How do you listen to music most often?
Performing is the most active form of listening. And when I’m not standing in front of an orchestra, I spend a great deal of time “listening” in my head. But the ultimate experience would be in a completely darkened room with a great sound system, or better yet, a live orchestra – the lack of visual stimulus heightens the sense of sound. I’d like to plan an orchestral concert around this idea.
What was the first ever record or cd you bought?
At the age of eight or nine I bought the complete Beethoven symphonies conducted by Toscanini. It was the only version in the somewhat limited selection available in the small town of Morro Bay, California at the time.
What was the last piece of music you bought?
Score: a new revised edition of Boulez Répons.
Album: Several recordings featuring folk music from the 18th and 19th century North American tradition. In Quebec, Fred Pellerin has brought this tradition into the 21st century through the French-Canadian story-telling tradition of Les Contes, combined with traditional music.
What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
There is no guilt in the enjoyment of music! Genre is immaterial in the face of exceptional quality.
If you found yourself with six months free to learn a new instrument, what would you choose?
Something I’ve been looking into lately: the Octobass.
Is applauding between movements acceptable?
Applause shows engagement and enthusiasm! Compared to the ringtone of someone’s mobile phone during a quiet moment, applause is the very least of my worries. The only time it truly bothers me is when it comes too soon before the end of the piece, while the last note is still lingering.
What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?
There are two, and they both involve people who ended up my teachers. As a student in San Francisco, I witnessed Yvonne Loriod performing Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l’enfant Jesus – it was a rare and precious moment. Later, in the early 1980s, I was at Tanglewood studying with Bernstein, and he conducted a performance of Brahms’ First Symphony, which, from the first note, transported us all to another world. It was an experience no one who was there will ever forget.
We’re giving you a time machine: what period, or moment in musical history, would you travel to and why?
22 December, 1808, Theater an der Wien: A four-hour concert, featuring eight works (including the fifth and sixth symphonies, the fourth piano concerto and the choral fantasy) all composed, premiered, conducted and even played by Beethoven himself. Four hours that would have a profound effect on the course of western music.
However, if someone offered me the chance to witness the first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Saint Matthew’s Passion, I might be hard-pressed to decide between the two.
Which conductor or performer of yester-year do you most wish you could have worked with?
One of the greatest and universal geniuses humanity has known, composer-performer-conductor: WA Mozart.
What, in your opinion, is the best new piece written in the past 50 years?
It would take me another 50 years to figure this out and provide an answer.
Which non-classical musician would you love to work with?
One of my best experiences in this regard was performing Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire with Björk. If I could dream up another, it might be to collaborate with one of Quebec’s greatest poets and songwriters, Gilles Vigneault.
What do you sing in the shower?
That is a private matter between me and my shower!
Kent Nagano and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal release L’Aiglon (Decca) on 4 March.
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