When Riccardo Muti joins the Vienna Philharmonic for the New Year’s Concert at the Musikverein next week, he will become the longest-serving conductor in the event’s history. But that is no temptation to rest on his laurels.
“It’s always like the first time,” he said in a video interview earlier this month from Ravenna, Italy. “Because it is a great responsibility to perform for the world from this hall, to put on display the culture of a city and of a nation.”
The concert, which will be broadcast in more than 90 countries, will consist almost exclusively of music from the Strauss dynasty as part of celebrations for the bicentenary of the most famous member, Johann Strauss Jr., who penned the waltz “The Blue Danube.”
Muti, 83, has worked with the orchestra for more than 50 consecutive years, and their relationship continues to evolve.
In February and March, he and the Philharmonic will go on tour to La Scala in Milan and to Carnegie Hall in New York with repertoire ranging from Bruckner’s monumental Seventh Symphony to the “Divertimento” from Stravinsky’s ballet “The Fairy’s Kiss.”
The conductor also remains tied to the Chicago Symphony, where he served as music director from 2010 to 2023 and was last season named music director emeritus for life. And since 2015, he has coached young conductors through his opera academy, both at home in Italy and as far away as Japan.
He spoke about his musical activities shortly after returning from Suzhou, China, where he had led courses focused on Mascagni’s opera “Cavalleria Rusticana.” The following conversation, conducted in Italian, has been translated, edited and condensed.
What do you emphasize when transmitting the Italian opera tradition abroad?
The first thing is to learn the language well, because in Italian opera there is a very close relationship between music and text. The world of Wagner is different because the score is a great orchestral symphony, with words in this great river. In Verdi, as in Mozart, every note must carry the color and scent of the word.
Knowing the language makes it possible to understand the blood of our culture. And I was very impressed when the Suzhou Symphony Orchestra performed “Cavalleria.” After many rehearsals, they understood the intensity and fire that represent the south of Italy — the jealousy, love, violence, religion — all these things that Mascagni captured, but that are very distant from Chinese culture. Music in this sense can overcome any misunderstanding.
How can one reconcile that the New Year’s Concert first emerged during World War II — as a fund-raiser for the War Winter Relief Program, under the auspices of Nazi rule — with its current role as a vehicle for peace and harmony?
Human beings have often used music for political reasons, but the music is innocent. As an Italian, I should in theory refuse to lead the “Radetzky March” [by Johann Strauss Sr.] because at the time Austria ruled over Lombardy, but when I do, I am conducting a piece of music.
When I take the podium, I am a person with my own political views, but the music is neither left, center or right. Opera is of course different because of the text. Words are the problem. They can cause war, hatred, resentment, murder. Pure music does not.
Where does the music of Johann Strauss Jr. fall into this discussion?
We are celebrating a musician who represents the spirit of Vienna. For me, Schubert is the other musician who represents this world between tenderness and an impending sense of death.
In Strauss’s music, you always have to keep in mind that beneath the apparent cheerfulness, there is a black undercurrent of melancholy. And our lives are nothing more than a constant shifting between joy and sadness. The conductor must always keep in mind the balance between these two elements.
Strauss’s music seeks to send a message of harmony, lightness, beauty and peace. And certainly, in a world full of war, music can only deliver a message of love. If this music has been used in the past for different reasons, then this is the time to say that it is innocent, that it only brings beauty with a capital B to the world.
The program will also include a composition by a woman — Constanze Geiger — for the first time in the event’s history.
Yes, and it has nothing to do with being politically correct. It is very interesting that a woman born in 1835 was composing waltzes. The “Ferdinandus Waltz,” which is very well written, begins with “Vivace con fuoco” [lively with fire], as if to assert, “I am also capable.” The music also has wit and tenderness, which is in a sense very feminine. I think this will open up interest in exploring female composers who in Strauss’ time wrote music of a certain value.
It is said that you have helped preserve the Vienna Philharmonic’s sound culture given your long relationship with the orchestra. What have they given to you?
In the 1970s, I learned the phrasing and sound demanded by classical and romantic repertoire of the Austrian tradition. Now, after so many years, I bring it back to them.
The members of the Philharmonic are very careful to preserve a way of playing that embodies their culture. This does not mean conservatism but to preserve the roots — to look into the future, but not to cut the roots. Because if you do, the tree dies.
When I travel in Japan or China, the word Vienna has a charisma, a fascination that is in everybody’s heart. That is the reason why, on the morning of Jan. 1, this music from the Musikverein is like a dream that becomes reality. It is a feeling of nostalgia for the past, of a youth that is no more, of a world that we would like to improve.
I have been a conductor of great orchestras like the Philharmonia in London, La Scala, Philadelphia, Chicago. However, the orchestra that has accompanied my youth, maturity and old age has been the Vienna Philharmonic.
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