Pod Insights Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin From the Archives: Paavo Järvi Conducts Beautiful Music About this episode Estonian conductor Paavo Järvi is one of the most in-demand maestros in the world, and one of Alec’s favorite conductors. Järvi is currently the chief conductor of the NHK symphony orchestra in Tokyo and the Tonhalle Orchester-Zürich. Over his career, he’s led orchestras in Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Malmö, and, for the decade between 2001 and 2011, here in the United States, as the musical director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He and his musical family are pillars of the thriving classical music scene in his home country of Estonia. Paavo Järvi talks to Alec about how slowing down in the pandemic offered Paavo time to think, his early love of music, what it was like to come to the United States from Soviet-era Estonia as a 17-year-old, and what he took away from a decade of conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
Originally aired November 30, 2021
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1:05 Speaker 03 Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:38 Speaker 03 I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio.
2:15 Alec Baldwin? That's the NHK Symphony Orchestra, conducted by my guest today, Paavo Yarvi, performing Wagner's "Das Rheingold", the entry of the gods into Valhalla. Paavo Yarvi is one of the most in-demand maestros in the world. He's currently the chief conductor of both the NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Thomahal Orchestra Zurich. Over his career, he's also led orchestras in Paris, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Malmo, and for the decade between 2001 and 2011, here in the US, in Cincinnati. Paavo Yarvi was born into a musical family in Soviet-era Estonia. His father, Neme, and his brother, Christian, are both also conductors.
3:00 Alec Baldwin? The family defected to New Jersey in 1980, when Paavo was 17 years old. As one of the most respected conductors in the world, Paavo Yarvi travels a lot. When the pandemic struck last year, he found some freedom in staying put.
3:18 Speaker 05 It was one of those sort of amazing moments. Because first of all, we never thought it would be three months. We thought, oh, it's going to be maybe a couple of weeks and then things will get better. And then you realize it's going to be a bit more and then a bit more again. And then you realize that, okay, this is now indefinite. We don't know how long it's going to be. And you know, something happens in your brain when this happens. I'm sure you went through the same thing. But I started, first of all, I was kind of restless and I started learning the things that I was supposed to do, even though I knew that they're going to be canceled. And then I slowly started doing less of it.
4:00 Speaker 05 And then I started doing a lot of nothing. And when you start doing nothing, an interesting thing happens, at least happened to me. My brain started working in an entirely different way. I didn't live by the schedule first time in twenty five years or thirty years even. I didn't need to wake up at eight. I didn't need to catch the train. I didn't need to catch the plane or go to a rehearsal, be prepared. And then all of a sudden, interesting thing, you start thinking about different things. You know, why am I doing all of this stuff? Saying this is so great to actually wake up in your own bed. And also to know that next day and day after it's also your bed.
4:42 Speaker 05 And then you start questioning this sort of slightly philosophical things like, I am not so young anymore, even though I feel like a kid. How many years of active life do I have? Do I really need to be on a schedule like this for the rest of my sort of?
4:57 Alec Baldwin? The schedule you've been on for quite a while.
4:59 Speaker 05 Well, thirty years.
5:01 Alec Baldwin? Yeah, the schedule you've been on. But but it's interesting you say that because you know, a lot of people in the professional world I live in, whether it's acting and film and television or theater and then maestros, soloists and so forth. They're like racehorses. And what the COVID did was it allowed them to just go into the corral and just eat some grass. And they said, well, maybe I want to go running, but I don't necessarily want to race. I don't want it to be competitive. I'd like to go run on the beach. I'm a horse and I want to go take a run for some fun.
5:26 Speaker 05 Exactly.
5:27 Alec Baldwin? And and you realize that when you gave people these bunches of time, they started this journey to get back to their true nature of what it is they like.
5:35 Speaker 05 I think exactly right. And I I also think that you don't have enough time in your schedule or in your brain to really think. You know, it's a funny thing because I'm thinking all the time, but I'm thinking about things that I need to think about, the things that I need to be prepared. I need to learn this. I need to make that schedule. I have an interview coming up. I have the television thing. I have a recording, whatever. But these are the things you have to do and you have to because you have a deadline. But the kind of thinking that happens when you have no deadline is so much more valuable. And interesting ideas start coming and say, how, why not, why didn't I ever think about this before? Well, I didn't have time. I didn't have time. I was
6:16 Alec Baldwin? There was no room.
6:17 Speaker 05 Sort of trying to catch up all the time rather than just
6:20 Alec Baldwin? You're on a schedule. You're a heavily scheduled man. One thing you don't realize about people in the classical repertoire, I said, is these are people who know exactly where they're going to be on August 15th, three years from now.
6:31 Speaker 05 Absolutely.
6:31 Alec Baldwin? They've booked festivals and they've booked concerts. These things are booked out so far in advance. But I want to pivot here and ask you, as I was reading about your, your biography, and I want to talk to you about popular music and rock and roll music and the boy from Estonia who had to smuggle cassettes of rock music and then set up a drum set. Tell me about your relationship. And what I'm looking for really is the seam between the two. Are you a man who there was a sense of a duty because of your dad? I remember watching in the documentary that you said that your father had the classical music playing on the radio or on an album or cassette all day long. And in the middle of the family dinner, he'd go, wait, and he'd want to hear the passage or whatever the moment.
7:16 Alec Baldwin? Now, was classical music something that was a fait accompli for you because of your dad? It was a true passion. It was both. And were you two different people that craved two different sources of music?
7:27 Speaker 05 I think the answer, the first thing is that I think the difference and the distance between these two types of music is actually not so big. In fact, I don't really see any distance. I don't think that there is any difference between rock music, jazz music, or classical music if, because on the highest levels of it, it is just as much hard work and it requires just as much talent and requires just as much skill, very specific to that particular field. For me, when I have dinner with, with, with my girls, you know, we listen to Etta James, we listen to, you know, Billie Eilish, we listen to a lot of the stuff. We, I even play some of the rock music that they have no idea about.
8:11 Speaker 05 I said, listen to this. And this is, oh, this is great. He said, this is Led Zeppelin. Led who? Fifteen and seventeen years old, some of the greatest names in music history, pop music history, are totally unknown to them, just like in films. And it is very interesting for me to realize that my girls actually know. Who Bach was, Beethoven, Chekhov, whatever. But they don't know a lot of, you know, if you say who is Peter Gabriel, they say, I don't know.
8:37 Alec Baldwin? Right.
8:37 Speaker 05 And he's one of the greatest of greats, you know, and so the distance between these two fields or the arts in general is very short and it's not actually at all for me. It was never that I wanted to become a rock and roll drummer. I just did it because I loved playing it, but I was actually studying drums in school. And it was a natural, totally, totally natural connection from just being a drummer. You know, like most of the bass players in symphony orchestras are all sort of quietly fantasizing being the great rock players in a rock band.
9:11 Alec Baldwin? Be Gene Krupa.
9:12 Speaker 05 Yes, absolutely. And so it's not actually so different. And one other thing that was interesting that you just said, I was never forced into music. I love the fact that I never had to make a decision. I have two girls right now who don't know, they're very talented, but they don't know, what am I gonna do in life? I never had ever that question because I wanted to not only to be a musician, I wanted to be a conductor way before. Why? Because my father was a conductor. I loved my father. I think he was having a lot of fun. And we're very close to this day. So it was done. It was a done deal. I wanted to be a conductor. And I never, ever wanted to be anything else ever.
9:56 Speaker 05 And so it is maybe a little bit unusual, but the point of the story is that I think that if somebody sort of makes it fun for you when you're a kid, it stays with you, you know? If somebody forces you, that's a different story, but I was never forced.
10:13 Alec Baldwin? Right. Your family left Estonia. Your father conducted a piece, if I read this correctly, without what were considered the necessary permissions back then.
10:23 Speaker 05 Well, it was Arvo Paret, Credo, and Credo is on the religious text. And Arvo Paret was a kind of a dissident composer. Now he's of course a legend, you know? But my father was not supposed to do it and he did it anyway. And it was a huge scandal and it was basically, it was bordering on a kind of, you might be deported or you might be sent to someplace really cold.
10:47 Alec Baldwin? And that was happening when you were how old?
10:50 Speaker 05 I was probably eleven, something like that.
10:54 Alec Baldwin? So as a young child, that's when you head over to New York?
10:57 Speaker 05 No, we came to New York when I was around seventeen, but that incident sort of started the, the, the whole turmoil.
11:04 Alec Baldwin? A longer process.
11:04 Speaker 05 Yes, a long process, yes.
11:06 Alec Baldwin? So you came when you were seventeen, you come and you talk about seeing as many people on the highway coming from the airport into the city as were in your entire town or country, or were in all of Estonia.
11:16 Speaker 05 Exactly right.
11:17 Alec Baldwin? And you thought, no one's gonna find me here, no one's gonna, I'm gonna get so lost here.
11:21 Speaker 05 You know, if you live in a country of, of one and a half million people and you're isolated because it's an iron curtain in the Soviet Union, you go to Kennedy Airport and then you take the highway and you see, you know, four lanes this way and four lanes that way, and you literally, you, you, you haven't even seen it in films. I mean, it was that, it was this dramatic, you know, so I thought, okay, nobody will find me here.
11:45 Alec Baldwin? Now, obviously, your father had this reputation, I'm sure when he came to New York, he was not without contacts, without friends, he had people he could plug into here, correct?
11:56 Speaker 05 Absolutely, absolutely. And in fact, my father was a very well-known conductor back in, in a Soviet Union and in Europe, but, you know, since the Soviet Union was closed and iron curtain was very much, you know, a real thing, the actual possibility to make contacts in the West only came when you were allowed to travel. And he occasionally was allowed to travel, and in fact, he even conducted in Metropolitan Opera, he conducted on Egin, and met a lot of local Estonian expats in, in America. You know, New Jersey and New York has a very large Estonian community. And, you know, it was a fun fact for you
12:36 Speaker 05 to perhaps, to, to know is that, that almost every big city in the world, but also in the United States, has what they call an Estonian house. That was a little community centers where Estonians would speak Estonian, would do the folk dancing, they would do the male choir singing, they would have the newspaper published, they would have Estonian independents observed. It was a little place in every, in Chicago, in New York, in Los Angeles, in New Zealand, in London, in Paris, everywhere, there was Estonian house. So there are a lot of Estonians scattered around the world. And one of those people actually brought us and gave us refuge when we came here.
13:17 Alec Baldwin? When you get to New York, how does it begin for you? You knew you wanted to be a conductor. You eventually end up at Curtis and so forth. But what's the beginning for you when you land in the United States? How does your education begin?
13:29 Speaker 05 The very first thing is the language. Because when we came to the United States, we didn't speak in English. Perhaps hello, goodbye, nice to meet you, and that was about it. So this was the first thing which had to be kind of dealt with. And so we lived in a house with our Estonian family. Pustroms were their names. I was seventeen years old, so we went to high school in New Jersey. And it was in fact, one of those really nice moments where we became and slowly learned the language through speaking with other kids or trying to speak with other kids. And of course, they never knew what Estonian is like. And they said, oh, these two Russian kids, because I was with my sister. Two Russians kids. And I said, no, no, we are not Russians, we're Estonians.
14:13 Speaker 05 Oh, Astoria, Queens, no, no, Estonian. Then, already applying to schools, I went to Juilliard pre-college. I went to University of Rutgers.
14:25 Alec Baldwin? So what I'm saying is, how does that happen? Because of your father's reputation?
14:28 Speaker 05 No, no, no.
14:29 Alec Baldwin? But I'm saying that that introduction is made? No, no.
14:31 Speaker 05 Not at all. No, in fact, what you have to do is that there's an audition, that you send in your application, and you have to do an audition.
14:38 Alec Baldwin? And you knew you wanted that? You knew you wanted Juilliard?
14:41 Speaker 05 I was dreaming about Juilliard, and I was, I got into a pre-college as a percussionist. And from there on...
14:48 Alec Baldwin? The John Bonham of Estonia.
14:50 Speaker 05 I think there are better drummers than me, much better drummers than me in Estonia. But actually, there is a very, very active rock scene also in Estonia. But mainly Estonia is known for its classical music, of course. But the rock and the pop music, and it's actually very, very big there. And there's a very good, some very, very good artists.
15:09 Alec Baldwin? And what was the pre-college program at Juilliard? How did you find that? What was that like?
15:13 Speaker 05 Well, first of all, I had to travel every morning, get up at six from New Jersey, get a bus, go to Port Authority Terminal, then walk. But that was a 42nd Street, the old-fashioned way. Not the cleaned up, gentrified Disney thing. It was, you know, and I barely spoke English. So I always remember the moment where I was walking from the terminal to Juilliard. And a girl came up to me, a lady came up to me and said, do you have time? And I was sort of startled and I said, yes, it's it's seven o'clock AM. And then she looked at me kind of and walked away in disgust. I think she obviously didn't.
15:54 Alec Baldwin? With her faux mink jacket on.
15:56 Speaker 05 She had, yeah, she didn't really want to know what time it was.
15:59 Alec Baldwin? She wanted you to know what time it was. But anyway, so you made it up to 66th Street. And when you get there, what kind of work are you doing?
16:06 Speaker 05 Well, first of all, we had theory lessons. We had air training. We had solfège. We had percussion, the the major lessons. But the most interesting thing was always the orchestra. It was a pre-college orchestra and the orchestra was full of really wonderful, wonderful musicians. A lot of them, or not a lot of them, but some of them, I'm still very closely connected and they are now well-known musicians. And you would every time have an orchestra rehearsal and the conductor was was rehearsing and you are playing timpani and you are kind of all in that world. You can see what the conductor tells tells to the strings and you see how the brass players react to some comments and, you know, all of a sudden
16:47 Speaker 05 in the back of the orchestra, you are actually doing much more than learning how to play timpani. You're learning how the process of conducting is actually happening and what is important, how, what are the things that you like about the way the conductor asked the musicians, what what what turns you off, what makes you angry, what makes you laugh? Who is popular, who is less, you know, it is, it's a whole process.
17:11 Alec Baldwin? Universe.
17:12 Speaker 05 Yeah, and that process is very much to do with also human ability, you know, some conductors can know everything, but they can piss everybody off in first three minutes and nobody will want to hear what they say. And other people.
17:24 Alec Baldwin? They do, they close off.
17:26 Speaker 05 Yes, they close off and they immediately build a a kind of a barrier between themselves and the and the conductor and and, you know, there is not so much love sort of lost between orchestral musicians and conductors anyway, from the kind of older history of the kind of a tyrannical conductors, which of course now is not the case anymore because the society is different. But there is a kind of a built-in distrust and musicians always listen to the teachers and teachers say, oh, you know, conductors, they can be this, they can be that. So it was an interesting kind of experience to see how the process works.
18:04 Alec Baldwin? Conductor Paavo Yarvi. If you love stories of life on the podium, be sure to check out my conversation with Finnish composer and conductor Esapeka Solonen. When he arrived in the United States to conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he loved leaving behind the arrogance of the European classical music world.
18:27 Speaker 06 When I started out in L.A., I had this, some kind of residue from this European thing that, okay, I'm here to bring some kind of culture to...
18:36 Alec Baldwin? Elevate you.
18:37 Speaker 06 Yeah, this culture as medicine kind of thing, which is vile. It was an interesting process because I was talking about things, you know, the way we used to in Europe those days and, you know, with this kind of historic necessity of atonal music and this and that. And people were very nice. They said, "Oh, yeah, great, interesting." But how does it sound? Asking these questions that are the obvious questions that everybody should ask, but we weren't for some reason asking.
19:05 Alec Baldwin? Hear more of my conversation with Maestro Esapeka Solonen at hereisthething.org. After the break, Paavo Yarvi talks about the role he plays in the orchestra as the conductor.
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21:36 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. This is the sacrificial dance from Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, performed by the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. The conductor is my guest today, Paavo Yarvi.
22:16 Alec Baldwin? Paavo Yarvi's home country Estonia has a population of just over 1.3 million and a thriving classical music scene in part thanks to the Yarvi family. Paavo Yarvi's life and work was featured in the 2003 documentary Maestro. The film includes interviews with famous classical musicians talking about Yarvi's talent and explaining the complexities of the classical music world. Violinist Joshua Bell goes so far as to suggest musicians playing at the highest level do not need a conductor. Paavo Yarvi wouldn't go that far, but he agrees his job is probably not quite what you think it is.
23:01 Speaker 05 Two things. Number one, I am not a decider per se because I don't believe in this. It's not an autocratic. For me, that doesn't work. What works is I invite musicians to see my point of view. And when Joshua or somebody else says that we don't need a conductor, they are really explaining it to a kind of a layman who doesn't quite understand the nuances. Because what they don't need is somebody to be the policeman in order to organize everything. Because on that level where he exists and I exist and New York Philharmonic and so they can play the piece together and make sure that it doesn't fall apart absolutely without, you know, a problem without a conductor.
23:46 Speaker 05 Now, so one would ask, why is the conductor important? Or what's the role? I'll tell you, my view of it is this. Somebody has to formulate a point of view. That point of view varies from one conductor to another. And so that is why we still do some standard repertoire because some younger generation people see it in a different light. But they have studied the score. They have studied the tradition. And at the end of the day, 100 people cannot make up their mind. To be unified enough to formulate on the spot of the performance, an interesting enough point of view. Just getting through something is not the goal. It's making something exceptional and finding a ways of making an old piece new.
24:31 Speaker 05 That's really the conductor's job. The other thing is that, you know, most of the people, if, let's say, you go to New York Philharmonic, a fantastic orchestra, they have to do a different program every single week. Every single week, they have at least three new pieces that they need to master. They play all the notes, they need to be absolutely perfect. They don't have time to study in depth all the scores for three new pieces every week.
24:58 Alec Baldwin? The research, the research.
25:00 Speaker 05 It takes years, it takes years.
25:02 Alec Baldwin? And that's your job.
25:03 Speaker 05 That's my, that's a conductor's job.
25:05 Alec Baldwin? Yeah.
25:05 Speaker 05 But I would never say that this is a kind of, I decide, or I, I have a strong point of view and then I invite them to see it. And actually, musicians always look for that. They look for somebody who is going to open the door that illuminates something in the piece. And where a piece that they've played hundred times becomes maybe fun again because it's, has a little different angle, maybe a slightly a different point of view. And, and you know, there are a lot of subtleties that can make a piece sound new.
25:35 Alec Baldwin? Well, the reason sometimes I dwell on that topic is because theater mirrors the classical repertoire because very often you're doing a revival of classic material. So the work of Chekhov, the work of Williams, the work of Miller and O'Neill are like all the great composers. And, and the joke we always tell in the theater is, we know the material works, so if the show's a bomb, it's us.
25:59 Speaker 05 Well, yeah.
25:59 Alec Baldwin? We got it wrong. And the director's task is to do what you're saying, is to sell them a clear sense of what the film is they want to make. How do I sell you on my idea and get you to do what I think you should do? Now, as I often say for years when I was the announcer for the Philharmonic, I'm the bat boy for the New York Philharmonic. I'm not really a great pitcher or fielder, but I, I just love the game, so to speak. I see, like, for example, a very lazy component of this or analysis of this is I'll go download a piece, and let's use a very basic piece. I'll get the Adagio, the fourth movement of the Mahler Ninth, and I'll see that High Tink plays it, and he does it in
26:41 Alec Baldwin? 27 minutes. And then I'll see that Mizel with the Philharmonic does it in 31 minutes. It's four minutes longer. And so pace is, of course, one component, and I want you to share with me, is that in your realm? You decide, or you propose, the pace of the piece, the emphasis, what are the knobs and dials you're controlling?
27:06 Speaker 05 One of the most fundamental choices that any performer has to make is the choice of tempo. And it's an interesting thing about tempo in general, because tempo can be a metronomic understanding. You can put the metronome, say, okay, this is 60, so this is exactly how it is. And that's very often how the click tracks and movie soundtracks are made, because it needs to be absolutely precise. And then there is a perception of tempo, which is sometimes a great conductor can make a very slow movement so compelling that it doesn't feel slow. It doesn't feel like it never ends. And sometimes, an inexperienced conductor, or a less talented conductor, can do it even a little bit faster, whatever,
27:49 Speaker 05 and it feels like it never ends. And you feel like, my God, this is dragging, and this is so boring. And then you look at the timings, and actually, it was a faster performance. That should have been easier to listen to. And so the experience of knowing how to say something has a lot to do with knowing within the whole process, when to speed up, when to take time. This material is repeating, we have to go a little bit forward, and so on. So it is really a perception of time that matters. And very often, an older conductor, they get slower, but they get slower because they know how to fill that space. And very often, the very young musicians,
28:32 Speaker 05 they do everything on adrenaline and say, oh, this is so exciting, you know. But then it's all adrenaline and nothing, nothing else. You know, sometimes you look at the old actors and they just pause in the middle of the dialogue and it's like there's a long silence and it is, it's filled with tension. And in some people, in some cases, people are afraid of being silent. They just need to fill every single moment with a word.
29:04 Alec Baldwin? Conductor, Paavo Yarvi. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeart Radio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Paavo Yarvi talks about his favorite music to conduct.
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32:20 Alec Baldwin? I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
32:34 Alec Baldwin? This is Pavlov Yarvi conducting one of Jean Sibelius's best-known works of "Valse Trieste," performed by the Estonian National Orchestra.
33:28 Alec Baldwin? When the documentary Maestro about Paavo Yarvi was released in 2003, he was the music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. The film features many performances in the orchestra's primary home, Cincinnati Music Hall.
33:44 Speaker 05 It is a fantastic acoustics. And the thing with this hall is that it was built by one of the, Taft was a president in old times, and there's a women's committee. In old times, women's committees got all these things done. If you were a president's wife, you collected the women
34:01 Alec Baldwin? Yeah.
34:01 Speaker 05 of all the rich people around you, and they built halls like that.
34:05 Alec Baldwin? Rich husbands.
34:06 Speaker 05 That's right. And so what happened is that this was built for conventions and concerts and May Festival, which was of course the great choral festival, still exists in Cincinnati. And when I was their music director, I left about 10 years ago, but I was astounded by how large it is and 3,500 seats. Is a hall that is way too big for Cincinnati. Cincinnati is not a very big city. It's a great city, but it's not a very big one. So we started this campaign in trying to do something about this hall. So finally, it was renovated. It looks the same, but it is a bit smaller. It's just so gorgeous, you have to, you have to see.
34:47 Alec Baldwin? They redesigned the inside of the space.
34:50 Speaker 05 Right.
34:50 Alec Baldwin? The same thing they're doing at Lincoln Center.
34:52 Speaker 05 Yeah.
34:52 Alec Baldwin? Which is, the building is landmarked. And I think I've said this before on the show. We had Alan Gilbert on the show several years ago as he was leaving New York. And Debra Borda, who I must say, I've never been prouder to work on a board than I am on the Philharmonic board, simply because of the genius of this woman. Debra's the one who, she knew whatever schedule they had for the renovation. She said, we're shut down for the COVID. I think she She bumped it up like a year. She said, let's blow the place up now. We're not in there and we're not going back in there. Let's just start. I'm just so excited because they are going to have the most beautiful space. They took four hundred seats out of there as well. They took a lot of seats out.
35:30 Speaker 05 You know, this is one of those strange phenomena that happened. Classical music somehow had to compete with a kind of large show business events. And in a way, the music is not designed for that. You know, at two thousand seat, okay, fine. Three thousand, four thousand, it's just not the right music.
35:48 Alec Baldwin? It's impractical. When you're in a town like Cincinnati, what was it like? Like, explain to people, where does the ensemble come from? Do you have to bring people there and house them? Are there natives of Cincinnati, many of them? Where does the talent come from?
36:00 Speaker 05 I'll tell you, Cincinnati, this is one of the very funny things about the United States. Is that most people in America don't even realize how much culture is actually in these smaller places in the Midwest, for example. You know, Cincinnati is, I think, like a second or third oldest orchestra in the United States. It was created by the same guy who created Chicago Symphony. It was totally German. You know, Fritz Reiner, who was the music director for fifteen years there, Isai. First job of Stokowski was in Cincinnati. You know, the amazing legacy of Horowitz, Stravinsky, all the great conductors and great composers, they all went to Cincinnati.
36:44 Speaker 05 There are pictures, and if you listen to, for example, one of the most iconic American pieces that everybody knows, the Fanfare for the Common Man. You know, that is commissioned by Cincinnati Orchestra and many, many, many, many other historic things. So if you start thinking about all this Rust Belt, the best orchestras in America are in Midwest. Okay, there is, of course, New York Philharmonic, clearly, that is exceptional. But if you look at Cleveland, if you look at Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, you know, this is not exactly the glamorous part of the United States, but this is an unbelievably cultured, this is where all the German.
37:26 Speaker 05 European immigrants went, you know, all the Californias and and west coast and also Texas, that's already an afterthought. That music came later there, but Cincinnati Symphony was an orchestra where Stokowski was a music director. He he became the great Stokowski of Philadelphia. Reiner became the great Fritz Reiner of Chicago Symphony. And so Cincinnati is really suffering from the basic image that United States and Americans have about Ohio. Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, did I ever leave Ohio? You know, this is exactly the whole thing. There is a kind of a, you know, a stereotype.
38:04 Alec Baldwin? A prejudice toward the big five.
38:06 Speaker 05 Well, a big five truly are great. There was no question about it. But but in today's world.
38:11 Alec Baldwin? They have a lot of money.
38:14 Speaker 05 Yes, but I think that more than money even, I think it has something to do with the legacy of long term relationships that they had with conductors. You have George Zell stayed all his life in Cleveland and really made sure that this orchestra is unbeatable. And
38:31 Alec Baldwin? And that hall and that hall in Cleveland.
38:33 Speaker 05 Well, right now, I would say that Severance Hall in Cleveland, great as it is, without any question, is the Cincinnati is not any worse.
38:41 Alec Baldwin? In my life of listening to and collecting first on CDs and then downloading this relationship between the maestro and the ensemble. And I remember Kunzel, who was the Cincinnati Pops conductor
38:55 Speaker 05 Wonderful, wonderful. Yes.
38:57 Alec Baldwin? He was there forever. He was there forever, Eric.
38:59 Speaker 05 Exactly. Yes.
39:00 Alec Baldwin? I was always devouring that, as you said, that conductor who stayed and developed that rich relationship du toi with Montreal, Slatkin with St. Louis, Mata with the Dallas Symphony.
39:14 Speaker 05 You're right.
39:14 Alec Baldwin? Tilson Thomas in San Francisco, Esapeka in LA, and so forth, you in Cincinnati. But getting back to this question about the performers, are a significant number of them, or any significant proportion of them natives of Ohio, or they have to come in for the season?
39:30 Speaker 05 No, they they all become residents of Ohio once they get the job in in orchestra. They, you know, getting a job in American orchestra, it is, it's a nightmare. It is so difficult. I mean, there are people who try for ten years and they don't get the job and almost give up. And they say, OK, one more audition and then then never again. And they get the job finally. You know, it is, it's, it's all behind the screens. It's extremely tough to get a job. So of course, if you are a member of an orchestra in Cincinnati, you have to live there because you have to work every week. But originally, all the musicians came from Germany. There, this was, I mean, they, the area where the hall is located is called Over the Rhine. This, it has, it has, it in a local.
40:13 Alec Baldwin? I can't wait to go back there.
40:14 Speaker 05 Yeah, local, and it has a beautiful architecture. And the one of the largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich is is in, you know, Kentucky, which is right next door. So it's a really German and, you know, and the certain cultural sort of DNA remains to this day.
40:32 Alec Baldwin? And I thought that Grater's Ice Cream was the number one reason to go to Cincinnati. I would ship, I would ship Grater's Ice Cream to all my friends on dry ice. I'd send them these cases and they'd all be crying. They'd say to me, my God, this is the greatest ice cream I've ever heard. I facilitated their addiction to Grater's Ice Cream in Cincinnati. And now I have to go back there just to go to a concert.
40:52 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, the thing is that the, the, you know, I left orchestra already more than ten years ago. But what I like very much and I agree with you is that these relationships that are long term are really worth something. And in the music business, this is not so common anymore. People stay a few years and they go to another, you know.
41:10 Alec Baldwin? In all things, in all things.
41:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, and but I think the ones who really, I, I love the people who build something, who leave some, something behind.
41:18 Alec Baldwin? So this is a cliched question, but I can't help myself because, you know, there's music I listen to that I enjoy. There's music I listen to in the classical repertoire that I don't really care for. I mean, I'm not a big fan of Mozart. I mean, very chirpy, kind of complex as it is, mathematically as multi-layered and dimensional as some of these composers are as we move, you know, further toward Stravinsky and so forth, and things get a little more layered and non-traditional.
41:45 Alec Baldwin? There's nonetheless music I listen to, which is, I mean, I, I, I remember I was doing a film and I told him, I said this before on the show, but forgive me, but I'm trying to impress you here with my passion. Cause in my life, if I had my life to do over again, and I mean this, I swear to God in heaven. If I had my life to do over again, I'd be you.
42:02 Speaker 05 You know, you told me that after I walked off stage in New York last time and you came and you said, I want your life. Yes.
42:11 Alec Baldwin? I want to be you, to learn to play, to play the piano, to all of them have to master some instrument. Apparently they all play something and then to become a conductor. Because, I mean, I, I'm racing from a show I was doing, I was shooting a film and they contractually had to let me leave work at five o'clock on four nights of one week. They knew in my contract that on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, I had to leave the show, shooting a movie in Brooklyn at five o'clock. So I could go to Carnegie Hall to see the Stots Kapel do the Mahler cycle with Baron Boim and Boulez.
42:52 Speaker 05 Fantastic.
42:52 Alec Baldwin? And I wanted to see the Mahler four, five, six and nine. And I am late. I went home to change my clothes and I ran down, I'm going down Central Park West and Obama was in town and the cops had everything shut down. And by the time I go in the back of Carnegie Hall and get my tickets and run and as literally as my, my ass hits the seat, I'm the last person sitting in the hall. And as I sit down and I touch the cushion, the door opens and out comes Baron Boim to conduct the ninth. Now the music plays and everybody's there to get what they want. I mean, they're dying for this Mahler cycle and the tears are just streaming down my face. And the tears are streaming down the face of everybody to the left of me and to the right of me.
43:36 Alec Baldwin? And this music touches you in a way that nothing else can.
43:40 Speaker 05 Exactly.
43:41 Alec Baldwin? And the woman says that, and the woman says it in the documentary. She says, this is a music that does, that goes so deep. And I'm wondering, what are the pieces that you play that touch you? I know, I know you can't pick favorites, but what's a piece or two that you play that even you're surprised at how much it moves you?
43:56 Speaker 05 I would think that without any exception. It is something slow, an adagio by Bruckner, adagio by Mahler, something that is introverted. Like if you listen to the Fourth or the Seventh Symphony of Sibelius, you have this feeling that you have this, this somehow, something is just creeping deep inside you. It is not, it's not artificial, superficial, easy listening, or America say toe tapper. I don't, this doesn't do anything really. What does something to me is a slow, you know, like end of the Mahler III, you know, the last movement. It is just out of this world.
44:36 Speaker 05 And, and yeah, I think slow music that really just gets inside your soul.
44:42 Alec Baldwin? Which Bruckner, the Seventh?
44:44 Speaker 05 I love the Seventh, but listen to the adagio of the, of the Eighth, Bruckner Eight, adagio of the Bruckner Six, unbelievable. Uh, Bruckner Nine, adagio. But you know, Beethoven was the person in this Ninth Symphony, who kind of created the prototype for this great adagio. You know, the Ninth, the, the slow movement. And every composer since tried to kind of outdo him. Because it was the, the true master knew, was really somebody who knew how to write a, a great adagio. And that is why, for example, Mahler often ends his, his symphonies in Ninth, definitely, but also the Third, with this incredibly soul-searching adagio.
45:28 Speaker 05 And, and to me, slow music, maybe I'm just getting old, but I always, I always loved slow and contemplative music. I wanted to tell you something funny, because you mentioned Barrenboim. I'm sitting here in a quarantine in Tokyo, in a hotel. He's upstairs. He's upstairs and he wanted to come and see me. They wouldn't let, the people are so uptight here in Tokyo, that they wouldn't let him into my room. And it is so funny, because we are literally in the, not only in the same wing too.
46:01 Alec Baldwin? It's hard to believe that the six feet of concrete and steel are separating two of the greatest maestros in modern music today in the classical repertoire. And you can't have a cup of tea together.
46:11 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, I am, I am.
46:12 Alec Baldwin? You can't have a martini together.
46:13 Speaker 05 I had a bottle already, you prepared with a glass of, even I got two glasses, they wouldn't let him.
46:21 Alec Baldwin? You'll have to toast over the internet.
46:23 Speaker 05 It's unbelievable. So we did, we were literally doing what we're doing now. And this is the story, yeah.
46:29 Alec Baldwin? You were married, you're not married now, and you have two daughters.
46:31 Speaker 05 I have two daughters, yes.
46:33 Alec Baldwin? Your ex-wife, she was a violinist?
46:35 Speaker 05 A very good one, yes.
46:37 Alec Baldwin? And you met her where?
46:38 Speaker 05 I met her actually in London when I was, well, I still live in London and between London and US, but she was studying in Royal Academy and we met in, in London.
46:50 Alec Baldwin? Now, I always tell people, and forgive me if this sounds odd, but that is, I often find that talent is the greatest aphrodisiac. And if talent is the greatest aphrodisiac, and I was a conductor working in the classical repertoire, I'd want to get married probably two or three times a month. Talented women who are playing these instruments are just, they're everywhere.
47:13 Speaker 05 You know, this is one of those almost dangerous subjects in this time and age, but the truth is exactly what you're saying. What you're saying is so right, because you, first of all, speak the same language. You speak music, it's your passion, both of you understand all the nuances. It is so, it is so obvious that most people in that field find their partner in the same field, and it is very difficult to even understand the idiosyncrasies and all the craziness that one needs to understand if you are not in part of the business. So this whole thing about, you know, be careful, workplace romances and all this, yeah, on one level I understand totally, but on the other hand, there is...
47:58 Speaker 05 Almost impossible to create a union that is really long lasting.
48:02 Alec Baldwin? And more and more, I think what you're saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, which is what I suspected, which is more beyond the chemistry between a man and a woman, or two women or two men for that matter, beyond that chemistry, it's the chemistry of the arts.
48:14 Speaker 05 Exactly.
48:15 Alec Baldwin? There's just nothing like watching all those tens of thousands of hours that these people, the hundreds of thousands of hours, and they're up there and they're doing their thing and you sit there and you watch them all doing the same thing together in service of the same thing at the same time. I think to myself, this is the most intoxicating thing in the world. Now, you're there in Tokyo. Are you doing something with NHK or who are you working with?
48:40 Speaker 05 NHK. I'm a chief conductor in NHK. I am a chief conductor in Don Halle Orchestra Zurich, Deutsche Kammer Philharmonie in Bremen. So, so there is, the geography is quite wild and, and I have not been here because of the COVID now for 13 months. So now I have decided as a chief conductor, I have to come here and sit through this quarantine because it's my orchestra and I feel the loyalty and I feel the responsibility.
49:10 Alec Baldwin? Well, let me just say this to you. You are one of the most elegant men I've ever seen on the podium in my lifetime. And you are a great, great, great music conductor. But I hope we see you in New York before too long. We are dying for you to come back. Please come back.
49:24 Speaker 05 Thank you. Thank you very much.
49:28 Alec Baldwin? Conductor Pavu Yarvi. This is Pavu Yarvi conducting the Estonian National Symphony in "The Kantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten," written by the world-renowned Estonian composer Arvo Part. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.
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