You’ve made a name conducting Wagner and have conducted a complete Ring Cycle. Can you remember when you were first drawn to Wagner and what it is about his music that attracts you?
It’s like their minds expand to fit it!
Oh, I remember it vividly. I was attending a theory class at the Conservatorium, and the teacher that evening put the prelude to Tristan and Isolde on the record player. I will never forget it. I was just completely overwhelmed by this music. I’d never heard anything like it, so that was the beginning of the journey. And that journey involved learning German, learning a lot of lied because great romantic German opera has all its roots in lied singing and in the text from the great German poets. It involved years of study both at the keyboard, playing, rehearsals, conducting rehearsals and fortunately then at a relatively young age beginning to conduct all these works myself. I conducted Dutchman when I was 33 and Tristan, Meistersinger, and Siegfried when I was still only 34. That’s incredibly young for all that repertoire, so by the age of 40 I had conducted all of them, including full Ring Cycles, and then I just kept building on that. There must be a parallel with Shakespearean actors who do all the historic plays. It’s a lifetime of development. As you get older your understanding gets deeper and more profound and you continue to develop. And the fascination never fades. It’s probably about time I did another Ring Cycle sometime soon. Another lap around the Wagner pool… Another lap, exactly. And the amazing thing about Wagner, despite the length of the operas, an awful lot of people who have no operatic experience whatsoever will find themselves completely fascinated by him and find the span of the work no challenge whatsoever…
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Exactly, and so I’m doing Parsifal next Easter in Paris with the lovely Simon O’Neill, and I’m anticipating that very much that because it will be about six years since I did my last Parsifal and it feels like it’s time to reinvestigate that score. So, I’m looking forward to that and I imagine there will be some Wagner in the future, down the track in Sydney. One last question then. Because music is so all-encompassing for you, do you ever listen to music for relaxation or do you just like silence? Because there’s music in silence as well… There is music in silence. Silence is not an acoustic vacuum. Silence has substance, but yes, I do sometimes listen to some popular music for relaxation. Sometimes I’ll be in the mood to listen to some chamber music. I very rarely listen to anything that is in my repertoire, because that then falls into the work category, and I cannot detach myself from it. I’ll find myself focusing on a particular singer or on a particular structure by a conductor or whatever, so it becomes more analytical. But if it’s a work I don’t know, then sometimes, but if it’s in a genre or style that I work within then it’s not relaxing for me. You can’t switch off. I can’t switch off, but if it’s chamber music of the kind that I don’t play, or if it’s some jazz, or some pop music… If we’re on a road trip, I always let my daughters make the playlist! I’m very grateful for your time.
