My latest guest on Q&A is a return guest and a favorite: Riccardo Muti, the esteemed conductor. For our podcast, go here. We sat down at the Salzburg Festival, where Muti was conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. He has done that, I believe, for 54 straight seasons.
He and I met in a hotel, and, before we sat down to talk, I introduced him to a member of the hotel’s staff who had helped set up the podcast: a wonderful, warm woman from Minnesota, Martha. When Muti heard her name, he immediately thought of the 1844 opera by Flotow, Martha, and he sang for her the hit aria of the show: “M’apparì tutt’amor.”
Wish you had seen it, and heard it.
This season, Muti conducted the Vienna Phil in a Bruckner symphony: the mighty Eighth. True, all of Bruckner’s symphonies are mighty, in their own ways, but the Eighth has a special grandeur. “Cathedrals in sound.” That is a common description of Bruckner symphonies.
Muti, born in 1941, waited a long time to conduct No. 8. He waited until now. He had waited a long time to conduct the Missa solemnis (Beethoven). He first conducted it three seasons ago.
Why? Why these long waits? It takes a lot of living, a lot of studying, a lot of absorbing, says Muti, before one should dare approach these works.
Bruckner’s music is “mysterious,” he says. It contains the various elements of human life: hope, pain, tragedy, determination, progress, joy. Bruckner expresses “gratitude for the Creation,” says Muti. Bruckner expresses “thanks to the Creator.” The music is not confined to a specific religion but is “universal.”
Muti compares Anton Bruckner to Michelangelo — two artists who have a similar sense of power and proportion.
Bruckner was not fully appreciated in his own lifetime. Far from it. I thought of something Muti had told me about Verdi in a previous conversation. Today, everyone says, “Verdi, Verdi, the great and immortal Verdi.” But, at the end of his life, Giuseppe Verdi did not feel like a big success. He had doubts about his music and its future.
In our new podcast, Muti tells me about a visit he made to Verdi’s home. He saw a box, tied with a string. It contained Verdi’s materials for Rigoletto, La traviata, and others of his great operas. On the box, Verdi wrote an instruction: “To Be Burned.” His descendants disobeyed.
Bruckner was often knocked as a rustic and a kook. I wish he could know that his music inspires people every day.
What else do Muti and I talk about in our Q&A? The role that keys play in music: C major, C minor, etc. Opera productions. (The composer often tells you how to stage the opera, says Muti, in his music.) Mozart. (“A miracle,” says Muti. “Mozart was a person made of flesh and blood as we are, but . . .”)
Here is an old, old question: Does music mean anything? Anything specific? (Music without words, that is.) Muti, like almost all musicians, answers, “No.” Music carries feelings, emotions. “Music does not describe,” he says, “it evokes.”
At the end of our conversation, I say something like this: “The worse politics gets, the more we need music. Thank God for music, right?” Muti tells me about a concert he led this summer at the Verona Arena. The president of Italy was there, along with other members of the government.
Microphone in hand, Muti made some remarks to the audience, and he addressed the governmental officials in particular. A society is like an orchestra, he said. Everyone has a part to play. The lines must work together. This is the meaning of “symphony”: to play together in harmony. There is only one man who can screw it up, he said: the conductor, the leader.
This was an amusing remark, typical of Muti. (To watch this, on YouTube, go here.) But the remark caused a stir, with the press wondering, “Was the maestro talking about one leader in particular?”
Again, our Q&A is here. Muti is experienced and wise, sure — but he’s also a helluva lot of fun. In Salzburg, there are squares, plazas, named after two great conductors of the past: Toscanini and Karajan. I bet that, someday, there will be a Piazza Muti.