What counts is experience

If there is one motto that I would put above my work as a musician, it would be: "Don't help yourself to a work, but serve it."

Whereby motto sounds too technical, too programmatic. It's more about my innermost conviction, the actual motive for devoting myself to a score as a conductor. By serve, of course, I don't mean anything reminiscent of servitude. Rather, it is about putting one's own personality, experience, talent and work at the disposal of the respective composition. As a performer, you are the advocate of a piece of music and therefore take a back seat to it. And from this perspective, those who consider themselves more important than the work, i.e. who use a symphony, an opera, a song or a sonata to push themselves to the fore, are not really musicians at all. Not serious ones, anyway. That's why the famous tenor who jovially whispers to me just before a performance of Bohème: "Today, Bertrand, we're going to rewrite the piece", is on the wrong track. He lacks the necessary respect from the interpreter, who misunderstands himself as the creator.

The questions that I therefore ask myself as a conductor are: "What can I bring to the work that I am performing? Am I able to present it to an audience in the best possible way? Can I still bring it to life?" If not, I should definitely remove it from my repertoire. There are times when you move away from certain pieces or composers. Perhaps forever, perhaps only for a limited time. Others stay with you for the rest of your life.

For example, I can't imagine being a conductor without Mozart. The important thing is to recognize whether the inner relationship is still intact or not. This requires constant study. And for me, this is by no means limited to sitting at my desk analyzing a score. If you are a musician, your life will be one hundred percent saturated with music. "You've got it good", I often hear, "you've turned your passion into a profession". That's true. But the German word Leidenschaft, with its root word "Leiden", aptly expresses an important aspect: I am driven, consciously and unconsciously, to occupy myself incessantly with music. Occasionally I would like to press the stop button and take a vacation from my passion, so to speak. But that's not possible.

Sometimes I wake up in the night and something inside me almost forces me to get up and look at a certain detail in a certain beat, which suddenly and unexpectedly brings me closer to the essence of the composition.

Nature is very important to me in this context. I realize again and again that I have to go outside in order to penetrate a work more deeply. Water and mountains are therefore indispensable for me. Just one example: In the fall, I conducted Mozart's Nozze di Figaro at the Vienna State Opera's guest performance in Japan, a piece that I had already performed countless times and knew inside and out. Nevertheless, I wanted to devote myself intensively to this opera again beforehand. So I took a picnic blanket and sat down for a few hours - I live in Lausanne - on the shore of Lake Geneva: the mountains in the background, a few swans swimming past in front of me and the score and the concertmaster's voice of the State Opera in my lap. In addition, an atmosphere of silence and tranquillity that I would never find within my own four walls. I couldn't possibly name exactly what I had discovered in Figaro that had been hidden from me until then.

But my understanding of this ultimately unfathomable masterpiece was definitely richer and deeper after those few hours. And so every walk, every museum visit, every book, every encounter provides additional experience. And this is essential for my profession. The saying that a good conductor should be at least 50 years old is therefore no exaggeration. Like a good Burgundy, you need time to mature. While others my age are starting to think about retirement, I see myself as only at the beginning of the artistic journey that will take me further and further into the world of music. It's remarkable how diametrically opposed life and art are: In the physical world, getting older at a certain point means decay; for the artist, getting older means an increase in depth.

An amusing question that I was once asked in an interview fits in with this: "Isn't it frustrating," said the visibly concerned interviewee, "that as a conductor you always have to be aware during a performance that you have not yet reached the final destination of your own interpretation, but merely an intermediate station, because with even more experience a few years later you would be even closer to the piece?"

Well, Confucius' famous saying that the path is the goal is also pertinent here. If you don't enjoy becoming, enjoying the present moment, you will never find happiness. Especially not in music. In order to interpret a piece even better once, I have to interpret it again and again. Even great athletes are not immediately ready for the Olympics. And it's often the mistakes and missteps that ultimately take you further. That's why I prefer those student conductors who have the typical teething troubles such as "too loud, too fast, too extreme" and thus suggest an authentic personality, rather than those who offer a smooth mainstream interpretation. The process of experience cannot be accelerated. When I was allowed to conduct Verdi's Falstaff for the first time many years ago, I immersed myself in the autograph. I had fallen in love with the idea of bringing the original to life and deliberately ignoring Verdi's later corrections and retouching. What can I say? I gradually realized that Verdi already knew what he was doing. Each of his changes was a clear improvement on the previous one. My somewhat fundamentalist detour was nevertheless important, because it enabled me to really get to the bottom of the why behind the composition.

But I have to inform myself historically, I have to know what the socio-political situation was like at the time, I have to know the models and events on which the subject matter was based. I have to know whether and where the composer found himself in the material or what personal experiences and opinions the creators incorporated. I thus become my own dramaturge, who provides me with the knowledge that is hidden behind the notes.

Finally, a little excursion below sea level: I am a passionate diver. I started this hobby about twenty years ago at my daughter's request so that I could explore the mysteriously beautiful world of lakes and oceans with her. One of the highlights in this regard was a dive off the coast of Mexico. Our teacher had chosen a place that is regularly visited by (pregnant and therefore in principle harmless) sharks and is considered a diving attraction. Unlike my daughter, I was naturally very scared, but overcame my fear and the three of us waited at a depth of 25 meters until the shadows of the sharks finally appeared and then some of them gradually swam closer and closer. My daughter and I had been told not to make any movements and to trust that the sharks would not see us as a source of food. When one of the sharks suddenly headed towards me and stopped right in front of me, I heard the beginning of the overture to The Flying Dutchman, as if at the touch of a button. An inspiration without any warning. Matching the (supposed) drama of what was happening.

A few seconds later, the shark turned away and disappeared - but since then, whenever I conduct Der Holländer, I see that Mexican shark in my mind's eye whenever I hear the same theme. I don't know whether this encounter with the sea had anything to do with my interpretation, but the immediate association at that time proves how permeated and filled my entire being is with music and that there is no situation in life in which it does not make itself felt in me.