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Thank you so much!
Guten Tag — ladies and gentlemen — meine Damen und Herren.
Ich spreche nicht Deutsch.
Sie erlauben mir, in English fortzufahren?
I will be very happy to tell you then how happy I am and honoured
to be here in your fabulous city
and in this what is called, deservingly, a temple of art,
and to stand before your very great orchestra,
whose invitation to me is certainly one of the greatest honours of my life.
Any musician...
Any musician accorded the privilege
of standing in front of this group of musicians is one greatly honoured.
And I treasure this moment.
Also joining us today is Anne-Sophie Mutter, who you all know.
You certainly know that Anne-Sophie Mutter is many things.
She's one of the world's greatest violinists,
she is a wonderful mother,
she brings honour to her country
And in going to Australia and to Asia, South America, North America, Europe,
she's indeed a very great world citizen.
And it's again an honour also and a privilege
to welcome to the stage Anne-Sophie Mutter.
So thank you very much.
What is coming now is the end of “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial” —
many of you will remember the film.
It was directed by Steven Spielberg.
He and I have been working together for, I think, 44 years, something like that.
And it has been like a very good marriage.
We haven't had any arguments.
We don't have to talk to each other every day.
So far it's working very, very well, I hope!
This end of “E.T.”, you'll hear the music,
it begins very quickly, in an agitated way,
when the little earth children are on their bicycles. They're trying to get E.T. back
to the spaceship so he can go back to his home.
And they are pursued by the police and they go quickly on their bicycles,
faster, faster, faster, achieving what we can imagine is “escape-gravity” velocity!
Maybe a physicist here will tell us,
35-miles-an-hour — something like that — escape?
And they've escaped the gravity speed and fly over the moon —
and we accept it perfectly! It seems very natural.
They land very gracefully on the ground, you remember, and set E.T. down.
And then there's some sentimental music coming at the end,
which accompanied the dialogue between E.T. and his little earthling friends
as E.T. departs.
And then at the end of the music,
there's a fanfare and flourishes from the orchestra that complete the film.
What I love about these kinds of concerts is that
you can hear the orchestra
and you can hear the contribution that all of our orchestras make to these films.
We go to the theatre and we don't notice the virtuosity
that's been put into the soundtrack.
And now we have one of the greatest orchestras in the world doing it for us.
You can imagine a composer's delicate vanity, being able and satisfied
by having the orchestra play it without the distraction of the film!
All the notes aren't covered up by spaceships,
or horses' hooves, or dialogue or whatever —
the enemies of music! I shouldn't put it that way, but...
This is the end of, the orchestra's contribution to the end of the film “E.T.”.
Thank you ladies and gentlemen. A word or two about “Star Wars”,
all nine of them.
When we first began this project in 1977,
the writer, director, producer George Lucas, who you're probably familiar with,
gave us no indication at the time that there was to be a second film.
So, I watched the film,
and I saw Luke and Leia, and I thought they were two attractive young people.
And they were doing their comedy scenes and their action scenes.
So I made the assumption that at the end of the film and in their future,
they looked to me like they might become lovers
and be parents, and have a life together.
And two years later, the second film, George Lucas says to me,
“No, no, no, they're not lovers, they're brother and sister”!
So I was off by a little bit, but nevertheless we play the love theme.
This is one of the themes from the second film, “The Empire Strikes Back”,
that will be included in this little triptych that we'll do.
And then finally the “March” from the very first episode.
We've just completed the ninth one — I think it's in the theatres here now —
so we've put a bow on it, which I think,
at least from my own personal point of view and contribution,
that will be a nice tidy number — nine.
So here are three little pieces from “Star Wars”. Thank you.
Thank you.
This little piece is from a film, “Cinderella Liberty”,
by Mark Rydell some years ago,
played by Marsha Mason, who's a fantastic actress.
And it was the story of a girl, a very simple, straight line in her life,
and she made a few wrong choices and another few wrong choices
and her life became unravelled. It was very sadly sweet and very beautiful also.
This is the theme from “Cinderella Liberty”.
This little piece is from “Tintin” and it's a sword fight.
I don't know how you say it in Deutsch? Sword fight.
In the cartoon they tease the feathers with the tip of their swords,
never cutting.
And you will hear these little feather twists in this little piece, “The Duel”.
I have been so pleased to visit with the Vienna Philharmonic.
|t's a dream for me — one of the great orchestras in the world
with a tradition that one feels immediately.
But also, with the privilege of coming, I had the concern about
whether the orchestra would be comfortable with this style of music,
and how they would interpret it;
the idiomatic aspects of it would be something that they would not be grasping.
And I couldn't have been more happily surprised.
It was brilliant for me, the way they did it.
They understood the phrasing in a way
that I thought was particularly of a certain idiom of film music,
which I know they don't play very often.
So I have to compliment the orchestra on their great virtuosity
and fantastic ability to cover all styles of music,
including one that I don't think they play very much.
Their virtuosity and ability to adjust is an amazing part of their art.
And for me, as a guest, a surprising one and a very happy surprise.
The reason why I started to play the violin is Beethoven.
So there we are in Vienna.
Actually it was the Beethoven Concerto which I performed at a very early stage
here in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic and Karajan.
Vienna used to be — it still is — such a breeding ground
for European history
in terms of painters and writers, but also composers, obviously.
Alban Berg is another great hero,
which I fell in love with when I was a rather grown-up violinist.
But for me being here now in Vienna after having done most of the big repertoire
in this fabulous hall, which just turned 150,
being here with you and playing with probably the world's greatest orchestra...
It's a dream come true.
Somehow knowing that you in your studies
had also so many roots in European culture...
I think you shared the same composition teacher with Andre Previn?
- Yes. - Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
So, I mean, Europe travelled to your country
and set foot in California during the Second World War.
Because many of Europe's and Austria's great composers
had to flee the Nazi regime.
Then in California there was this seed of European music replanted.
And, as it happens, you also write for film.
André once, I thought, beautifully said that Korngold didn't sound like Hollywood,
but rather that Hollywood after a while, after Korngold had been there,
suddenly sounded like him.
The level of composition, which probably always was very high
but was very much influenced by these great composers like Ernst Toch
who was a great friend of Honegger.
So where do you see the relationship between
where you have spent most of your life, in America, in California,
and the great European tradition which has gone to America?
In a way we all know that music is of course a global language.
Anne-Sophie, probably I wouldn't be in Vienna now
had it not been for André Previn bringing us together.
- Because I met you through André. - That's true.
Here in Wien, I look around this incredible city
and I say to people that are here, that have lived their lives here
and look upon it every day, it could be routine.
I wish the Viennese people could borrow my eye for one minute
to look at the city on a beautiful day with my eyes
and never having seen it before.
|t's the most incredible monument to a history that we know.
But it is a physical evidence of this centuries-old history
that we couldn't replace in terms of art and craft and so on.
We just were in the National Library to see a few Beethoven scores.
Of course, coming from the United States, which is a very young country,
probably this building is older than our country.
But seeing the city is an affirmation of the history that we have studied.
And we can realize that three or four or five hundred years
of a certain common thinking and behavioural norms
that the society in Vienna, in Austria, shared for so long
presents a history of an organization socially that is so envious.
We cannot go back to an imperial system, and we don't want to do that.
But this is a physical manifestation, evidence of a certain kind of cooperation
- and unified thought... - ...which left great artistic treasures.
I think the impression that you can get here, you study it a little bit,
maybe will suggest to us the kind of solutions to our governance we need to find.
And in terms of music, my God...
I ask myself, why, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg...
Everybody coming to this one place. It's like the heart of...
|t's a difficult question to answer, why it happened.
Because of the wealth of Vienna to invite composers to write for them, you see that.
And how does it feel for you to be here with all that history?
For me it's almost unreal. What I wanted to do, Anne-Sophie,
was only go to some street that Beethoven was on and breathe the air.
Maybe it will help me and give me some idea of how to write music.
- Finally your line of symphonies is coming! - Yeah, maybe!
It is enormously profound for anyone interested in music.
And for you to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic,
here in this hall, which just turned 150 years?
How does that feel? How is the acoustical sensation for you?
I mean, obviously we all have heard them on recordings
and you have worked with them in the States.
But here in this hall,
how is that when everything comes together in their home?
It's something one feels.
Of course we have wonderful orchestras in the States, we all know that.
They're technically amazing.
But just the last day here in Vienna,
to spend a few hours with this orchestra, one senses,
they're brilliant players.
They have accommodated to this style of music,
which is not classical, which they wouldn't play every day.
However, the ambiance of the hall and one's sense of history
and whatever's in the instruments that the players were only children.
But now they're grown up with something that they share,
some kind of common cultural heritage they share, that's not even verbal.
And if you think that instruments pass hands over generations.
- I was about to say, the instruments themselves. - And the style of playing.
How much pressure, whatever, all of these things.
And you really can sense a difference.
I actually thought originally it would be old-fashioned.
But none of it, I didn't feel that at all.
It felt vital and alive and contemporary in a way,
but imbued with this wealth of shared memory of the past.
Even though |'m not Austrian, I know the history enough to know
that we share the memory of our great great grandparents and so on.
- And now you are a part of that memory here in Vienna, of the orchestra. - A tiny part.
I was so moved when the orchestra was actually begging you — the brass —
that you would include the Star Wars march in the programme.
Because they just also wanted to have the physical joy of playing that.
I was listening to it yesterday in the rehearsal.
It was just totally overwhelming seeing this joy in making music together.
It's something which I think should not be underestimated.
And sometimes I run across living composers
who are also incredibly intellectual as you are
but who have totally forgotten the connection
between the cerebral understanding and construction of a concerto
and what has to be poured into it.
And your music is really the synthesis of that.
And seeing these seasoned professors and young members of the orchestra alike
joining in such joy in music they have not played often is just wonderful to see,
and I hope it gives you great joy to see that enthusiasm.
It was a wonderful experience.
We'll have two concerts, do it again.
But what is also true that music...
What I can do is only put some notes on the paper and then it's finished.
- That's already a lot! - But someone has to play it.
And then in my mind someone has to also listen to it
to complete a triangular situation, so that the music...
The thing about music is that it will present itself
and immediately become evaporated into space and time, it's gone.
- It will stay in our memory, hopefully. - It stays in our memory.
It's fixed in time. You play the piece, and now the time has gone.
So when you are working on...
Have you already started to work on the violin concerto?
No, I only finished Star Wars a few weeks ago.
The schedule was such... The film was almost in the theatre.
We were almost selling seats, and I was still writing the music.
So that was our production schedule. Not unusual, by the way, for Hollywood.
|t's a human trait to be having last-minute work.
But how do you usually go about a concerto?
Do you use something which is already existing?
I wish I could tell you, Anne-Sophie.
I think maybe what I would do... Every situation is different of course.
The thing about writing concerti, which I think |'ve written 11 or 12,
it's for individuals. And this will be for Anne-Sophie Mutter.
And I think a part of what |'m trying to do is
describe my impression of your sound, your sensibility, if I can do that.
In a way it's a kind of portrait.
That's one way to think about it.
Maybe not!
It's possible to write two or three little themes
that will be composed for the first and the second movement.
But I wanted to go back, speaking of Vienna,
what you said earlier about Hollywood and music and writing...
And the connection of it all.
When I was a youngster, we had all the people that you mentioned,
Korngold and Waxman, and all came from either Germany or Austria.
They established a style of writing for film.
Because in the beginning of film, in the 1930s, we didn't know what to do.
We have sound now, we have to confront the question of how to do this.
And the Europeans, especially those from Vienna,
Max Steiner, Ernest Gold and Korngold,
applied what they knew about instrumental music from the theatre and opera and so on.
So it's something that early on I began to understand
that that was what movie music was, even before I knew it was Vienna.
Because we already saw that
as the proper way to do an action film or even a comedy.
- Think of Seahawk, with Errol Flynn. - Seahawk, amazing!
And people used to say: the music doesn't sound very English, it sounds Austrian.
But it seems to go very well with Errol Flynn!
But of course there's a great debt in our industry of film
to German and Austrian composers, tremendously.
At the beginning at least, what little bit I've learned about any of it,
I feel a great debt, especially in orchestration and these things.
- How long were you with Tedesco? - Not long, two summers, very briefly.
And who was your main influence in terms of composing?
- Who was your main teacher? - I don't really know.
I have written in such a kind of chameleon-like way if you can say that.
I used to do comedies when I was very young
and do it in a certain style and change it.
Star Wars required something else that was more military.
What is more exciting and challenging
than standing next to the composer who is also conducting?
This is actually very intimidating
and maybe the reason why I miscounted a few times yesterday.
Because you're standing next to the man who obviously knows the music inside out.
I admire the way you rehearse in a very gentle manner,
how you speak about your music and how you bring things together.
The idea has been suggested that it might be a unique experience,
working together on stage, we haven't done it very much.
- No, just a half concert in Tanglewood. - But I have to confess
that at times with the orchestra as we're working together,
it would be good if I looked serious. I wouldn't look too silly!
But I have such fun doing it, Anne-Sophie.
I'm conducting, you are there. I start to smile, almost laughing!
I'm happy to look upon you of course.
But I have to realize this is a serious business.
We have to get through this thing, it's quick, it's difficult.
- It sounds easy, but it is not. - Trillions of notes.
But intimidation is always...
If I conduct for any great artist, there's an intimidation:
Will I be a sufficient conductor and accompanist for this person?
And vice versa, back and forth.
Human, good, because it gives a little edge.
It puts you on your toes.
And you work that way.
I would say as a conductor there are some soloists that are a nightmare to follow.
Like singers also, sometimes...
- Yeah, |'ve heard stories... - You heard that?
- I hope |'m not part of that group. - No.
The bow is only so long, but you can never measure...
But I can change it, inaudible.
It just feels totally natural
rehearsing and being on stage
and of course greatly looking forward to the violin concerto.
I would say in German-speaking countries...
|'ve never encountered it in England or of course not in America,
there's an open-mindedness of a multicultural approach to music
and its many possible languages and dialects.
And in the German-speaking countries
we have this very strange labels called “Ernste Musik” and “Unterhaltungsmusik”.
There's the “serious music” and there is the “music for entertainment”.
Some people who think they are super intellectual have invented these labels.
Probably a few music lovers
are surprised that film music is being performed in a hall
where we also play Brahms and Beethoven.
Do you have any comment on such...?
I could speak to it, it's a very difficult question.
And it becomes a kind of a cultural question,
an educational question, geographic question.
But if you think about serious music, is that the word you would use?
- “E” or or how do you say? - “Ernste Musik” and “Unterhaltung”.
Even it has its roots in the idiomatic cultures of various places.
You can't have Dvoiék without the country music of his country.
You don't have Brahms without the dances and so on and so forth,
or even Haydn with the minuet, or with this and that.
The source of all of this seriousness and braininess...
It actually comes from the people, it comes from the breathing.
And it may be becoming over-refined in people's minds and over-intellectualized,
because it is a very great art and so it can be applied that way.
And people can become prejudiced — I guess this is the word you could use —
against sort of idiomatic music that will still come along.
I have to say in this conversation, as an American,
that probably the greatest injection of a cultural stamp
has been put on by our African-American brothers and sisters
that have created a music, which in spirituals...
Anybody who's listened to Aretha Franklin will understand the human heart.
And that has to be regarded as great music.
And where are we going as an art? Big challenges for our young people.
I wish I would be around in 100 years to see what they do.
What music is really surviving.
I think also the time that people live in makes the great leaders of society:
A war, a famine or whatever,
someone will emerge like Franklin Roosevelt in our country.
So our children have to understand that the geniuses are not...
You can't expect them, the time and the currencies or circumstances of life.
Which means we have to develop a really keen, sharply working society
where resources and ecology and the population are managed in a way
that can produce this future that we want.
With music in it, because music is the only thing which holds us together.
I think so.
Despite all the labels we put on it, “A to Z”, whatever.
At the end of the day it's the only language we share.
The only language where we are not judged by heritage, or religion or whatever.
I strongly believe in the place of music in society
as “der Zement der Gesellschaft”.
You also mentioned that Alban Berg is somehow not as exposed as...
You go to the Haydn House, you go to the very many places Beethoven lived,
you go and look for Schubert and Mozart — and Schoenberg probably also not.
The last century is still not so much in the limelight
and in the focus of people visiting Vienna.
And so my question is, do you have...
It seemed to me because you mentioned Alban Berg very early in our conversation
about composers who had their homes here.
Alban Berg seems to be a more prominent and of more actual importance
in your visit to Vienna, than Korngold.
Probably some people would think, Korngold must be your great master.
But you mentioned Alban Berg.
- Because of the operas? - I admire them both very much.
But it is true that when I came here people would say:
“You can go to Mozart's house, to Haydn's house.”
So the next question: “Can you go to Alban Berg's house?”
“No, I don't think so. We don't have that.”
- But it will come when people evaluate... - Next visit.
- Sigmund Freud, Alban Berg, Schoenberg. - Absolutely.
And then we need a Wiener Schnitzel.
I could mention my first open-air concert, which was very exciting for me.
I mean, you have done innumerous, obviously, open-air concerts
and I hope you will do soon one in Munich.
Because you were very much missed in September of 2019
- when I gave my first open-air ever. - Ever?
Yeah, I mean, I have played of course in amphitheatres.
But I felt that the repertoire — a Mozart concerto, open air, amplified...
- It still feels strange. - It's not intimate enough.
Exactly, it needs the natural acoustic.
But the interesting part in the themes I have played from your films
is that it initially has not been written for an acoustical room,
but for amplification, if you want, or just for that kind of transport system.
And that's why I felt very comfortable leaving the sound of my violin
in the very capable hands of my wonderful sound engineer.
Because the orchestration, as we know, is, thanks to God,
very impressive and overwhelming at times.
And that's maybe a question which arises out of that experience
playing it in such a huge space,
with the help, for the violinist, of a very tasteful amplification,
versus bringing these huge pieces into, not a small hall,
but a smaller space of 2000 people here in Vienna.
What is it for you like as a composer
to conduct your music in the studio, for the microphones,
and now conducting it in the acoustical shell of...
Are there changes you want to do to the pieces, to the orchestration?
Or just the way you balance the orchestra?
Working in the studio, you will know, Anne-Sophie, is a very different psychology.
We can change balances just simply by pushing a dial and so on and so forth.
So if certain things within the orchestra need to be protected or the opposite of that,
and the main thing is that the soloist, in this case a violin, is surrounded
with the right kind of ambiance...
I just remember there is one piece of classical repertoire,
the Alban Berg Violin Concerto, which really survives best in a studio.
With the “Hauptstimme” and “Nebenstimme”...
- The orchestration is very heavy. - Yes, the orchestration is so dense,
that even if they would play soft you would lose character.
So this is, interestingly enough, a piece
which does not survive as well or as clearly on stage than in the studio.
Is there anything in the orchestration you would need to or want to change?
Yesterday after our rehearsal I made a few little changes,
mostly deletions of things that were doubled.
Which is to say parts that are still there,
but they're not duplicated here and there which will make it lighter.
And that's a very usual kind of practice that we go through,
particularly with violins and singers, and cello also.
Particularly with that register.
But we are aiming to a one performance before the orchestra will...
We are looking for a line and an approach of this whole thing
that we rarely think about too much in the film studio.
We will make the best take we can make.
But then the practice is usually the producer will say:
Let's just do this little piece here, that little piece there.
You know you can do that.
So if you do a fantastic take, but you may have missed one note in bar 62.
62 is not a problem, we'll fix it.
- In the concert of course... - |t's a totally different situation.
It's a totally different psychology, a different balance situation...
For me it's wonderful to come back to the pieces.
Thinking back to the moments we were in the studio
and I had barely, I mean, never played the pieces in front of an audience.
And that long stretch from April to now, January,
where I played in Tanglewood with you,
and then in September the open-air concert and coming back to the pieces feels...
Very often actually I warm up with the runs in Hedwig's Theme.
Because I've got a fabulous trick by a wonderful string player colleague,
Lynn Harrell, who told me he warms up every day
with the most difficult passages in the entire cello repertoire.
Of course the cello repertoire is very small compared with the violin repertoire!
But I find the idea really interesting.
So I warm up with some Bach stuff and I warm up with Hedwig's runs.
- That's very funny. - So you're in good company.
|'m always ready for the runs in case John calls in the middle of the night.
We played two rehearsals with the orchestra.
At the end of which the orchestra management came and said,
“Can we play the Imperial March from Star Wars?” I hadn't programmed that.
I thought I had already asked the brass to play quite enough of big music.
And as I understand it, the brass players and the orchestra themselves requested
that we would play the Imperial March.
So at the end of the rehearsal we played it.
They had the music, everyone seemed to know it. And I have to tell you,
it was honestly the best presentation of that march that I ever heard.
It had such solidity and such power and force,
but also control in the tone and the intonation of everything.
It is powerful and forceful,
but not forced into some airspace that it shouldn't be.
A kind of strength, that defines the word.
That was certainly my favourite piece that they played.
They played it as though they owned it, and I felt very grateful to them
for giving me the chance to play it at the end of the programme. I loved it.