Europe in the genes, America in the heart

Manfred Honeck, you have long been conducting orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic. Is there such a thing as the typical American orchestral sound?

In the past, people would probably have meant two things by that: incredible precision and loud brass. Like a machine, impressive but also a little cold. But I’ve become very careful about generalisations of this kind. Firstly, there have been huge developments: the sound of the Chicago Symphony, for example, has changed a lot under Daniel Barenboim and Riccardo Muti. Secondly, the differences between the individual orchestras are just too great. In the USA it’s no different than in Europe – the Vienna Philharmonic sounds very different to the Berlin Philharmonic. That’s what makes it so exciting! And thirdly, there’s never one uniform sound: a Beethoven will always sound different to a Tchaikovsky.

How does the sound of an orchestra actually come about?

It’s shaped over years, or even decades, by the chief conductors and their personalities. Take my orchestra in Pittsburgh, for example: my direct predecessors were Lorin Maazel and Mariss Jansons, each of whom led the orchestra for eight years. I’ve been there for 14 years by now, and of course, I too try to realise my ideas. Those ideas arise from my background and my musical development in Vienna, from the traditions of Austrian folk music, Viennese Classicism, Romanticism and all the way to Gustav Mahler. How exactly do you play a ländler folk dance with its rhythmical freedoms? Mahler said: »The most important thing in music isn’t in the notes.« I see it as my mission to pass on this knowledge.

It’s striking how American orchestras love to import conductors from Europe. Five conductors who were all born in Budapest played a huge part in the rise of the American classical music scene after the Second World War: Fritz Reiner, Eugene Ormandy, Georg Solti, George Szell and Antal Doráti. Today, the chief conductors are called Riccardo Muti, Andris Nelsons, Franz Welser-Möst and Manfred Honeck.

Of course, Europe was the birthplace of classical music. And after the USA became constituted as a nation, there was a great need to promote art and to breathe life into it with advisors from the motherland of music. The best example is Antonín Dvořák, whom the New York Conservatory engaged as its director in 1892 – with the explicit task of creating an American music. Later, the two world wars led a number of European artists to emigrate to the USA, where they helped shape cultural life. However, the profound desire to dive deep and to truly understand the European musical tradition has endured to this day. And so I have the incredible luck to be working with outstandingly trained musicians who are both enthusiastic and incredibly eager to learn more.

In this age of globalisation, do the members of your orchestra still mainly come from the US?

Yes, the vast majority of the musicians come from the US and studied here. However, many of them have European, South American or Asian roots.

Quite a few special traditions and characteristics have emerged over the years. For example, you have the »American« orchestra seating, where the string players are arranged in ascending order from left to right: first violins, second violins, violas, cellos, double basses – in contrast to the »traditional German« seating…

…where the first and second violins sit opposite each other, with the cellos and violas between them. Which produces a kind of stereo effect, with the second violins coming through much more clearly. Every composer from the age of Viennese Classicism to the beginning of the 20th century wrote for this seating arrangement as a matter of course. That’s why I’ve introduced it in Pittsburgh for this repertoire. And that’s how we will perform in the Elbphilharmonie too. The American seating emerged in the 1920s, presumably with the advent of the record industry. When recording with a single microphone, it made more sense to have the high instruments on one side and the deep ones on the other. It’s also easier when the orchestra is arranged like the score. And when the first and second violins play the same voice in unison, it is, of course, much easier to play together when they’re sitting next to each other. Here we see the ideal of precision again, which became a higher priority in the age of sound recordings. But of course, we also take the specific acoustics of the respective concert hall into consideration when deciding on the seating arrangement.

There are similar differences with instruments: the German trumpet with rotary valves and the American trumpet with piston valves. Does this make such a big difference to the sound?

Oh yes, definitely. The German model sounds softer, more like a horn, while the American one is more brilliant. Piston valves are also better for blurring notes, like in jazz, when you want a slightly dirty sound. We’re flexible and simply use the type that’s most suitable in each case: the German model for Brahms and Bruckner, the American one for Stravinsky and Bernstein.

So you actually have the advantage of versatility, in contrast to European orchestras, where the American version is completely frowned upon.

Exactly, although an appreciation of the additional sound possibilities is also gradually developing in Europe. Incidentally, this is also true in jazz: the jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis recently told me that he uses a range of different trumpets depending on the kind of sound he wants to produce.

Final topic: the repertoire. Is it true that the boundary between classical music and film music, jazz and pop is much more porous in America than in Europe?

Oh yes. In Pittsburgh we even have a Principal Pops Conductor, a position currently held by the jazz trumpeter Byron Stripling.

Really? It’s impossible to imagine the Vienna Philharmonic doing that.

Absolutely. [Grins] I remember, when I was in Vienna, Leonard Bernstein conducting his »Divertimento«. Understanding his style was a huge adjustment for us. In Pittsburgh, our highest-profile long-standing Pops Conductor was Marvin Hamlisch, who composed the musical »A Chorus Line«, the theme song to the Bond film »The Spy Who Loved Me« and numerous songs for Barbra Streisand. The great John Williams conducted for us only recently. Our musicians play pop, jazz and film music fantastically well, and these kinds of forays are a tremendous enrichment for the sound culture and stylistic flexibility overall. Here too you see that the basis is profoundly European, but love for one’s own country and traditions is at least as important.

Interview: Clemens Matuschek, Version: 1.7.2022