Well, at least he’s loosened up enough to let that slip. Control tends to be a leitmotif in Lorin Maazel’s for-the-record conversation. He won’t take over the Philharmonic until September 2002–he’s only the third American to head the orchestra in its 159 years–but he already speaks with a sense of the responsibilities incumbent upon the successor to Mahler, Toscanini and Bernstein. He keeps a lid on what he can’t “reveal,” plants on-message one-liners (the Philharmonic, you’ll be glad to know, is “rooted in the past and pointed towards the future”), remembers to say “he or she” at least one time in three and keeps guard over his own metaphors. “If the admiral has come up through the ranks,” he says, alluding to his service years ago in the Pittsburgh Symphony’s violin section, “he has the respect of the crew. I’m not saying that orchestra musicians are sailors on deck. I consider them to be collaborators and colleagues. But at that moment there is the leader-follower relationship, and that’s OK, too.” And he talks articulately about the great paradox of conducting: to maintain control of the orchestra, you must relax, and for the orchestra to relax, you must be in control. When Maazel hints that the interview is over by saying “So, now you know everything about me,” it’s hard to tell which of you is the more bemused.
Maazel, an august member of the great school of conductors who came up during the 1950s, has stepped into a situation that will put even his self-discipline to the test. The Philharmonic, America’s oldest and most prestigious orchestra, began looking to replace its current head, the 74-year-old Kurt Masur, three years ago, with more awkward publicity than its directors would have liked. Sir Simon Rattle, who’s recently signed with the Berlin Philharmonic, didn’t want the job. Many of the orchestra’s musicians didn’t want Michael Tilson Thomas, of the San Francisco Symphony. Riccardo Muti of Milan’s La Scala almost got hired, but negotiations broke down. Two other candidates, Mariss Jansons of the Pittsburgh Symphony and Christoph Eschenbach of the Orchestre de Paris, reportedly disappointed the New York players as guest conductors. Maazel, 71, who led the Cleveland Orchestra from 1972 to 1982 and has 300-odd recordings on his resume, hadn’t been a contender–perhaps because of the $3 million to $4 million annual salary he reportedly made as head of the Bavarian Radio Orchestra.
But in November Maazel–who hadn’t appeared with the Philharmonic for 25 years–wowed the musicans in a guest appearance, in part with his conducting of Bruckner and Wagner, and in part by telling them they were so good they didn’t need a full schedule of rehearsals. It was a disarming move by a maestro with a reputation for being autocratically meticulous; by February he was hired, at a salary estimated to be at least $2 million. Though no one faults Maazel’s musicianship–fellow conductor and Bard College president Leon Botstein has said “he has no peer”–critics had hoped for a younger, less traditionalist leader who, as holder of America’s most visible job in classical music, would revitalize the repertoire and attract new audiences. Whether playing spiky and challenging new music is the way to pull in the generations raised on three-chord rock is another question.
It’s not Maazel’s fault that the Philharmonic didn’t hire a venturesome young conductor like Kent Nagano of Berlin’s Deutsche Symphonie, though of course he’ll take the heat. The board’s request that he open his first season with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony–the heart of the heart of the canon–suggests that the Philharmonic still sees its role primarily as custodian of the old high culture. In fact, Maazel makes a convincing case that a major orchestra should concentrate on “burnishing the repertoire that is the foundation of our classical tradition.” Plenty of ensembles, he says, specialize in new music; meanwhile, “somebody has got to go on playing Beethoven. There are a lot of folks out there, believe it or not, who have not heard Beethoven Nine. There are always new folks to bring into the music, and these are the folks we’re thinking about.” Of course, he also plans to do some “masterpieces of the 20th century”–how could he not?–at “the appropriate time,” and to commission new work. From whom? “Well, without giving anything away, I think if I mention a name like [Krzysztof] Penderecki no one will fault me. And if I were also to mention Luciano Berio I don’t think anyone would fault me.” As a composer himself–“in a fairly advanced language,” he says; others compare him to Richard Strauss–he sympathizes with the “young composer” who “said publicly about my appointment, ‘I’ll love him to the extent he conducts my music’.” (On investigation, this upstart turned out to be the 78-year-old Ned Rorem.) But as head of one of the world’s great cultural institutions, Maazel says, “I have other responsibilities.”
And speaking of contemporary composers, how’s that opera of his coming along? Maazel laughs. “Um, I have a premiere date, in 2003. I have the theater, which I am not at liberty to divulge, at the request of the theater. I have a stage director, whose name I may not mention. I have a librettist, whose name I may not mention. I have the composer and conductor,” he continues, keeping a straight face, “under lock and key.” (You think that’s a metaphor. But read on.) “I’m not much further along.” So this exemplar of will and self-discipline has a problem with procrastination? Well, he’s got a story about that. “I had to finish this cello piece for Rostropovich,” he says. “And I couldn’t come up with an ending. I was in Ireland, on vacation with my family, and we had this tiny stone lodge about half the size of this room, and I said, ‘Lock me in here.’ My wife said, ‘You’re crazy. How can I lock my own husband–’ I said, ‘Keep the key and if you think I’m going to die of starvation, come back.’ Well, when she came back, I’d finished it.” However the Philharmonic ultimately takes to its new taskmaster, they can be sure he won’t be tougher on them than he is on himself.
