How did you develop this sensibility and knowledge of the music in your student years? I know that you have studied in Italy – so was there a special approach to musical education there?
The main lesson I learned when I was a student in Sienna, studying with Valery Gergiev when he came to visit our Academy was to pay attention to the details and understand how even minor details change the perception of the musical phrase. Although not always serious in private lifes, in music we, musicians, take things seriously, we want to know and to study.
Both for Italians and for Russians it is important to be connected with our musical tradition as well as literature and poetry. In Italy there are such giants as Dante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Manzoni – there are so many. One could draw parallels with Russia – Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy in the 19thcentury, Bulgakov, Akhmatova in the 20thcentury, then also all the composers – Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Scriabin – what a heritage. This knowledge established the foundation, makes you understand your roots, allows you to flourish and to blossom. It is like a tree – if you are connected to the earth, you can shoot into the sky standing on the shoulders of giants.
Could you speak about your lessons with Valery Gergiev?
He taught us in Accademia Chigiana in summer 1993. He taught me the sensitivity to the sound. I remember he said that I had very eloquent and rhythmic hands. He said that I should concentrate on imagining the sound, understand what kind of sound you want, what kind of colour, what kind of articulation, which is the most important note in the first fifty bars of this piece and who is playing it. He always pushed students to the limit for us to understand these things. For example, you do Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and it is already difficult, but then you work on Shostakovich’s symphonies, and it becomes even more challenging to understand: what is the most important note in this section? what is the most important phrase? what is the key moment that enlightens the fragment? Gergiev pushed me to look for answers to these questions.
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It is interesting that Shostakovich, along with Verdi and Beethoven, was the composer who could change the society he was living in. Other composers were fantastic, but they could not do it. Verdi was born in Italy in 1813, and he died in 1901 in a completely different Italy, and he actually contributed to the change of the country. It was the same for Beethoven – Napoleon, the Vienna Congress, the Restoration – through his art he changed the state of contemporary world. And it is true for Shostakovich – I think without him glasnost’ and perestroika would have happened in a different way. Shostakovich suffered during Stalin’s era – he was marked as a modernist composer, he was trying to comply to the rules of the Soviet state to survive during Stalin’s era and after his death you would think he could live as he wanted. But in fact, it was also a difficult time for him, and he was already old – and he was looking back at the society he lived in before and compared it to the society he was living in then. His music is about the relationship between the artist and the society, the rules of the society, big philosophical questions – why death, why life, why one has to compose music, what is it to be an artist in his time. And little by little he changed the society – from the dictatorship to a new era. Whatever you do to change the status quo is good for the future. Things developed – probably not the way he wanted, but he contributed to the change. Even nowadays we are going through a difficult time as a society, and it might be compared (figuratively) to the time between 1936 to 1953 (Stalin’s death) that Shostakovich lived in. That time imposed the same kind of questions we ask today – where do I go? Where I should go? I don’t know, but I try here and there. I try to be the Russian composer who celebrates great victories, but I also try to develop there revolutionary ideas of freedom and self-expression.
But why Shostakovich specifically? Why not Prokofiev, for instance?
I would do Prokofiev, too. But Shostakovich, after Beethoven and Mahler, is the biggest symphonist. Beethoven wrote 9 symphonies, Mahler – 9 symphonies, Shostakovich – 15. It is a massive output. If you want to trace what he wanted to say, you need to start from when he was young to his late symphonies and explore his huge world encompassing 20thcentury which was very dramatic and had two World Wars and several dictatorships.
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Shostakovich pushes my imagination to the limit. The Eighth is written like no other, it is not in the sonata form, it is more like a suite with seven moments. It is not perfect in terms of structure, but in terms of imagination it is one of the most innovative and advanced works of Shostakovich. Architecturally some other symphonies are more secure, but sometimes in things that are not perfect there is more power. This symphony goes from the massive sound to nothing, from the most extreme phrase and articulations to some visionary elements and to complete dissolution.
I spent roughly 10 years as the principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theatre. [Legendary Russian conductor] Valery Gergiev at first asked me to be responsible for the Italian repertoire there. But being there in St. Petersburg, you cannot avoid conducting another repertoire. And for me, I was very curious to touch, and to conduct with my own hands, Boris Godunov [by Modest Mussorgsky], Eugene Onegin, Queen of Spades [both by Tchaikovsky], and a little bit less-known repertoire like Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery and War and Peace. So while I was doing Italian opera, I was asked to do Queen of Spades, I was asked to do Boris, and I did it in the right place, where everybody was “breathing the Boris language.” I mean the Mussorgsky language, the Tchaikovsky language.
I’ve always been passionate about Russian literature, so I’ve always been reading Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. And Chekhov, Bulgakov, and many others. It was sort of my personal love of that culture. And so my debut at the Met was War and Peace by Prokofiev, without rehearsals …
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I’ll tell you a small story. When I arrived in Russia in 1997, I thought Prokofiev was a genius and Shostakovich was [just] a great composer. As I started to live there, I perceived the opposite – the Russians consider Shostakovich a genius and Prokofiev a great composer. I thought, what’s wrong with me, or with that? But from the Russian perspective, Prokofiev was seen as someone who left Russia and came back. While Shostakovich always lived there, even after living through some tough, tough years. That’s why they probably felt Shostakovich closer to their souls.
For myself, after 10 years of going there regularly, I think both are geniuses!
Interview with Gianandrea Noseda
Valery Gergiev introduces Shostakovich Symphony No 8
たまった感想のアップ、サクサクすすめます。サクサク。 エリアス弦楽四重奏団のベートヴェンサイクル、後半３公演に行ってきました。 なぜ行こうと思ったかというと、ハイティンクが引退後にビシュコフに宛てて'My own empty days since I stopped conducting seem to fill up surprisingly easily, there is always something to read or hear. I am indulging my passion for Beethoven quartets at the moment, the scores of late ones seem as complicated as Mahler 7 to me sometimes. The more I look at these things, the more I realise that I don't know anything.' (slipped disc）と言っていて、またバレンボイムも「作曲家には生涯を通じて手がける、日記とも呼ぶべきジャンルがあります。モーツァルトならピアノ協奏曲、シューベルトなら歌曲…。ベートーヴェンはピアノ・ソナタと弦楽四重奏曲でしょう」と言っていたので、ベートーヴェンの弦楽四重奏曲を機会があればちゃんと聴いてみたいとずっと思っていたからでした。 今回はそのうちの半分を聴くことができました
さて、サイクル後半の全８曲を聴いた感想としては、とても勢いよく瑞々しい演奏をするカルテットのように感じました。 ４人の雰囲気もとても親密な感じで、見ていて気持ちがいい。 もちろん演奏の息もピッタリ。 ８曲の演奏を短期間で聴くとその緊張感の連続のようなエネルギッシュな勢いが少々ワンパターン気味に感じられてきてしまったのも正直なところではあったけれど（ふっと息抜きしたくなったりもした）、一方で、その情熱的な勢いにベートーヴェンの曲がもつ今まで知らなかった面を気づかせてもらえたようにも感じたのでした。 たとえば13番ラストの大フーガ。ストラヴィンスキーが「絶対的に現代的な楽曲。永久に現代的な楽曲」と言った意味が、彼らの演奏を聴いているとよくわかった。本当にまるでストラヴィンスキーを聴いているようだった。ハイティンクが「The more I look at these things, the more I realise that I don't know anything.」と言っていた意味が、おこがましいけれど、ハイティンクの1000分の1くらいはわかったような気がしたり。
大野： Che gelida manina! Se la lasci riscaldar... 「手を温めましょう」と言って歌い始める冒頭も素敵なんですが、彼は詩人の卵ですから、そのうち興が乗ってきて Chi son? 「私は誰でしょう」 とミミの前で歌います。ミミはお針子で、寒い中気を失いかけて彼のところに来るわけですが、そこで静かに聞いていると彼が大きな声で
Chi son? Sono un poeta. Che cosa faccio? Scrivo. E come vivo? Vivo. 「私は誰でしょう」「私は詩人です。そして生きているんです（Vivo.）」って言うんですね。初めて息を深く吸ってびっくりしながらも、自分の中に凄烈な息を吸い込んだミミの姿が浮かんでくるように思います。
この作品に魅かれる理由はまさにこういうところかもしれないなぁ。 若くて、うまく生きられなくて、社会の現実に直面して、でも精一杯愛して・・・。そして生き残った者達は成長し、この先の人生を生きていく。 今回ボエームを観て、ミュージカル『RENT』もより好きになれた気がします。『RENT』のミミはオペラと違って最後に生き返るけれど、当然だけど彼女は快癒しているわけではないんですよね。HIVはあの頃は不治の病だったのだから。彼女に残された時間は長くはない。それは皆がわかってる。それでも”今この瞬間”、彼女は生きている。そして歌われるNo day but today。ボエームもレントも、どちらも素敵。
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。もっと聴きたい。
）。各幕冒頭のセピア色の紗幕の使い方も印象的でした。
