Харуки Мураками - Absolutely on Music

MURAKAMI: But you could tell how the sound of the orchestra would change when he gave them instructions, I’m sure.

OZAWA: Of course I could tell as I watched the rehearsal unfold, but in Lenny’s case, he would often interrupt the rehearsal itself and talk to the musicians. Then I couldn’t tell what he was saying. But you know, these talks of his were very unpopular with the orchestra members. There was only a certain amount of time for rehearsals, and the longer he talked, the less time there was to rehearse. So then you had a lot of irritated musicians who became even more annoyed if the rehearsal ran over.

MURAKAMI: What would he talk about? His opinions on the meaning of the music?

OZAWA: For the most part, he would talk about the meaning of the music, but then he would go off on tangents, like, “Oh, that reminds me, when I went to so-and-so’s place last time …” and go on forever about stuff like that until people got fed up.

MURAKAMI: I guess he liked to talk.

OZAWA: He liked it and he was good at it, and he could be very convincing, which is why I still regret the fact that I couldn’t really understand what he was saying.

MURAKAMI: I suppose you were right there with him, observing his rehearsals and taking notes.

OZAWA: That’s right, but I’d get totally lost whenever he launched into his long monologues.

MURAKAMI: Did you ever find yourself in a situation where you had read the score and heard the music in your head, but then when you heard the actual music that Bernstein was making with the orchestra, it sounded totally different to you?

OZAWA: Oh, sure, that happened all the time. That’s because I was still reading Mahler scores with the same mind-set as when I read Brahms. It could be a total shock to hear the orchestra playing what I’d read that way.

MURAKAMI: Whenever I listen to one of those long Mahler symphonies, I find myself thinking that if it were a Beethoven or a Brahms, I’d know pretty much how it was structured and it might not be that hard to learn the movements in order. But is it possible for a conductor to fit the entire complex construction of a Mahler piece inside his head?

OZAWA: In the case of Mahler, the important thing is not so much to learn it, as to immerse yourself in it. If you can’t do that, you can’t do Mahler. The works are not that hard to learn. The challenging thing is whether or not you can get inside a work once you’ve learned it.

MURAKAMI: I often find myself incapable of grasping the order in which the music unfolds. Take the fifth movement of the Second Symphony, for example. It goes this way and that way and I start wondering why it does what it does at any one point … and before I know it my brain has turned to mush.

OZAWA: Yeah, there’s no logic to it at all.

MURAKAMI: No, none at all. That never happens with Mozart or Beethoven.

OZAWA: Because their works adhere to certain forms. The point with Mahler was to destroy those forms, deliberately. So in a sonata form, where the piece is telling you, “Here, I want you to go back to this melody,” he’ll bring in a whole new melody. In that sense, of course, his works can be hard to learn—but if you study them properly and if you immerse yourself in the flow, his pieces are not that difficult. You do have to spend time on them, though, to get to that point—a lot more time than with a Beethoven or a Bruckner.

MURAKAMI: When I first started listening to Mahler, I used to wonder if he wasn’t just fundamentally mistaken about how to go about creating music. I sometimes feel that way even now. Why is he doing this in this part of the composition? But over the years, those very passages have gradually become a source of pleasure for me. There will always be a kind of catharsis at the end of the process, but in the meantime, I’m often at a total loss.

OZAWA: That’s especially true of the Seventh and the Third, even for those of us who are playing the music. If you don’t concentrate hard and do things exactly right, you end up drowning along the way. The First is fine, the Second is fine, and so are the Fourth and Fifth. There’s something a little strange about the Sixth, but ultimately, it’s okay, too. But the Seventh, wow, that’s a real problem. And the Third is another weird one. Once you get to the Eighth, you’re already into the huge ones, and you can make it work one way or another.

MURAKAMI: There are still some inscrutable parts in the Ninth, of course, but, I don’t know, with that one you’re in a whole different category.

OZAWA: You know, I once traveled all over Europe conducting the Third and the Sixth. With the Boston Symphony.

MURAKAMI: Talk about an austere pair of symphonies!

OZAWA: The Boston Symphony was famous for its Mahler renditions at the time, and we got lots of invitations from Europe specifically to play Mahler. That was a good twenty years ago, though.

MURAKAMI: That was the time when Bernstein and Solti and Kubelik were the big names in Mahler performance. With you as conductor, the Boston became famous for having a somewhat different feel.

OZAWA: We were among the earliest orchestras to gain a reputation for performing Mahler. [ He eats a piece of fruit. ] Mmm, this is good. Mango?

MURAKAMI: No, it’s a papaya.

Seiji Ozawa and the Saito Kinen

Perform the Titan

MURAKAMI: At this point, I’d like to listen to the Saito Kinen Orchestra performing the third movement of Mahler’s First Symphony, conducted by you. It’s from a DVD performance taken at the Matsumoto music festival.

When the solemn (but in no way severe) funeral march, with its air of mystery, comes to an end, a traditional Jewish folk melody suddenly begins (2:29).

MURAKAMI: I always find this part—what?—extraordinary? It’s certainly in no way ordinary.

OZAWA: You’re right about that. The way this Jewish melody pops out after the funeral music: it’s a crazy combination.

MURAKAMI: But think of what a shock it must have been to the Viennese of the day to have music like this played for them all of a sudden.

OZAWA: A huge shock, I’m sure! And in terms of technique, in something like this traditional Jewish musical passage, the violins play what they call col legno —striking the strings with the wooden part of the bow instead of the horsehair part—which produces a very crude sound.

MURAKAMI: Did other composers use the technique before Mahler?

OZAWA: Hmm, I wonder—certainly none of the symphonies of people like Beethoven, Brahms, or Bruckner used it. It may be there in Bartók, say, or Shostakovich.

MURAKAMI: Definitely, when you’re listening to Mahler, you come across these passages where you have to wonder, “How are they making that sound?” If you listen closely to contemporary music, though, especially in movies, they use sounds like that every now and then—in John Williams’s Star Wars music, for example.

OZAWA: That’s the Mahler influence, I’m sure. But anyhow, just looking at this movement, it’s packed full of all sorts of those elements. It’s amazing that he was able to do that. Back then, his audiences must have been astounded.

The funeral march returns (4:30), and then (5:20) a beautifully lyrical melody makes its appearance, the same melody that concluded Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

MURAKAMI: Here again, the mood of the music undergoes a dramatic change.

OZAWA: Yes, this is a pastoral, finally, a song of paradise.

MURAKAMI: Yes, but it comes out of nowhere, without any logical connection to anything that came before. There’s no sense of inevitability to it.

OZAWA: No, none at all. Listen to that harp: it’s supposed to be reminiscent of a guitar.