Absolutely on Music: Conversations With Seiji Ozawa by Haruki Murakami

Author:Haruki Murakami [Murakami, Haruki]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
ISBN: 0804173729
Publisher: Vintage Digital
Published: 2016-11-14T18:30:00+00:00

I Never Even Knew Music Like That Existed

MURAKAMI: Had you been listening to Mahler before Bernstein got you started?

OZAWA: No, not at all. When I was a student at Tanglewood, my roommate, the Uruguayan conductor José Serebrier, was studying the Mahler First and Fifth. Serebrier was a truly outstanding student. I still see him now and then. He’ll drop in to visit me backstage, that sort of thing. I saw him in London, I saw him in Berlin. Well, anyway, back then I asked to look at the scores he was studying, and that was the first time in my life I found out about Mahler. Afterward, I sent for the scores of both those pieces and studied them. There was no way a student orchestra could play them, but I put tremendous effort into studying the scores.

MURAKAMI: Just the scores? You didn’t listen to them on records?

OZAWA: No, I had never heard them on records. I didn’t have the money to buy records then, and I didn’t even have a machine to play them on.

MURAKAMI: What was it like, reading the scores for the first time?

OZAWA: It was a huge shock for me—until then I never even knew music like that existed. I mean, here we were at Tanglewood, playing Tchaikovsky and Debussy, and meanwhile there’s this guy putting all his energy into studying Mahler. I could feel the blood draining from my face. I had to order my own copies right then and there. After that, I started reading Mahler like crazy—the First, the Second, the Fifth.

MURAKAMI: Did you enjoy just reading the scores?

OZAWA: Oh, tremendously. I mean, it was the first time in my life I had ever seen anything like them. To think there were scores like this!

MURAKAMI: Was it a completely different world from the music you had been playing until then?

OZAWA: First of all, I was amazed that there was someone who knew how to use an orchestra so well. It was extreme—his marvelous ability to put every component of the orchestra to use. And from the orchestra’s point of view, the Mahler symphonies are the most challenging pieces ever.

MURAKAMI: So when was the first time you actually heard, with your own ears, the sound of an orchestra playing Mahler—was that with Bernstein?

OZAWA: Yes, the first time I ever heard Mahler was as Bernstein’s assistant in New York.

MURAKAMI: What was it like for you, hearing the real thing for the first time?

OZAWA: It was a complete shock. At the same time, I felt overjoyed that I could be right there with him, in that time and place, when Bernstein was, quite literally, pioneering this kind of music. So I also did Mahler as soon as I got to Toronto. Then I could do it myself! And with the San Francisco Symphony, too, I played almost all of Mahler’s symphonies.

MURAKAMI: What kind of response did you get from the audiences?

OZAWA: Good, I think. By then, Mahler was, well, not exactly popular—but among the kind of people who come to listen to symphonies, Mahler was getting a lot of attention.

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