Vienna Staatsoper intendant Ioan Holender leaves in June 2010 after 18 years in charge (here's the just-announced final season, 2009-10), but he's not going without a fight.
In a combative interview with Gilbert Kaplan of WNYC, he details his problems with the legendarily-bolshy Vienna Philharmonic (also the opera's house orchestra). They don't listen to him, they don't listen to the conductors, and all they want is more dosh.
The pre-recorded interview is due for broadcast tomorrow 5 April - more details and a full transcript here.
Some choice extracts:
"I had a lot of discussions with Simon Rattle when he came to conduct Parsifal, and he comes now back next season with Tristan. And I try to say without any success, to members of the orchestra, “We don’t like how this man is conducting Salome. This is not our style.” And I say to them, “You have to play as he conducts, if you like it or you don’t like it. You must give the respect to the conductor to play his interpretation. And, not he has to conduct as you like it.” This is a fundamental thing, by the way, by this orchestra. And this, I go, but this is the biggest problem what we have, and I told to Welser-Möst and Dominique Meyer if they don’t resolve this problem, it wouldn’t work out. Because today you cannot make music so, they know it, I know it, let’s go ahead with it. The time is over with this. An orchestra must try to play as the conductor is conducting. These nice jokes from Vienna, “What the man conducted yesterday?” And the answer is, “I don’t know what he conducted, we played Beethoven’s Fidelio.” "
"They wrote an agreement from 1952 - are ten Philharmonic concerts, and somebody changed ten with a pencil with 12. That’s all. Today, we don’t pass one day that they are not playing somewhere, something - in Vienna, as you say, or out of Vienna. The record time is dead for the moment or for the moment also for the future years surely. The records - what they did was - in Vienna, done in Vienna in the afternoon, and they didn’t have to leave the town. The world is full of money today, much more as it ever was, and all the cities can pay everybody. This is the biggest problem from the interpretive arts. Caruso sang at the Metropolitan. In his life, he sang two performances at the Vienna State Opera; he sang for La Scala, but he didn’t go all over the world. Today, from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, to India and to China, and to Japan, not only Tokyo, and, and, and, and they want the best of the best. All the world can pay the best of the best, The Vienna Philharmonic is the best of the best, so they go also to Australia, and they are more away than here."
"As more they do there, as less they are here, the more tired they are, is less times they have to study, to read, to prepare themselves. That’s how they make chamber music, which is very important. Then they teach, which is very important. Now they have a fantastic contract with Rolex, but for this fantastic contract they get a lot of money, but for a lot of money they have to do also something. The Musikverein is the best concert hall for Vienna, as you know they cancelled now five concerts in the Musikverein, to do it somewhere else, where there is more money. And newspapers write about this as the situation is really very, very, very bad."
"I regret that I couldn’t resolve, really deeply all the problems with the orchestra about what we spoke."
