BD: Do you get inspired by the moment?
CK: I wouldn’t say it like that. It’s just at the moment of the concert something seems to be there which is not there at the rehearsals, even if the rehearsals are extremely intense and we work very, very hard. Just to tell you a name among conductors whom I know that are certainly very, very interesting — Claudio Abbado. That’s a conductor for the evening. At rehearsal everything is fine, but in the evening he does certain things, and maybe he does even not know what he does, but it happens and there is the music!
BD: Is it your responsibility, as the conductor, to make it happen, or is it the responsibility of the musicians onstage to make it happen?
CK: I think both. In the case of our work as conductors, we have eighty to a hundred musicians in front of us. It is one person, the conductor, who says, “Now,” and how it will happen, because among eighty musicians, we have maybe twenty to forty ways of doing it.
BD: Is your way right?
CK: I don’t know! [Laughs] If I say my way is right, that sounds certainly... how do you say that in English?
BD: Arrogant?
CK: Definitely arrogant! If a musician, after a concert, says, “Well done,” then certainly I feel good. I feel happy. But concerning myself, sometimes I think, “Okay, in this concert, in a few moments during the concert, there was the spirit which I tried to get.” But after concerts I’m never really happy, never really satisfied! Sometimes I think, “Okay, that’s where you could get, but next time you have to get more of the music, more of the spirit.”
BD: So every day you get closer?
CK: At least I hope so. I would say I try.
BD: Is it even possible to get there?
CK: In my personal work, I can’t answer. Only the audience which is listening and the musicians with whom I’m working are maybe able to answer. I think about performances, conductors, soloists which I’ve seen when I am sitting in the audience, where I thought, “That’s it,” but not very often.
BD: Does that, then, weigh on your mind, to try and make the same “it,” or do you have to make your own “it”?
CK: I always have to make my own! There is no question. Certainly I would like to conduct like Herbert von Karajan, but I’m not Herbert von Karajan.
BD: So you shouldn’t try to duplicate what he did?
CK: Not at all because it’s just not possible! If you listen to a certain interpretation of him, or another interpretation, maybe you will get a certain idea. But as you Americans say, “I did it my way!” [Both laugh]
BD: Well, Frank Sinatra said it!
CK: And he was completely right!
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BD: From a huge array of repertoire, how do you decide which works you will conduct and which works you won’t conduct?
CK: I’m quite an easy conductor to come along with because I like all the music. I always try not to focus on a certain repertoire.
BD: You’re a generalist?
CK: Yes, definitely. Definitely! At a certain time I was a little specialized in Mozart because of my work in the Zurich Opera House, and certainly Mozart is a composer who is very important for me. But I always try to do the whole repertoire. I avoid the very ancient music before Bach because in my opinion you can’t do that with modern instruments. And comparing maybe to other conductors, I don’t do so often modern music, but I do it. But I think about certain conductors, colleagues, who really are absolutely specialized; I try not to specialize.
BD: Let’s stick with the twentieth century music just a moment. I asked you if you wanted to contact Mozart. When you have a living composer whose work you are bringing forth for the first time, is it better or worse to have him there to guide you? Or, should you just take what is in the score, and figure it out yourself?
CK: Personally, I prefer if the composer is there, and does not talk too much! [Both laugh] I have had already many experiences with composers and first performances. Most of them just give me the score, and if I have questions they tell me something about it. The last composition I did for the first time was by an Italian composer, and he was there. I asked him one or two questions and he made things clear; the rest was just written on the score. I am an experienced conductor, so even if the score is very complicated, if what the composer writes in his score is not clear to me, then he should make it clear — but not with words, only with his way of writing. I don’t avoid talking to the composers, and I don’t tell a composer, “Listen, just sit in the audience and shut up!” [Both laugh] But I always prefer that we talk about what he heard during the break. And sometimes it happens that a composer changes his mind and says, “Here and there I would prefer to do it another way because it was not clear what I wrote. So just change it.” That may happen.
BD: Are there times that he thanks you for your brilliance in discovering something he didn’t know he’d hidden in the score?
CK: It must be overwhelming for a composer to listen for the first time to his work. Because all the composers just do their work, and excepting with chamber music — which is easier to get performed — they don’t hear it right away. When they hear it in the rehearsal, it’s the big aha moment when they hear what comes out.
BD: Do they say, “Gee, that sounded wonderful”?
CK: Yeah, I hope! [Laughs]
BD: You’ve worked with a number of composers. Does that help you when you are working with Beethoven and Brahms and Mozart and Bach?
CK: No. No.
BD: Why not?
CK: Because it’s different. It’s different music and it’s certainly a different style. If I’m doing Haydn, it helps if I’ve been doing a lot of Mozart and a lot of Schubert. But it does not help when I do a new opera if I’ve been doing George Bizet’s Carmen because it has nothing to do with each other. It’s just music.
BD: Don’t all pieces of music relate to one another on some level?
CK: On some level yes, but my point of view is it doesn’t really help you while you are doing it. Maybe they all normally use the same kind of writing, but it’s not really the same language.
BD: Let me ask the real easy question — what is the purpose of music?
CK: The purpose of music is to transmit feelings. As we all know, we human beings have so many feelings of so different kinds, that music transmits feelings. But please don’t ask me ever if a certain phrase in a certain symphony transmits this certain feeling! I can’t tell you. And even if I could, which may happen, I would not like to do it, because in my understanding music transmits feelings. But when I do it, music means a certain feeling to me, a certain cosmos of feeling. When you’re listening, it means a cosmos of feelings to you, but it’s different. It’s your cosmos.
BD: So if you have four thousand listeners, you’ll have four thousand different cosmoses?
CK: Yes, and I can live with that. It reminds me of a review. I once did Beethoven Nine, which I did very often, in Bamberg. Afterwards I read the review, and the reviewer said he liked it, and he talked about this young South American conductor with his quite romantic way, and he tried to emphasize all the romantic views I had about this music and all the feelings which were transmitted in that way. I thought, okay, I like that the review is good, but the feelings were certainly not what I tried to transmit. So what? There were feelings and that’s the thing which is important. I don’t think that my way to see the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven is in any way romantic! But if the audience thinks it’s romantic and it transmits something, wonderful!
BD: So, it’s your job to get across something, but not necessarily a specific thing?
CK: Not for the audience, because as I said, music, for me, is a language that I can’t translate! If I could, then I would stress the fact that I want you to have the same feelings as I have. But I don’t want that!
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