacher: As I wrote in my book, no. In a way I feel that you have to be on the edge to really do it right. It’s not the sort of music where you can watch yourself conducting; I think you really have to go into it, I would say it demands total commitment. Maybe all music does, but I think with Mahler it is especially the case. Although I would still say that because of the length of the pieces you must somehow keep a clear head, because it is extremely important to have economy in the timing of the movements. Otherwise you will find you lose the structure of the piece, and you will have a lot of emotions in a house which falls down: it will not help you. So finding the right balance between the two is maybe one of the biggest challenges.

Is there a danger as a conductor in being so emotionally involved, if for example you talk about the last movement of the 2nd Symphony. I mean on the one hand you have to give your emotion in order to create it, and on the other hand you have to be so focussed in order that you don’t lose control.

Metzmacher: Yes. You know the old saying goes that it doesn’t really matter what you as a conductor feel in that moment – it’s not about my feeling, it’s about the music. So you have to bring out the emotion in the music, not my emotion, which is a very minor thing compared to what the music has to bring. And sometimes I think the danger can be that we substitute our emotions for the emotion of the music, or we think that we are very emotional and that will transfer across – maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but the most important thing is that the music has the strength it needs. And as a conductor you sometimes have to be very economical in order to get this out. There is a wonderful passage about this in Busoni’s book – you know the famous little book about the Tonkunst [Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst] – a passage which I really like, where he speaks about exactly this point. And I think that book is from 1906, it’s from that time, so we’re right in the heart of the matter here.

As someone who believes in communicating music to younger generations – in your books for instance – I’m sure you would agree that simple questions are sometimes difficult to answer, but what would your answer be if someone asked you, what Mahler wanted?

Metzmacher: I think what’s really outstanding is that each of his symphonies has its own universe; I would say that he tries to describe the world in every one of his symphonies – like a great novel would do, his music tries to describe the reality of the world. He is not interested in parts or aspects, he always just wants the big picture. Every symphony is a real universe. And they are also very different from each other, come to think of it – there is perhaps only one other composer you can say that about, and that’s Beethoven – they are really very different. With each symphony he is really writing a new book, maybe about the same thing, but he writes a new book. And that’s fascinating, and to me it’s as though they are stars in a galaxy.

It seems to be that there comes a point when we are stuck with these nine symphonies, because as a human being you are not able to write more. There is no way that you could create more than nine symphonies in your life, because there is a limit to your ability; to your forces; to your fantasy; to your creativity; to your ability to create a new symphony in the sense that you are creating a universe. There’s some truth in that, there must be: the magic number nine, I don’t know where it comes from.

That’s what Schönberg said; he remarked that there was this limit to your growth. Is Mahler an example to you, as a conductor who fought for new music in his time and really stuck to his position on this?

Metzmacher: Yes, he was always a big example to me, especially as an opera conductor, you know as Generalmusikdirektor. I think it’s amazing when you think of how many performances he conducted, when working in Hamburg and especially in Vienna. And also the way he prepared the Regietheater – I mean he was the first conductor who was interested in theatre. This is something I really admire, and that’s a tradition I certainly try to live up to. Mahler was the first one to work together with certain stage directors and set designers, because he understood the importance of creating a music theatre production. Unfortunately that’s a tradition which even today has not taken hold completely, because many conductors still think, “they do their theatre on stage, I do my music in the pit”, which I think is a complete misunderstanding of opera. So I read a lot about what he did with that, especially when I was in Hamburg, and I really try to do it in his tradition. I think it’s very, very important to understand the theatrical aspect of opera music and to bring it together with the action on stage. It’s crucially important. Since he never wrote an opera himself people sometimes forget about this side of his life, but it was a very important part of his life. After all, he only composed in the summer and the rest of the year he was fighting for music theatre, he was fighting for music in general in the concerts.

We should also mention that he reorchestrated a lot of music, which nowadays you would be killed for doing, because we now want music to be as historically correct as possible: only that has authority. But Mahler didn’t care, he just reorchestrated the pieces because he thought they were better that way. It’s amazing actually, and I think that’s also a very important part of his life. I think today people would scream if they heard what he did with Beethoven and Schumann. So he really was an innovator on all fronts, he was a pioneer – obsessed, maybe.

So when you had your own struggles in Hamburg or elsewhere, did you think, Mahler faced this too?

Metzmacher: Yes, yes of course. I think there is a very important tradition which runs through Mahler, and maybe Klemperer in Berlin, and Gielen in Frankfurt – there are some people who really, really fought for a new approach to opera and I certainly do respect that a lot.

I just want to come back to Nono and Mahler. You said your experience with Prometeo helped you when you were conducting Mahler, can you explain this?

Metzmacher: I think Prometeo helped me in a lot of ways. Maybe there is this inner contradiction in Mahler’s music, we know he was always changing the pieces after he performed them: he changed instrumentation, he changed dynamics, he changed indications in the score. So in a way the music was always a work in progress – in the tradition of Schubert and Der Wanderer, let’s say – and there is a link to Nono here because Nono is just a work in progress. You have to approach it in a new way each time, that’s what he demands of you. And I think Mahler would actually have said that too, although he writes everything so explicitly in his scores. Thinking about it now, you could say maybe he wanted to fight his own inability to make a final decision by constantly renotating his scores, because he didn’t want his doubts, or his new feelings about how it should be played and how the music should go, to be there for anyone who lived after him – maybe that is at the heart of it. Because he started this tradition of writing everything meticulously in the scores and that has very much influenced music that came after him. Composers began to think, I really have to mark it very precisely, whereas composers before him very often leave us in doubt about what they really wanted – in terms of tempo or whatever – and you struggle a lot with that. Mahler didn’t do that, but maybe it’s also the wrong idea.

Having met Nono, I know that he was only interested in things he would not be able to write down in the score. He would come and talk to me about the sound and when I wanted to ask him things about it, I asked him in the usual terms – loud, soft, attack, articulation – everything that you can really write down in the scores, and he said, “No, no, no, no, it’s the quality of sound I dislike.” And he didn’t mean quality in the sense we use it today, meaning very polished and soft and round; he meant it in an older sense of the word: the characteristics of the sound. He was very interested in this and he challenged you to look for it, never to think you have done it and that you can keep it in a bottle now and just open it up whenever you do Nono; he challenged you to always look for it again. And I think Mahler was probably similar in that, although he wrote everything in his scores, so maybe we shouldn’t feel too sure about that. We should look behind it, because perhaps he tried to hide this necessity always to be searching for the right balance in the orchestra, the right sound, the right arrangement in the hall, the right acoustics. Maybe he tried to hide all this behind a very meticulously notated score. And so today we say, “Okay this is fine, I can do it, nobody can say anything.” Of course I will always try to do the pianissimo but I think, knowing that he was doubting and changing things himself, we should keep that in mind. You know, when I did Al gran sole here I went to Venice and I looked at the first version of the piece, just so that I could know what Nono had changed. Knowing him, maybe three years later he would have changed it again, so I marked it all in my score and during the process of working on it I sometimes thought, maybe what he first thought wasn’t such a bad idea. So I think it’s always very important to know the steps the composer went through to arrive at the final version – I think this tells us a lot, and we will never know if it was really the final score. And when you come to Symphony No. 10 you realise that suddenly you feel lost, because the markings are very scarce in the Adagio and you can only guess. Suddenly you are left with your own doubts and thoughts, but maybe one should learn from that that one shouldn’t feel too sure about the other pieces, just because he wrote everything down.

Interview: Wolfgang Schaufler, Universal Edition
Transcript: Flora Death
5.8.2009, Salzburg
© Universal Edition