This was an interesting read (someone posted this on the Mahler List).
The interview originally appeared in German in the Süddeutsche Zeitung
on January 16, 2007.
2007-02-07
Mahler and me
Jörg Königsdorf interviews composer and conductor Pierre Boulez on
his selective affinities for the works of Gustav Mahler.
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Like Herbert von Karajan and Daniel Barenboim,
you became known as a Mahler specialist only later in your career. Do you
have to be 80 years old to understand Mahler?
Pierre Boulez: I conducted a lot of Mahler 40 years ago as head of the
BBC Orchestra in London - but not in Germany. I discovered Mahler's
music in 1958, through his Lieder. Mahler was a great fan of the voice,
and he orchestrated the songs with a lighter touch and greater refinement
than the symphonies.
Does Mahler bring the 19th century to a close, or usher in the 20th?
It is precisely his position between two different epochs that makes
him so fascinating. For me, Mahler's music is closely associated with
that of Alban Berg, the same sensibility is present in both. It's just
that Berg used a new vocabulary, while you can still listen to Mahler
through 19th-century ears without being overly disturbed. I believe Mahler
attempted to achieve a unity that had ceased to be attainable. Take his
third symphony: the bombast of the first movement is followed by
theatrical episodes, the Nietzsche movement is then followed by the "Bim Bam"
of the boy's choir and then by the finale, which invokes the spirit of
Beethoven by means of virtually literal citations. It's completely
illogical as a totality - but comprehensible in light of Mahler's own
biography.
Do you perceive a sustained impact by Mahler on contemporary
composition?
Mahler's music had no immediate successors.
...apart from Shostakovich.
But now we're really in a completely different price class.
Shostakovich is far less complex than Mahler! But there is an eminently practical
reason why Mahler had no immediate followers: the Second Viennese
School considered shorter pieces to be modern, and no one was especially
interested in Mahler's protracted narrative breath. That came only later -
for me as well. While you would never say that my music resembles
Mahler's stylistically, I have nonetheless been influenced by its
fundamental principles: the conception of time and the attempt to wrest
continually new standpoints from the same material.
With contemporary orchestral music, you often get the impression that
to a great extent, Mahler exhausted the expressive resources of the
symphonic apparatus.
When composers deploy the orchestra in three groups as Mahler did, it
inevitably recalls classical orchestration. I've drawn the logical
consequences from this situation, progressively subdividing the orchestra in
my pieces. The musicians must be deployed individually - that is the
path toward the orchestra of the 21st century.
It seems astonishing that you have conducted so much Mahler, but never
Richard Strauss.
I admire Strauss' virtuosity. But I have the feeling that at times
content mattered less to him.
You're highly selective in deciding which pieces to perform.
That has to do with the fact that I see myself primarily as a composer,
not an interpreter. I only conduct music that interests me as a
composer. I enjoy listening to Tchaikovsky and Sibelius on the radio or at
concerts, but I feel no genuine affinity for their music.
Jörg Königsdorf writes on music for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Translation: Ian Pepper
Topic: Boulez talks about Mahler in an interview... (Read 5889 times)