hello everyone today i am here with alex ross who is music critic for the new yorker author of the best-selling the rest is noise but most importantly he has a new book out fascinating work called wagnerism art and politics in the shadow of music alex welcome thank you so much wonderful to be here i have so many questions about wagner let me start with one why is it i have the perception that the truly great
wagner recordings come from the 1950s or the 1960s if i think even of the talk you gave for the new yorker well you talked about kyle barrett and schulte and fertvangler those are ancient recordings clement krauss that was what 1953 what has happened to the recording quality of wagner that's an interesting question there are great many wonderful wagner voices today um and you know it there's always a little bit of a dearth in one category
or another we never seem to be at the moment where you know there are a sort of a surfeit of outstanding voices in uh for every role but but there's no there's no lack of wonderful wagner singers but it is true that there was this extraordinary outpouring of of recordings in the 50s and 60s and i think it had something to do with with all of these singers uh it was just an extraordinary generation of singers to begin with hans
hotter and and astrid varnai and then uh berger nielsen a little later wolfgang vindassen um but i think you know because of the the second world war created this this kind of cesiura and and you know a bunch of singers went into exile uh and and others were remained in nazi germany and and collaborated or didn't collaborate to whatever extent and then after the war they all came back together um and by
resumed with what seemed to be a a really a new uh uh uh philosophy uh and a new approach uh under the wagner grandsons and and so suddenly there was this explosion of something that's this pent-up kind of energy uh but you know it isn't just about the singing quality there is an expressive power uh to those voices and it's it's sort of a question i think this comes up throughout opera not just in wagner the the high technical quality of voices
today but it's not so easy to find this total expressive conviction whether in wagner or verdi or or mozart and so i think in terms of the training of opera voices today there might be a little too much emphasis on sheer technique and and less on expression and the use of language and the communication of drama uh through the voice and why is this different for wagner if we think about beethoven piano sonatas
which also blossomed after the end of the second world war just in the last two years you have cycles by igor levitt jonathan biss martino torimo uh daniel bin pianar stefan massey no assertive stephan mossy he doesn't even have his own wikipedia page and they're tremendous right fanfare says this is as good as solomon or pelini or kemp nothing like that for wagner right they're both german composers why hasn't the meaningfulness been
drained out of beethoven pianism the same way well again i wouldn't say that the the meaningfulness has been drained out of wagner singing i mean you have some tremendous singers right now i mean lisa davidson the the young swede of soprano uh i think has incredible potential to become uh possibly a singer almost at the level of nielsen in terms of uh sheer technique uh you know we've had this great run of performances from
renee popp and and there are younger singers in that uh category who i think could could easily uh carry that on gunter grossbook uh and and some others and um the tenors uh maybe a little less so i'm not as much a fan of jonas kaufman as some others are in terms of his uh wagner's thinking it seems a little contained to me but uh yes i wouldn't i wouldn't put it quite as starkly as that but uh definitely i don't feel this sort of
overall sense of of dramatic immersion and i think just because this this opera is just so much more complicated uh uh you know in terms of putting all these ingredients together and making an effective uh fusion in terms of having the right singers the right conductor the right uh stage director uh it it's you know a pianist you know on his or her own uh can can just you know make uh a great beethoven recording without needing all
of these sort of you know uh uh cogs and wheels and sort of working pieces uh uh to depend on so just you know wagner it's it's always tricky and people are always saying that the all the great faulkner singers are the past and people said that in 50s 60s they said oh you should have heard so and so um and and so this this bemoaning of the lost golden age is a very familiar syndrome in the conversation about opera
but it seems also the conductors are an issue so there are maybe more wonderful conductors today than ever before but there's not a single one doing wagner that i really should care about it feels to me is that wrong is it overly homogenized and is that part of the bargain with modernity higher quality more uniformity and interpretation i do agree with that i mean that's absolutely a general issue uh in in musical interpretation these
days you just don't have these uh geographical distinctions among orchestras in different countries that you used to where sort of you know just a french wind section sounded quite different from a from a german one uh and it's it's been called the the americanization of or orchestral sound because the great american orchestras of the 20th century tended to smooth out those regional differences uh even as they incorporated players from
some so many different traditions they they tended to smooth out those differences and then i think that attitude has spread backward uh uh back to europe uh in terms of european orchestras just don't have that as much of that distinction what's the production function behind that so it seems the musical world would love to have additional excitement someone like dudamel comes along but everyone thinks of him
it's certainly been good for his career right why doesn't some orchestra some opera company deviate from the homogenization norm what stops that from happening what is it people can't do anymore it's just such a highly professionalized field you know in terms of how players are chosen and this lengthy lengthy process of the audition process and before the audition process the conservatory training process and
and you know people take the the the sheer question of technique very very seriously um and take pride in it you know as they should because the technical level of orchestra players today is higher than it's ever been uh and if you just go back to the classic recordings you might hear more expression you might hear a more uh sense of musical understanding the playing is not going to be as good as it is today just in sheer technical terms
that's that's a a trade-off um that deserves to be questioned you know because when you go back to those recordings sometimes you just don't care if there are a few more horn flubs or a slightly sour wind sound when uh you're getting this this wonderful uh sense of expression so so i think it's that professionalization the sort of the specialization uh the self-consciousness uh scholars have written about how
the advent of recording itself made orchestras much more self-conscious about their sound uh more eager to avoid uh mistakes uh getting away from that kind of looser slightly more chaotic understanding of orchestral ensemble that that fert fingler uh for example uh prized he just never liked it when everyone was absolutely uh sort of smacked together in this precise way and he criticized toscanini on those grounds so it's it's
sort of shifting aesthetics uh shifting uh uh standards uh of taste i would love to see uh uh certain orchestras certain conductors uh shake really shake things up and and uh sort of step away from that extreme extreme concentration on the technical pure technical standard but who's going to be the first to do it because the first person to do it will will be questioned and criticized you know what's happened to
you know the perfection of our of our sound you know so it's it's a tricky move uh to make you see it in early music you see this much looser more improvisatory more uh flavorful uh uh kind of uh approach in in early music and i wish we could bring some of that spontaneity uh into 19th century orchestral sort of playing of the romantic repertory as well maybe it'll happen we'll see what would wagner himself think if he showed up at beiroid
and heard some of the plane what would surprise him the most i think he would be very pleased by the technical standard uh it's just very hard to say i mean when you go back to the 19th century i mean this the singing style was so different if you listen to those recordings right from the turn of the century the very early cylinder recordings it's a very different kind of of vocal delivery it's it's less finished uh less burnished
in terms of the tone quality it has a kind of more i think what we consider to be a a focus uh kind of sounds slightly rougher in terms of timbre uh uh almost more conversational uh in terms of the uh delivery uh the voices weren't as big uh also so i think he'd be he'd be surprised and he might not be altogether pleased by the this kind of finished ringing power of the sound he might well say oh that sounds great but i can't hear
the words you know i want to hear i mean to hear uh more of the words at every moment i don't care if the you know c sharp is perfectly uh sustained in the soprano if i'm sort of losing the meaning of the words because he was he was always a dramatist as well as a composer um and and the words mattered a great deal to him and this general sensibility that we have now of voices always in danger of getting
swamped by the orchestra i don't think would have pleased him at all as an outsider let me ask you a very naive question now i have a single cd version of wagner's dust rheingold by rudolph kemper you probably know this recording it's beautiful it's like a wonderful mini opera just the highlights i can listen to the one disc why should i ever listen to the hall opera i enjoy the one disc more canva did pick out the highlights yeah
no that's perfectly valid you know and and the um the orchestral syntheses that were devised by stakovsky and and and many other conductors are are very entertaining to listen to and uh it's an interesting question about excerpts and wagner he always had a a kind of uh ambivalent uh attitude toward the extraction of excerpts from his works on the one hand it was a great marketing device and he was a brilliant marketer
uh he was a master of of publicity and branding and sort of all these modern techniques and he knew that you know pulling the music of the right of the valkyries uh out of de valkyra uh would spread his fame because that piece had an electrifying effect on uh audiences so the moment was first heard uh the same with all the other uh excerpts from the ring and the other operas but at the same time he he he always felt that something was
was lost and that the dramatic purpose of these uh excerpts tended to disappear uh when they just became orchestral showpieces take for example the the end of rheingold uh the entry of the gods into valhalla it's a grandiose splendid uh uh kind of uh uh not quite uplifting but it's it's just very energizing it sort of makes you feel grand and important uh listening to it uh it's just the sheer pleasure and the power of masked orchestral
uh sound but in the context and i talk about this in the book it's absolutely ironic this is uh a catastrophe unfolding uh the gods are entering valhalla ignoring the pleas of the rhine maidens to return the ring to the rhine uh boton has struck this evil bargain to pay off the giants uh for the for the building uh of valhalla and it's always funny to remember that the ring is a story of of contractors not being paid for their
work and and so it it it is supposed to be uh uh it is uh dramatically uh ironic uh it's an empty spectacle it's a hollow spectacle uh and uh i compare it to the end of esculus's agamemnon uh and uh uh cleveland and negislus uh entering uh uh the palace uh at the end of academia um and so when you pull out the excerpt you lose uh those levels of irony those levels of dramatic richness but you know it's
impossible to resist i mean you know you can't listen to uh you know the entire operas and from end every time uh you you you know want to experience the the highlights as as the feeling moves you but i do feel that wagner is always at his richest when you take the entire conception in in the theater when you experience it as theater that's when it really comes alive and reveals its full power should we think less of wagner because
there's so little humor in it or do you think there's more humor in it than is commonly realized he was not a great humorist by any means but but there there is there is a heavy kind of wit i mean there's always this this question about de meistersinger and uh this is supposedly his great comedy uh i don't find it to be a particularly hilarious piece and it's of all the wagner operas it's the one i've always had
the most difficulty with for various reasons that we could maybe get into but but there is you know the the ring the ring certainly has irony uh it has uh there's a sense of detachment from from the characters the characters
are being observed from from various uh angles uh and so if not quite laugh out loud humor there is uh there are alienation effects in wagner there are uh moments of rupture where you're breaking out of the the character's own
delusional ideas about what's going on and then sort of seeing it from another angle and there's a kind of darker kind of wit uh in that even in tristan monday's old there are moments in just on uh that make you smile uh a little bit i always love this the moment uh at the end of um the first act when when uh king mark uh uh is mentioned or as soon as someone is uh and um uh and tristan says witch king you know he's so completely lost in this
this this uh potion infused bliss of of the of the love with izolda that he's forgotten who the king is who's his uncle and the whole idea is he's bringing uh izolda to his uncle so that he can marry her and and he's he's just so out of it that he asks which which king it's a it's a it's a moment of borderline uh uh humor in wagner but uh but no he's not the composer you go to for uh for uh laughs and and light moments
by any means who in popular music or rock and roll today would count as a valid successor to the wagnerian ethos it wouldn't be taylor swift right who or what would it be i don't know again because wagner is a is a theater composer um so we would have to be someone from the theater world uh it's it's not about songwriters um uh so i would sort of look to to [Music] i don't know if there's anyone on broadway uh in
in the broadway musical world who uh is working in this fashion but that's that's the the world where you would expect a kind of you know wagnerian effect i mean it's not a musical but i always think of angels in america uh as a very wagnerian uh enterprise because if it's its scope and its uh interweaving of realistic and mythic uh uh elements and then the and the layers uh to it so uh but in terms of this people talk about
the vagnarian in rock uh it's just a very very loose kind of understanding of what it means to be vaccinarian it just means grand and heavy and pounding uh and enormous and of course that's that's only one side of wagner's aesthetic but it's a very well known side the right of the valkyries the entry of the gods uh siegfried's funeral music these these just very uh uh powerful heavy hitting moments in wagner so
uh there's been always been a kind of this rumor this kind of just uh a hint of the of the fognarian and in heavy metal and i think going back to uh led zeppelin um and their fascination with the lord of the rings and tolkien kind of brings them into the you know zone of the of the wagnerian uh the hammer of the gods uh and so on so uh you know maybe that's one area where you can uh talk about the wagnerian and popular music now one theme
of your book as i understand it is that vogerism historically is more diverse than many people realize there was a branch of zionism that left wagner there's an african-american tradition that's quite interested in wagner but maybe you can talk me out of some of the worries i have when i listen to wagner so when i listen i feel better if i'm listening to von klemperer who is jewish and he was a refugee and he left europe to come to america i
feel i'm offsetting something in wagner that disturbs me and if you think about what wagner has become it seems the problematic element in wagner it does somehow match up to the music in a way which is hard to escape so no one listens to wagner and comes away saying well del bourgeois life as you find under democratic capitalism is underrated no one comes away from wagner saying i now have a greater appreciation
for methodological individualism right there is something ominous about the music and how should we as listeners come to terms with that should we feel guilty when listening to wagner given the association with anti-semitism nazis and
much more and i think you should always be wary uh we'll say to wagner and you know my whole history with wagner was actually i started out uh really uh averse to the to the entire sound world i mean when i was a kid
growing up with classical music i tried listening to low end grid and i checked records of london out of the public library and i put them on and just i only could stand it for 10 minutes or so of course i knew nothing about anti-semitism and and nazism and the connection with hitler it was just purely a question of the sound they found the sound disturbing and just kind of this this sort of seasick feeling of bobbing
from one chord to another without sort of clear demarcations i just i just had this this this kind of instinctual revulsion to it and then when i started revisiting wagner in college it was always from the point of view of the of the the intellectual problem of october i was by that time very conscious of wagner's anti-semitism and the chain of influences that lead to hitler and and i i just saw him as this problem of
intellectual history this problem of cultural uh history i spent a lot of time uh studying the period of the fantasy ecla uh the the culture and and history uh of that period especially in europe and wagner was just this shadow uh was this lurking presence and it wasn't until later it wasn't until i was in my 20s that i began really seriously listening to wagner um as music experiencing him as theater and beginning to have
a less negative and eventually a much more enthusiastic or sort of deeper engagement with music but always with weariness uh always with a consciousness of how this extraordinary figure um who really had it in him i think to become uh a cultural figure on the scale of esculus dante shakespeare there's there's there's a universalism uh there is this profound psychological understanding coupled with this flare for painting on the huge
canvas and manipulating mythic motifs uh just yet this extraordinary combination of creative qualities the ability to compose to create the texts for uh his operas his skills as a theater designer i mean he essentially designed uh the space of of byroid which was revolutionary in the late 19th century as a director a director of theater uh as a theorist just just a very singular almost unprecedented uh unsurpassed
collection of qualities fusion of qualities it all went wrong it's it all went wrong it it did this he had the potential to become that kind of universal figure and he did not because of his anti-semitism because of his extreme nationalism and so it shadows his achievement there will always be this asterisk uh next to wagner and and you're always aware of that issue but i think that doesn't that in a weird way enriches the
experience for me to be conscious of all this darkness it takes it takes this body of work out of the realm of the ideal uh this idea that music just lifts us up and takes us into this other world uh for a little while and we're entertained or or we're sort of led into the sort of sublime sphere and then we come back to reality wagner you never leave reality and everything sublime and magnificent and moving uh in wagner is insane
this darkness the this and i think that very unfortunately exemplary uh where uh the the greatness and the darkness are all mixed together because that's we are as a species and wagner really exemplifies our species in some ways in terms of this this mixing together of creative and destructive energies all at once and you can never separate them but if that's not isn't it enthusiasm itself for wagner that we should worry about so
in your book you mentioned of course apocalypse now francis ford coppola's use of the music from the valkyries uh when the helicopters are bombing the countryside and there's some combination of terror and beauty in the music that does make that a thrilling scene and shouldn't we be repulsed by our very attraction to wagner and thus we're always wanting to keep it at a distance maybe we listen to it two or three times a year
just to remind ourselves of why we don't read it as we would beethoven or mozart who were classical liberals or a human very vulnerable figures had a strong sense of humor and just the whole tradition of what wagner's descendants then how they connected with hitler and the nazis i mean shouldn't we keep it at a very real distance from ourselves but periodically pull it out of the drawer to remind ourselves why we're attracted
and then run away as fast as we can i don't think so i i think i don't i don't feel there's a there's a present clear and present danger with wagner in today's culture if you look at what's going on in the world if you look at the threats that we face if you look at racism in contemporary america if you look at inequality across the globe you you can't you know wagner is not lurking behind really any of this it's happening today
um what is at work in ways that i don't think we've we're fully conscious of or we haven't analyzed enough is all of this american popular culture that we think of as innately good and pure and innocent it's our music it's music from the people uh and yet it is unquestionably mixed up with with uh american history and present-day american uh politics uh so wagner isn't to blame for any of this you know i mean
uh uh and just because classical music no longer has anything like the role that it once had on the world stage and in culture today uh i just don't think you're gonna see some kind of uh you know new hitler arising uh enthused by by uh wagner and unleashing terror on the world so uh so i think i think we can go too far in demonizing wagner i think it's a mistake to say that beethoven and mozart and bach were all these sort of
wonderful pure liberal humanist figures and wagner was this evil irrational uh proto-fascist uh nationalist annie semi i mean uh the magic flute by mozart is unambiguously racist in a way that no work by wagner is uh because because jews are not present explicitly in any of wagner's operas it's theorized that that there are stereotypes at work uh but there's no one labeled a jew in wagner there are no black people in wagner
there is this these atrocious um this atrocious uh uh uh stereotype uh of uh monostatus in in uh the magic flute uh and so um uh you know that is uh i think that is a a a problem uh to be conscious of beethoven was was a misogynistic so
many of these composers were misogynists so you know wagner had a lot of bad qualities but he was not the most evil person who ever lived uh and uh and so i think again to to create this black and white where you know
these composers on the one hand are pure uh and innocent and and wagner is infused with evil i think uh is a mistake i mean wagner teaches us not to idealize uh wagner in that way talk us through your favorite recording of the ring cycle and why you find it so valuable and interesting which would it be you have to pick one uh i would pick the the 1955 ring cycle from byroid uh conducted by uh joseph kyle bart who's not one of the
the uh you know most celebrated uh conductors he's he's not his name is not instantly recognizable uh as as uh fervengler is and and uh toscanini and so many others but it's i think maybe precisely because he didn't seem to have some great interpretive scheme to to bring to bear he just sort of disappears into the music and sort of the music itself comes alive it's v it feels very spontaneous you just hear more of
the the constant shifting of moods uh the constant kind of psychological instability um but above all it's just an incredible cast i mean i astute farnai is my favorite uh bruno hilda and she just sings splendidly in that recording hans hotter uh saying vote on magnificently in any number of recordings somehow there he's you know at least as good as he ever was if not uh better and uh it just feels so of a piece
and it was recorded for release and then this recording never came out uh so it sounds very good for its time um but you could really go to i mean there's also 1953 pretty much the same cast with clemens krause conducting krause's uh uh probably a greater conductor uh sort of maybe makes more out of certain uh uh expressive moments and so that that has you know much to recommend it as well the one recording that i don't like is
garb schulte um and this is the classic this was the the first complete uh studio ring uh it's it was a great feat of recording for its time in terms of the use of uh stereo but uh schulte hammers too hard uh it's it's always overbearing it's this is a kind of a uh sort of unnecessarily brutal edge and it's not coincidentally it's the schulte recording of ride of the valkyries that you hear in apocalypse now
uh it's you know because that's just the most aggressively hard-hitting one and it goes with this sort of spectacle of masculine aggression uh the great irony of that scene of course and of so many other usages of the right of the valkyries is it's all men it's of male soldiers uh exulting in in their in their kind of lust for destruction uh the scene in uh in divakura is all about women it's it's all about uh these unusually powerful women
uh and at the turn of the last centuries i talk about in the book bruno hilda and the other valkyries became feminist icons to some extent culture of those days didn't offer so many strong female archetypes and and and wagner certainly did so there's a number of novels that define uh uh plays uh uh other works uh uh uh paintings works and visual arts uh where that that female power of the of the valkyries is celebrated and it was
inspiring for some women of the period so uh that's maybe an irony that that coppola was conscious of as he put together that scene would laura's fun triers ring have been any good uh i expect not i'm not a fan of his work i don't i don't uh i'm not um a fan of his use of uh the tristan prelude in melancholia you know his apocalyptic the end of the world movie the another planet is about to collide with uh earth and and you hear this
the prelude over and over again until it just seems to sort of wear itself out and become this this kitsch uh object and and so uh yeah who knows i mean maybe he would have done it brilliantly but uh i'm just not the biggest enthusiast of his work uh uh in general um and uh there's all kinds of problems with lars von trier in terms of his uh um attitudes uh on various subjects so it probably wouldn't have been the ideal
choice for byroid at the moment what's the best dorson whales movie and why um my favorite is touch of evil you know i don't know if i necessarily call it the best i mean in terms of sheer technical accomplishment uh uh citizen kane will will always be remarkable because that's the movie where you just had always had the most resources and the most control but i just absolutely love touch of evil i think it
taking this rather seamy sleazy uh genre uh picture uh and investing so much weirdness and and darkness and slightness and and menace uh into it is just uh i think it's it's it's an astonishing achievement i just get such this kind of visceral pleasure watching it uh every every moment is just wildly entertaining and and also i think rather deep in terms of how how it it talks about power uh uh and and uh uh the the his his character the the
the policeman who uh frames the guilty man it's it's a wonderfully sort of complex uh problem that it puts uh poses for the for the audience what is the best france to list piano transcription for capturing the essence of an opera he was amazing at that yes yeah yeah i mean there's so many yeah i mean i immediately think of the of some of the wagner transcriptions there's uh incredible transcription that he made of
the first transformation sequence in parsifal with the ringing of the bells it it departs somewhat from the opera from from wagner's uh score uh but it feels as though it's very much still of course falls world um and lest had every right to kind of do what he wanted with wagner because wagner took from him uh and missed also took from wagner they they had a sort of very complex uh relationship there's a great deal of
mutual borrowing uh that went on so so when he arranges percival he is to somebody uh uh arranging uh a couple of his own ideas as wagner uh uh uh appropriated them and sort of taking them back so that's that's a kind of wonderfully rich relationship there i think i would say reminiscences of norma from bellini yes kind of excerpts where i would rather listen to the transcription than the whole opera itself yeah yeah that's that's a wonderful one
yeah now the classical music world what would be the long-term effects of lockdown and having had a pandemic assume there's a vaccine we've recovered older people are still scared five to seven years from now what will the concert world look like in new york city i don't know i mean i uh on certain days i feel as though the classical world may not recover or go back to anything like what it was uh before because this the
damage has been very severe and once people get out of the habit of going to concerts it can be very difficult to to persuade them to come back i mean this is what happened to the the metropolitan opera after 9 11 for a little while people were just very reluctant to come into the city um and and some of them just never came back uh and they just developed new sort of cultural habits um so that it's it's a very just
sometimes some days i'm i'm very worried other days i feel as though they're there there could be a sort of more or less you know uh total recovery and perhaps five to seven years from now it will just be this strange nightmare that that we all kind of went through before going back to normal but but classical music is you know just it's just going to be the very last to come back uh along with uh sort of
really the the other performing arts forums it's just this is an art form that subsists on crowding people into an indoor space and then sort of having a crowd of people on stage for a certain period of time and even if the even if the medical question is resolved even if there is a vaccine there'll still be a psychological block against people coming back there'll be a fear of crowding into spaces so so i am fearful of what's going to
happen especially to the bigger institutions i think the smaller ones uh can be more resourceful and more spontaneous in terms of how they react uh and and so they might recover more quickly in terms of chamber music and uh uh solar recitalists and you know that end of the of the business uh should be okay but it's also the artists i mean there's thousands of artists who aren't being paid uh and some of them are gonna just
give up and get other jobs even even extremely talented ones uh and and that will certainly be a tragedy um and just when you look at the difference of the situation in europe uh where artists who are out of work uh have nothing to worry about uh you know they're being taken care of financially they have uh they have health plans um they can afford they're able to wait it out uh here people aren't gonna be able to to
wait it out and they're just gonna give up and and do something different and so uh it'll be it'll be a dark period i just don't know exactly what form it'll take but things will be very different there could be there could be ways in which there will be a healthy effect in the end if classical music becomes more local in focus you know just for decades we've had this culture of constant jet setting conductors zipping around
from continent to continents singers zipping around orchestras touring uh probably unnecessarily just because of the fear of travel at this moment and just other questions about the sort of wastefulness of this kind of travel you know that may be cut back and i think it'd actually be very healthy thing if conductors just spent more of their time with their orchestra that they are the music director of instead of feeling the need to
guest conduct in you know ten other places uh during a given season because they're being paid you know usually pretty hefty sums of of money uh eight hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars or more and just why not really concentrate your career in one place work on building ties to the community immediately around you uh and just forget about this this global marketplace uh which that end of the business will
just be much more difficult to negotiate should we maintain the norm in distinction we're at popular music concerts you're actually encouraged to make noise at so-called classical concerts you're forbidden from making noise obviously it was not that way in the early 19th century is that going to change and does that distinction still make sense why not let everyone make noise and play cards and talk and have a beer in the front row right
well there have been experiments in that direction i think my attitude toward it is there should never be hard and fast rules so i object to this absolutely dogmatic kind of sensibility that one must not ever uh make the slightest noise uh during a performance one must never applaud after you know the first movement of a concerto or a symphony you know that kind of thing is is nonsense to me because just certain of these pieces they cry out for
for you know the emperor concerto the end of the first movement of the emperor concerto it just sounds weird not to have applause because beethoven is working very hard to make the audience uh burst applause even more with tchaikovsky first piano concerto so i think these rules could be loose but at the same time there's very good reason for why audiences generally are quieter at classical performances because of the
dynamic extremes uh if people are making noise at the beginning of beethoven's ninth symphony you're not going to hear uh this this whispery this ethereal uh tremolo uh of course same thing with the beginning of wagner's ring cycle which begins almost subliminally with this deep uh e flat uh in the double basses and the tradition of byroid is to become completely silent before that happens you know for for
a full minute or so there's this total silence in the opera house which is a it's a it's a web effect to be able to really experience uh music emerging nothing uh emerging out of silence it's it's it's very powerful so so it's a good reason for some of these rules and i think just ultimately it should be on a casting case basis you know we have a thousand or tradition in classical music with very different kinds of music uh with
very different social intentions and and and functions and so there should never be a hard and fast rule where in the world are classical music audiences the most appreciative and adventurous those are not necessarily the same thing um these two places yeah yeah uh you know just in terms of of you know just being whisper quiet and concentrating at every moment [Music] it's a it's a cliche it's a stereotype
but the in the german-speaking world you know that's where you find uh this this kind of audience where where it just seems as though everyone is concentrating uh especially if you go to a chamber music concert in germany or austria uh this music is just so steeped in the country's uh traditions and and and so many people of different social classes and backgrounds have grown up with it and it just feels so natural to them
uh so you get that appreciation now in terms of adventurousness that's a slightly different thing you know those same austrian and german audiences uh may be quite resistant to 20th century music and contemporary music uh because they love and know brahms so well uh that doesn't prepare them so well for for something different and and new the one of the most adventurous audiences i've ever encountered is at the ojai festival
uh in uh uh southern california uh northwest of uh los angeles uh that's a festival that that goes back decades in terms of its commitment to new music uh quite adventurous uh often avant-garde music stravinsky was there uh bullets went many times and so the the attitude there is almost the just the complete opposite of what you normally encounter with a classical music audience where the the the more complex and the more difficult it is
the more excited people seem to get and i just had this wonderful experience of sitting in the audience once and and a few years ago at ohio and there was a piece that was it was quite tonal and repetitive and and minimalist and and uh you know i think average audience would have found it quite pleasant uh to listen to it was in no way dead or modernistic um and afterward uh uh a older couple sitting next to me said oh that was i
said no and then there was a piece by pierre boulez uh right after that um and what the older couples was um ah finally some real music they didn't like the tonal easy music they were waiting for the for the bullets uh and so that's uh so it just it varies very much from place to place and and uh you know the stereotype of the classical audience is that they're all they're not convinced they always want the tried and true but over time uh i think
when an institution a festival uh really shows commitment uh to this repertoire they can change the audience's mind and that's also what happened with los angeles philharmonic uh under esther becca salinen uh it happened to some extent in berlin with simon rattle uh at various other places and and so uh it's not a lost cause uh in terms of converting audiences to the new and different if you go to a second tier american city
say washington dc which is by no means uneducated and you go to the opera what percentage of the crowd there is actually enjoying it in the sense that they are wishing it would last longer than it will i grew up in dc so i have some experience with this and uh uh i don't know um uh it's always it's gonna be a mix i wouldn't know if i could put a percentage on it but but there are certainly uh uh quite a few people who who
go out of a sense of obligation you know this is just something that they they have their subscription tickets and it just you know the the joneses down the street are going so you know we might as well go so that that's always been a component of of the american orchestral audience or the opera audience but especially the orchestral audience uh in terms of these these orchestras that have become real civic institutions and and you know
certain families wealthier families in the city have supported them from generations for generations and it's just there it's a it's a fixture and people show up without necessarily being deeply involved in it but you need those people you know you can't what's your percentage number on what how many are having fun and they want an extra hour of verdi whatever they're hearing i would say at least 50 percent you know
i'd be optimistic sixty question about the time profile of creative achievement so to be a top conductor it's physically very demanding of course right and it's also very demanding on the memory even if you're using a score if there's so many figures in the history of classical music we're doing truly first-rate conducting maybe at the age of 80 or at least the late 70s stakowski i think kept on going until 95.
that was not his peak but just that he was able to do it so what is it about conducting that appears to defy the laws of nature that you just keep on going and you're amazing when you would think well these individuals would peak at age 62. right now it is an amazing phenomenon i mean it's it's not it's not anecdotal i think it's it's i think it could be statistically verified that that conductors live longer and keep working longer than
most professions perhaps you know almost any professions uh when you have you know toscanini uh active uh well into his uh eighties uh clember uh uh active to a quite advanced age and you know past the point of you know he he was really physically quite decrepit uh he he just had to have such enormous physical challenges uh and and yet he he kept conducting and even with with minimal movements on on his part he elicited
this these extraordinary performances i think there are two sides to this on on the one side just in terms of conducting and its physical demands and its mental demands you know hard to verify but there seems to be something in terms of the intensity of this mental activity of memorizing scores of of of being sort of uh this this this particular mode of sort of upper body exercise uh it does seem to encourage longevity
and and it does seem to to keep people sharp in some way because i'm completely out beyond my my uh realm of of knowledge in terms of the medical side of this but just from just i think anecdotally it looks as though something like that is happening so uh so there's that but at the same time there's also you're just conducting some mysterious terms of happening doctor uh and the orchestra there are explicit messages being sent uh
there there is the uh you know there are instructions being given but there's also this this slightly mystical side to it where sort of once you get to you know a figure like clumper or today bernard heitink who who just retired uh or her work launched at uh who is incredibly vital and active uh coming back at age 93 even before they say anything just the fact when they sort of arrive at the podium there is a level of effect there is a
level of attentiveness and readiness uh in the orchestra uh they don't have to be won over when herbert uh uh is is in front of him uh his reputation uh proceed and so so blumsha someone like this can just skip all the the preliminaries and you know just go for sort of fine-tuning uh these these points and and just just everyone plays better because they're in the presence of the celebrated uh uh legendary
uh older musician uh it's almost as if they don't even need to do anything anymore but they do of course they're you know they they are working very hard and and bumstead is is delivering very particular instructions to the orcs job but but there's this this that psychological dimension uh and i think that that adds some people the musicians are excited to be having this this opportunity and they think this might be the last time
uh and and so they they give something more um you know and so that's the that's the mystery of conducting and i always think of that anecdote about fruit bangler and uh i think it was walter legge who told this story watching the the orchestra rehearse with a different conductor and they were playing all right you know nothing nothing too inspired um and he's sort of looking straight ahead and looking at the orchestra and
suddenly something changes suddenly the playing is is electrified uh transformed and and the conductor seems to have done nothing different and and he's sitting what what is what is going on how did that change take place and then he happens to look over his shoulder fort fengler is standing by the door watching and in the few minutes that he's entered the the hall and has been standing at the back the orchestra noticed him
there and and their change their playing change completely so that's the weird the sort of slightly uh occult uh power that the conductors can have just their mere presence transforms the plane is morton feldman the great
post-war american composer he's one of them i mean i i love feldman's music and feldman did something really remarkable where he took this this modernist vocabulary the vocabulary of schermberg the second viennese school atenality
and then john cage the student of schoenberg brought that vocabulary into the world if he sort of created the sort of post-war uh american uh uh avant-garde movements and feldman was a figure of course very important uh uh uh pioneer himself alongside cage but it goes back to these these unearthly otherworldly uh atonal uh chords of of schoenberg arrogant vapor and that's the that's the fundamental uh vocabulary of
feldman's music but it's totally different in terms of its emotional temperature uh the dynamic level in feldman is always quiet everything is spaced out and and these harmonies that can be prickly and alarming and unnerving uh in in schoenberg berg and vaybern and so much other uh modernist music of the 20th century and feldman they become distant and they acquire this eerie beauty and and it's as if you can step way back
from them and contemplate them as art objects and they become like of course he loved rothko's paintings he knew rothko very well he knew so many of these early abstract expressionist painters and they and but especially with rothko it has that that misty distant uh unearthly uh quality not at all assaultive uh not at all aggressive uh and it becomes this this totally new world of of radical beauty and so he's from the moment i
first heard his music he just had an extraordinary effect on him and i still find it one of the great originals in musical history extraordinary extraordinary composer who who or what would even be a rival to men so much of cage now samski even though it was important you could say the early philip glass operas like men they're recognizably who they're by the moment you hear them what else in american music post-war
stacks up to early philip glass morton feldman uh in terms of music today or no post war not 2020 music of that era uh no there are a lot of wonderful composers in that from that year it isn't just uh it isn't just a a handful um uh i think feldman feldman actually has a lot of uh followers um in in late 20th and early 21st century music a lot of people have been intensely attracted to that aesthetic some of them are just mirror imitators
but others have managed to come up with a very uh individual reaction to his sound so i think if there's a group of composers called vondelvizer they live in different countries and and and they specialize in in a very quiet very spaced out uh kind of aesthetic and there's an obvious very strong influence from um from feldman uh york fry is a swiss composer who just wrote some of the most incredibly beautiful music
uh around today uh his string quartets uh and and he more or less worships feldman uh but michael pizarro is an american composer who's also of that school so i think it's it's a it's a um this aesthetic of radical quietude and and separateness i think is a very powerful one and i think particularly at this moment of frenzy and chaos uh this this music is quite appealing to go back to what's your favorite beatles song
beetle song not the best one your favorite um my favorite beetle song um i've never been a sort of beatles person a more dylan person um uh uh for some reason i'm tempted to say helter skelter right at the moment but that's i don't think that's actually my favorite favorite beatles that's what comes to mind the white album i love the white album especially i think uh uh the day in the life is is one of their most extraordinary
achievements and i go back to the lot a lot what's the best dylan album is it bringing it all back home blood on the tracks no questions yeah but the original version not the not the minnesota remix the original new york sessions um without the the big band um that's the greatest album ever made in my opinion um what is it in music that you are embarrassed by liking people ask me that and i don't i'm not i don't have guilty
pleasures i i feel that uh you know um it sort of buys into sort of this idea that that you know there's some exalted kind of level of genius and then uh uh and the sort of this embarrassing realm down below but to honestly answer your question i do like certain oasis songs that's slightly embarrassing champagne supernova that's great the final segment of our chat is what i call the alex ross production function
and this has to do with you a few questions about your history did writing a thesis about james joyce at harvard at all influence your music writing and how you approach music oh sure yeah i mean joyce was one of the most musical writers who ever lived a fine singer a very acute listener uh very comprehensive knowledge of different eras of uh of repertory going back to the renaissance and i think uh joyce cultivated a taste for me
you know i i fell in love with joyce and ulysses in particular before i really got to know the classic works of the 20th century so i read ulysses at age 18 at that stage i was still just kind of struggling to come to terms with schoenberg and stravinsky in the early 20th century so ulysses gave me a taste for a kind of sprawling comprehensive all devouring kind of you know it's the modernism of it's not
strict and spare and discipline modernism it's the it's the modernism of all engulfing chaos and then and in music uh that happens to be a mode that i'm quite fond of whether it's the symphonies of charles ives uh or uh parents alves zimmerman or certain later 20th century composers so so that yeah ulysses i think influenced my listening and and prepared me for unexpected and perhaps irrational juxtapositions of different styles
how did leon weasel here discover you as a potential music critic what is it you think he saw in you uh he read my fanfare reviews some of my fanfare reviews and not much else i forget what what i originally sent him to look at um but he he absolutely started my journalistic career he gave me my first journalistic assignment and then uh it was through him that the new york times became interested in hiring me as their uh fifth string critic uh
and uh when that opportunity came away i was to do it and leon to move to new york and taken up um so he had a huge effect on my early career but i what what he saw in this 23 year old kid i don't know you'd have to ask him if someone wants to be quote unquote the next alex ross what else do they need to know besides music so if one looks at your writings you could write about minor works by heinrich mann much less thomasvon
without too much effort is that important to you being the music critic that you are or is that a kind of accident i think music critics need to have command of new bring cultural areas because music is just not
separate from the rest of culture from from sort of the rest of our world and you know when you're writing about opera you're writing about literature as well as music you're writing about staging uh uh theater ideas uh as well as music and uh
and so i think every music critic needs to can't be a pure specialist and most of my colleagues i think they all have uh side interests and and uh you know they've all had a well-rounded uh cultural uh education so i think it's uh i think it's essential um i feel very lucky in that i have been able to pursue a lot of writing at the new yorker which is uh not strictly musical and i've been allowed to pursue this range of
interests which includes some natural sciences type travelogue pieces in the last few years on death valley and the bristlecone pine forest as well as pieces on literature and and history and and that is i think it makes my my musical writing better i think it also makes a case for classical music if if someone has read what i write about dylan or or radiohead or the bristlecon pines and sees my name at the top of a piece
about mozart or salieri or whoever they might give me a chance um having read those other pieces so this is the guy who wrote that interesting piece um uh i don't care about classical music but you know i'll give this a try anyway um and so i think that that that helps me in an inevitable aspect of my role as a critic which is not merely to be this objective cold detached commentator but to some extent be uh an advocate
uh a a face of the art form itself um and expanding uh its audience in my own little way and and so i think that that helps with that mission last question what music will you listen to today and why well it's going to be wagner today i'm afraid well i've er i'm getting ready for the publication of the book i'm building pages on my website which are kind of guide to wagner's works beyond what i do in the book
um and uh and so i'm going to be recommending recordings as well as giving the synopsis of the plot of the operas instead of pointing out uh crucial musical moments uh so i'm actually working on reingold right now so i'm i'm listening to carrion's ring cycle which has never been one of my favorites but i'm revisiting it and actually the his first his live rheingold in 1951 from byroid is is amazing it's a great recording
uh he conducted that one year byroid and then never came back because of he was carry on there were uh but it's it's a it's a really vigorous and and spiky and and lively reading of weingold which is always considered the scherzo of of the ring and and he really brings out that quality and quite different from the later recordings which are rather more polished and and kind of slightly sort of over burnished uh uh in in terms of the the
texture it's all incredibly beautiful but not necessarily that dramatic uh this spring gold is really fiery and alive i've never really listened to it before and i was quite pleased to discover it so anyway just yeah more wagner today ross thank you very much and again everyone i'm very happy to recommend alex's wonderful new book wagnerism art and politics and the shadow of music thank you alex thank you thank you that was wonderful