“Too much has changed” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 187 (7388) dated 10/08/2022

In the Austrian Hohenems, the last, fourth stage of the Schubertiada is taking place. With his quartermaster Gerd Nachbauer – the only head of a world-class music festival today, remaining in his position for 47 years, – said Alexey Mokrousov.

Has coronavirus ruined music life?

– We must be patient for a year, two or three, then it will become completely clear. But much has already been destroyed. First of all, the audience has changed.

– Do you also, like at many festivals this summer, began to go to concerts in bras and shorts?

– It’s not about clothes, but about the sequence of the listener’s interest in performances.

Has it gotten smaller?

– Yes. If earlier they ordered tickets for several concerts at once, now more and more often they come for the sake of one evening. At the same time, when addressing orders, we understand that we are increasingly dealing with a new audience.

– Something like a cultural selfie – check in, what was it?

– Probably. For a year now, I have been puzzling over how the festival will continue to exist, although the musicians are unexpectedly pleased with the filling of our halls – in other places they met with much worse. They talk about the disappearing listeners in the world – and are surprised that at the Schubertiade they are met by halls filled as before. Our situation in August was better than in June, although, to be honest, in the spring, when the virus seemed to have receded, I hoped for a return to the old life, that the guests who had been absent from us for two years – because of fear or for some other reasons, will return. In 2020, we abandoned almost the entire program, a year later, half of it. Guests from across the ocean could not come because of the bans, the Australians could not travel at all, the Japanese refused everything in advance with the words that they would not have time to take root.

The hope that everyone will come again was destroyed by the Ukrainian events, because of them the Western Europeans have not come now, the British, the Dutch are sure that the Bregenzerwald is halfway to hostilities. It reminded us of the situation with Chernobyl in 1986, when we also drastically reduced the program: the audience was small, the Americans, frightened by TV news, were sure that a huge nuclear mushroom was hanging over the whole of Europe, and since then they have never returned in their previous numbers. So, today the British, our faithful public, who came for decades largely thanks to numerous tours, also returned all the tickets – because of the fear of covid and war. The farther people are from the problem they are assessing, the bigger it seems to them, the larger it is than it is.

But since the musicians are happy…

“Last year they didn’t see the public at all. At the Vienna Opera, the premiere was played in front of a hall in which a couple of critics were sitting, the rest got a TV. This decision was understandable: the opera orchestra, like the choir, is considered civil servants in our country, musicians cannot be fired and put out on the street; The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is just a private business of these musicians, they do it in their free time from work at the Opera.

— Are chamber music performers, deprived of state support, ready to reduce their fees in this situation?

– This is not noticeable yet. It is really important for the performers that they see in front of them not only a microphone or a lens, but a full or at least half full hall. But what will happen to the music industry next, whether the interest of the public will remain at the same level, no one can say today, too much has changed. No one knows whether this is a temporary decline in attendance or a permanent one, whether those who previously attended concerts more out of habit will finally switch to television broadcasts and recordings after the pandemic.

– This should lead to an increase in sales of discs – they are actively traded in your lobby – or is the time for “physical media” gone?

— Only discs on which the program of today’s concert is recorded are selling well, and there are few such coincidences. But even if there is a recording of the concert on DVD, there is little interest. The market is overflowing with records. That’s why we don’t record our own projects – too much work, subtleties with copyrights, too little commercial result.

So far, we are busy making up for lost projects of the last two years, although not all of them will be brought back to life.

The audience has changed, and this is one of the key problems. Two years of pause influenced a long-established tradition, if not to say that they destroyed it. Both opera and concert halls around the world are seeing a drop in subscription interest. New generations are more spontaneous in their decisions, it is difficult for them to depend on a rigid concert calendar. They have a vacation or business – and here is this stupid subscription. The rejection trend is taking on dramatic proportions. The Frankfurt Opera is said to have lost 40% of its subscriptions.

– For forty years, many stars have performed at the festival, from Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau to Igor Levit. Who made the biggest impression on you?

– Svyatoslav Richter belonged to such people.

Was it immediately clear that you were a genius?

— No, his appearance was not particularly spectacular. But when he sat down at the piano, that’s when it all began. He impressed as a musician. Harnoncourt was very interesting to talk to. We had many meetings. Even after a long break, he instantly joined the conversation, no matter where – so, in Zurich after the concert, we began to talk as if we had interrupted a minute earlier, and not several months or even years ago.

— The Schubertiade has six museums, from the Franz Schubert Museum to the Elisabeth Schwarzkopf Museum. Which item is most dear to you?

– An agreement between the conductor, the court bandmaster in Vienna in the 1880s, Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, and one Berlin publishing house on the performance of Schubert’s opera Alfonso and Estrella. Fuchs undertook to rework the score in such a way as to perform the opera “in the style of today” – the exact opposite of our era, when the conductor in the orchestra pit – Gardiner, Jacobs or Currentzis, one can name many names – strives to play notes in the style that existed at the moment creations, but on stage the director creates a completely different visual image than the composer intended.

– The profession of a conductor often delights politicians …

– To a greater extent, those who put on the radical. The conductor, by virtue of his position, dominates the musicians – in most cases in the best sense of the word. 120 orchestra members cannot do whatever they want, they have to perform a joint text, achieve a musical result, in the end it is the conductor who achieves the composer’s idea, determines the path to it. This, of course, impresses politicians – the conductor gets control over the ensemble and can shape it as he pleases, impose his will on it.

Musical interpretation is born more by the subconscious than by the imposition of one’s will and the coercion of the orchestra. The conductor does not have his own instrument, he cannot play music himself, his problem is that he cannot work without other people. And in this sense it is the most difficult of all musical professions.

— But politicians can’t do anything alone, they need complicity, isn’t that why they are so admired by conductors?

– Of course.