Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.classica
Titolo: Profilo di Sir Charles Mackerras

From about eight or nine I had a sort of mania about it. I had first
started learning the violin, but didn't get on very well with that,
possibly because the nun who taught me used to rap me over the knuckles
with a pencil. Then I started learning the flute and got to play it
quite well. But I read in a newspaper that there was a shortage of
oboists, so I thought I'll move from the flute to the oboe."
Mackerras, by insisting on a musical career, was being true to his more
distant antecedents: his great-great-great grandfather, Isaac Nathan,
had been the first person to compose an opera in Australia, called,
rather confusingly, Don John of Austria. Years later, Mackerras
orchestrated it for a festival performance, the country's greatest
musician paying his dues to his pioneering forebear.
After leaving school at 15, Mackerras joined the Sydney Symphony
Orchestra and did orchestrations for commercial radio. The war was on
and there were plenty of opportunities for the talented teenager. His
self-confidence was apparent. Patricia Tuckwell, now Countess of
Harewood, who was a contemporary of Mackerras's at the Sydney
conservatory, recalls him presenting the celebrated conductor Eugene
Ormandy, who was touring Australia, with his own quirky arrangement of
"Waltzing Matilda". Ormandy, taken aback by the young man's sang froid,
agreed to play it through in rehearsal.
Mackerras was a talented pasticheur, but recognised he would never be a
composer. "I found my compositions were derivative," he says. "It was
what they call Kapellemeistermusik - perfectly good but just like all
the great composers you've ever heard." He decided, instead, to become
a conductor. Ormandy encouraged him to go to the Juilliard School in
New York, but instead he opted for London, leaving Australia on
February 6 1947.
Initially, he was only in London for six months, but it was long enough
to begin his association with the Sadler's Wells Opera Company (which
later recast itself as English National Opera), meet and marry
clarinettist Judy Wilkins, and sow the seed of his passion for Czech
music. The latter was the result of a chance meeting which was to
change his life. "One day I was sitting in a cafe in Kensington looking
at a miniature score of Dvorak's Symphony No 7," he recalls, "when a
man sitting opposite me said: 'Ah, I see you are studying the music of
my country.' It turned out that he was an amateur cellist who'd come to
England during the war. He was on a committee which chose British
students to go to Czechoslovakia to study and suggested I apply to go
to Prague."
Mackerras, who had been thwarted in his efforts to study conducting in
London, applied, was given a grant, and married Judy Wilkins so that
they could go to Prague together. In Czechoslovakia he was bowled over
by the operas of Janacek - then barely known outside central Europe -
and studied under Vaclav Talich, the former chief conductor of the
Czech Philharmonic. He was in Prague for less than a year, but got a
thorough grounding in both the language and music of the country, and
returned to the UK in 1948 determined to evangelise on Janacek's
behalf.
Back at Sadler's Wells, he conducted the first UK performance of Katya
Kabanova in 1951. Ernest Newman, the influential critic of the Sunday
Times, dismissed Janacek as a "scrap-by-scrap composer", but the
Manchester Guardian hailed the work as a masterpiece. Over the next two
decades, with Mackerras as his principal champion, Janacek would take
his place in the operatic repertoire, not just in the UK but around the
world.
He accepts that his championing of Janacek - his recordings of the
operas with the Vienna Philharmonic are regarded as definitive - is his
single greatest contribution to music. "My specialities are many and
various," he says, "and I like to think I have been one of the people
who helped to change the perception and interpretation of baroque
composers and classical composers such as Handel, Mozart, even
Beethoven. But everybody knew these were great composers, they don't
need me to tell them that, whereas they did with Janacek."
Mackerras's range is extraordinary. His manager, Robert Rattray at
Askonos Holt, calls him a "polymath" and runs through the composers in
which he is expert: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms,
Mahler, Beethoven, Verdi, Janacek, Martinu, Strauss, Wagner, Britten.
"I'm not sure there's anyone else who does all that," says Rattray.
"[James] Levine is probably the closest to Charles, but there's no Bach
and no Handel and, at the other end, no Janacek or Britten."
Yet, ironically, in mid-career this variety and facility in so many
genres held Mackerras back. He was given the unflattering sobriquet
"Chuck 'em Up Charlie" because, as a freelance for most of the 1950s
and 60s, he would conduct anything, anywhere. His friend and former ENO
colleague, Lord Harewood, says he and his wife Patricia advised
Mackerras against such profligacy. "Years ago," recalls Harewood, "we
used to say that the trouble about him is he's too available. If
somebody rings up in the evening and says 'I'm going to record a violin
concerto by Spohr in the morning, will you come and conduct it, the man
who was going to conduct it has dropped out,' Charlie always used to
say 'yes', get hold of the score, mug it up overnight and conduct it
very well. At first he needed the work and gradually, as he was a very
quick studier and an extremely capable conductor, it became part of
what he felt was his usefulness. Benjamin Britten always used to say,
'Well, a composer has to be useful; you've got to do things that are
needed,' and I think Charlie felt the same sort of thing. If somebody
needed him, he'd better do it."
Mackerras came to be seen as what Brian McMaster, who worked with him
at EMI, the ENO, Welsh National Opera and the Edinburgh Festival, calls
a "budget-label conductor". "There was a syndrome in the recording
industry that there were budget-label conductors and there were
top-price conductors," explains McMaster. "If you were a budget-label
conductor, you were a budget-label conductor and Charles was one
because the important thing for him was to record the performances. He
was perceived by orchestral players and audiences as a budget-label
conductor. It never had much to do with reality."
The cultivation of an aura is at the heart of the classical music
business. Karajan, Toscanini, Solti had that aura; they were huge
personalities as well as great musicians, but they were not above
polishing their legends. Because Mackerras has always been a practical
musician, eager first and foremost to work and serve the music, he was
denied a place among the musical glitterati throughout his most active
decades. He was held in high regard but never quite admitted to the
pantheon, was twice passed over for the job of music director at Covent
Garden, and even now would have less global recognition than the
telegenic Mutis, Mehtas and Maazels.
"His whole raison d'etre, his whole driving force, the whole point of
his life is to pay tribute to the score," says Dame Janet Baker.
"Nothing else matters at all. If there were bombs dropping, if somebody
fainted on the stage, the only thing he would worry about is the damage
to the score. He has extraordinary concentration on the work in hand.
All great conductors have this to a degree, but with Charles it's as
though for that moment he exists for nothing else and everybody around
him is expected to have the same kind of end in view. If you respect
that, he is a marvellous person to work with."
"Are the big music directorships the mark of a great career?" asks
baritone Simon Keenlyside, who has worked frequently with Mackerras
over the past few years. "Or are they the mark of a great marketed
career? Perhaps if he'd done those jobs, he wouldn't have had time for
the Janacek scholarship. He's got a very broad base, and I like that."
"When I was younger I was extremely ambitious and I could never
understand why certain other conductors were more successful at getting
engagements and positions than I was," says Mackerras, "but I stopped
bothering about that quite early on. All these positions are really
poisoned chalices anyway, because everybody in authority seems to have
a different idea as to the ideal way to run an opera house."
He is, however, clearly disappointed not to have been made music
director at Covent Garden when the post changed hands in 1971 and 1987.
"I don't understand quite why it didn't happen," he says. "The first
time it was partly because the English National Opera and Covent Garden
were vacant more or less at the same time [Mackerras went to ENO], but
after the era of Colin Davis it would have been appropriate to appoint
me. I'm disappointed that it didn't happen, but they appointed a very
good person [Bernard Haitink] and I can't really complain because I
have since worked at Covent Garden almost as much as if I had been the
musical director, without having the unpleasant task of sacking
anybody."
Mackerras's music directorships elsewhere have been relatively brief in
a profession where 10 years or more is seen as the norm. He did three
years in Hamburg (where he was number two), seven years at ENO, three
years in Sydney, five years in Wales. That suggests an impatience with
administration and an unwillingness to apply himself to long periods of
orchestra building. What has always mattered most to him was how the
orchestra played on the night. While at ENO he is said to have made
sure that the best musicians in the orchestra were always available for
his performances.
Rattray, while believing that Mackerras was denied the plum positions
because he was perceived by musical snobs as ubiquitous, thinks that
ultimately his career was not harmed. "Looking at it now, it seems to
me that it doesn't matter," he says. "It enabled him to continue and
plot his path with the San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Opera [in
New York], the Paris Opera, where he did a huge amount, and the Vienna
State Opera. So he was able to maintain this amazing international
connection, musical and scholastic, which would have been impossible if
he had become bogged down at Covent Garden."
Mackerras has always been as much musicologist as conductor, and his
research on Mozart and Handel, the way he draws on period practice to
ornament their compositions, has been prodigious. He worked in the
1940s and 50s with the Goldsborough Ensemble, which later became the
English Chamber Orchestra, playing baroque music in the style of the
period and stripping away the lushness that symphony orchestras steeped
in romantic music had imposed.
"Charles was interested in authenticity before it became popular," says
Emanuel Hurwitz, now 86, the former leader of the English Chamber
Orchestra. "Our orchestra did mostly Handel operas and Bach cantatas.
We were specialists in that period, so in the 1940s we were already
used to authentic playing. The only difference was that in those days,
although we were using period bows, we were still using modern violins.
Charles was a real young Australian and shouted very loudly to the
orchestra all the time."
Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of the perfect performance.
"He'd want to hear every word, he'd want to hear every note of the
decoration and if one slipped, which you could so easily, he would
remind you," says Valerie Masterson, a leading soprano at ENO when
Mackerras was music director in the 1970s. "I can remember recording
Julius Caesar, having done it a lot with him, and in the middle of the
recording session he suddenly turned to me and said, 'You know you sing
a B there, well really it should have been a B flat'. I hadn't a clue
what he was talking about and the decoration was so intense at that
point that it could have been any one of about 5,000 notes, so I just
said, 'Oooh, Charles, I don't know that I'm going to remember which
note it is in that very fast run and I think we'll have to hope for the
best.' He kind of accepted it, but that will jar with him every time he
hears it. He'll think, 'That's not right, I should have told her, it
should have been changed.' "
"Charles may seem brusque," explains Simon Keenlyside, "but what he's
waiting for is you to present him with things and to be able to deliver
them. If you can't deliver them, then it'll be irritating to him and he
will steamroller you. His ideas are fabulous and he's very generous
with his music-making, but you have to be on top of things at all
times."
"He never let up for a minute in rehearsal, he never let anything go,"
says Janet Baker. "It used to drive you mad because he'd worked so
hard. But he infected you with that vigour and that work ethic." And
the results, she says, could be sublime. "I remember a performance of
[Massenet's] Werther. At the end of the opera, Charlotte does a
marvellous letter scene. It's not very long but it's beautiful writing,
one of those moments which are terribly well known to audiences and
singers. We launched into the letter scene, and somehow or other the
rapport between the pit and the podium and me on the stage - it was
somewhere else again. I can remember feeling 'this is perfection'. You
don't expect perfection with the human endeavour; something always
creeps in to make it human. But that was a moment between a performer
and a conductor in which I think we reached the most extraordinary
heights of communication. I've never forgotten it. To have that once in
a lifetime is remarkable."
The past 10 years have been a golden period for Mackerras. A problem
with his right shoulder in his late 60s had threatened to end his
career, but an operation repaired it and, in his 70s, he has at last
received the plaudits denied him earlier. "It's a strange thing," he
says. "There suddenly was a time when everybody seemed to take me
terribly seriously. Critics started writing ecstatic things about my
performances and about the originality of my concepts, to use that
awful word, of the classics. Orchestras began to treat me with huge
deference and respect, and I felt like saying, 'Well, I love working
with you, but I have been here for the last 50 years.' "
He has enjoyed himself as principal guest with the Scottish Chamber
Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic (which even
offered him the music directorship in the mid-90s) and the
Philharmonia; made his debuts at the Salzburg Festival and with the
Berlin Philharmonic (at the advanced age of 78); was active in the US
until jet lag got the better of him in his mid-70s; and has renewed a
relationship with the Vienna Philharmonic which had been dormant for
more than a decade.
"Orchestras on the whole tend to mistrust conductors, but they are a
great deal nicer to me than they used to be," says Mackerras. "It's
rather nice not having to impress orchestras all the time with how good
you are, which the young conductor has to all the time. Now, I just
feel that I have to do my best."
Mackerras is fascinating on the conductor's art - on the way different
conductors conjure different sounds from orchestras. A lifelong
believer in the power of hypnotism - he used it to help quit smoking -
he presents the relationship between conductor and players as almost
mystical. "A great deal of the conductor's art is, as it were,
hypnotising them by your very presence, emanating what you feel about
the music. A conductor can make the orchestra play with a nasty sound
by certain gestures, or he can make them play with a round sound. It is
really extraordinary and I've never understood quite how it's done, but
I know that if different conductors stand in front of the orchestra and
say nothing, the sound will still be completely different."
At 80, Mackerras shows little sign of slowing up. He is conducting
Mozart's unfinished opera Zaide at the Edinburgh Festival on Tuesday,
goes to the Czech Republic to conduct the Prague Symphony Orchestra
next month, will conduct Fidelio in Edinburgh and London's Barbican in
early October and three concerts with the Berlin Philharmonic later
that month, and then heads for Covent Garden, where his birthday
performance of Un Ballo in Maschera is sure to be a heady occasion. The
house that never quite gave him the top job is now his natural home.
"My wife always jokingly says - well, I don't know how jokingly - that
I only seem to be happy when I'm standing in front of an orchestra,"
says Mackerras. "There's an element of truth in that. I would be very
sad if I had to retire. In fact, I'd quite like to die on the podium."
Then he laughs. "Well, something like that anyway."
Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras
Born: November 17 1925, Schenectady, New York.
Education: Sydney Grammar School; King's School, Parramatta; New South
Wales Conservatorium of Music, Sydney; Prague 1947-'48.
Married: 1947 Judy Wilkins (two daughters, Fiona and Catherine).
Career: 1954-56 chief conductor BBC Concert Orchestra; '66-69 conductor
with Hamburg Opera ; '70-77 music director Sadler's Wells/English
National Opera; '87-92 music director Welsh National Opera; '93-96
principal guest conductor Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; '97-2003
principal guest conductor Czech Philharmonic; currently principal guest
conductor Philharmonia.

 Lulu
Grazie mille per aver postato l'articolo, molto simpatico. Mackerras lo 
conoscevo sostanzialmente solo come grande esperto di Janacek (ho la sua 
Piccola Volpe Astuta con i Wiener, che è fantastica), ma il profilo che 
ne esce qui è molto bello, tipico di quei direttori di grande sostanza e 
zero lustrini che mi piacciono così tanto.
Ciao
Moos