Marin Alsop
Lunar tunes
As Marin Alsop records a new space-themed symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra, she speaks to Stephen Moss about leading the way for female conductors and where her career might lead next
Marin Alsop is looking a little tired. So am I. I’ve been pursuing her since May when she was in London to give a masterclass (sic) for female conductors at the Royal Festival Hall (it was riveting), to make her debut with the Philharmonia (their Shostakovich Fifth Symphony brought the house down), and to spend a weekend recording Australian composer Amanda Lee Falkenberg’s The Moons Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) at St Luke’s – a wildly ambitious, highly cinematic, 45-minute, seven-movement piece that portrays different moons in the solar system, ending with our own. Signum Records will release the fruits of that intense weekend of recording in October – the month of Alsop’s 66th birthday.
Other than a few brief snatches of conversation over lunchtime sandwiches, there was no time to talk to Alsop at the recording session, and a proposed trip to Austria to watch her rehearsing ahead of an August BBC Prom with her own ensemble, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, had to be cancelled as I had Covid. So reluctantly we have to talk online, in an hour between rehearsals. Alsop, back in Vienna after three weeks spent curating the Ravinia Festival in Chicago, is about to head to London for the Prom, to be followed by a tour of Japan with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, then back to the UK in September for more concerts with the Philharmonia. The life of the maestro – she apparently dislikes the term ‘maestra’ – is a demanding one.
The Moons Symphony is an off beat project. ‘Amanda emailed me and told me about this piece she was working on,’ Alsop recalls. ‘She sounded kind of nutty, but I like nutty ideas. She sent me some samples to listen to, and there was some really interesting stuff in there. My schedule was way too busy to get involved, but then Covid happened, so I wrote to her and said because of Covid maybe there’s some possibility we can team up. We read it through in Vienna during Covid and we hit it off right away; she’s very smart and sincere and committed.’ Alsop gave some advice on the orchestral parts, Falkenberg tweaked and a couple of years later here they are at St Luke’s committing the piece to disc. ‘This is Amanda’s project 150 per cent,’ says Alsop, ‘and my goal was to be helpful in her realising this dream.’
The scale of the piece is vast: a portrait of the cosmos and a tribute to the NASA space exploration team which spent decades building up a picture of these distant moons. The term ‘symphony’ is misleading because there’s also a libretto, written by Falkenberg herself and performed by London Voices. ‘It’s a huge undertaking,’ says Alsop, ‘but she’s poured so much of her energy and her extramusical energy into getting interesting and creative partners involved in the project.’
Falkenberg researched the subject deeply and tried to get the facts about her seven moons – Io, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, Miranda, Ganymede and our own moon – right. She brought to the recording sessions an astronaut and a group of scientists who had been involved in space exploration, and they gave brief talks to the orchestra about the particular moon being portrayed in each movement before it was recorded. The orchestra seemed genuinely captivated. ‘I thought it was fantastic,’ says Alsop, ‘to see how she has shared the process along the way with these people, so they have ownership. They turned up at the recording project; they’re crying – they’re really feeling a connection with this. Our siloed off world can feel a little insular, and this is a project that breaks through those barriers and into this interdisciplinary place where I love to live.’
Alsop hates being pigeonholed. ‘There are so many restrictions in classical music and so many rules,’ she says. ‘I remember when I had my swing band years ago. People said, “You can’t do jazz and be a serious conductor.” I said, “Oh for heaven’s sake! Why not? That’s so ridiculous.” It starts with the musical siloing, but it also extends to the lack of vision in terms of enabling people to understand how music can convey a concept or an idea. Those are the ways we can meet a much broader public and interest people. Context to me is everything, and giving people information and sharing more of that is the only way forward for our industry.’
Alsop accepts the score is highly cinematic – Falkenberg’s background is in film music – but hates it when that term is used negatively. ‘That’s another one of the rules, right,’ she says sharply. ‘If it’s cinematic it’s not good. Somehow, it’s not authentic or it’s not art music. But I think of some of these unbelievably brilliant scores by John Williams or Leonard Bernstein [she highlights On the Waterfront] or Shostakovich. They’re great film scores written by great composers. I don’t know why “cinematic” has to have a pejorative connotation, but it often does. Cinematic just means pictorial and this is a piece that conjures imagery. That’s exactly her intention.’
The LSO had no hang-ups about the filmic nature of the score. ‘That’s what I love about the London orchestras,’ says Alsop. ‘They really dig deep and commit to whatever project they’re working on. They don’t look down their noses at something that is cinematic. It wasn’t that easy either. It’s hard music and they gave it their all.’
The choir was overlaid later, conducted by London Voices director Ben Parry, but whether the libretto adds to the picturemaking or gets in the way is a moot point. At some stage the piece may well be recast in purely orchestral form –which Alsop believes would work well – and commodities trader Christopher Bake, a friend of Falkenberg’s who provided the £250,000 to finance the recording (a weekend with the LSO does not come cheap), anticipates a series of immersive concerts taking listeners on a voyage through space experience.
‘I really don’t read any of the critics. You need to be your own bellwether’
What will critics make of it? Are they likely to be snooty about a cinematic score? ‘I hope she gets a fair listening,’ says Alsop. ‘I hope people don’t hear “The Moons Symphony” and say, “Oh come on, it’s a gimmick.” I hope they don’t prejudge it, because I think it’s a strong work. I can never tell what critics are going to say. I really don’t read any. Is that a terrible thing to say? I know what I want to work on, and I know how a concert went. You need to be your own bellwether.’
As well as being the first woman conductor of international significance, Alsop is now the first woman conductor who will – and this is not meant to sound rude – have to age on the podium. Male conductors routinely go on at least into their eighties. What are her imperatives as she enters later middle age?
‘For me things dramatically shifted when I finished up my music directorship in Baltimore [in 2021] because I didn’t have all those responsibilities anymore,’ she explains. ‘The challenge was that coming out of Covid everyone wanted to rebook everything, so there was a traffic jam in my calendar. It’s been too hectic, so now I am trying to weed through and see what exactly I want to do. It’s wonderful when you arrive at that place in your career where you have the luxury to do that.’
The Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, where she is chief conductor, is currently the centre of gravity in her musical life. ‘My heart at the moment is really with Vienna. The orchestra is extremely versatile. It’s very open, experimental in a way. It’s the opposite of what you would think classical music tradition in Vienna would be, and that’s kind of cool. I love the breaking expectations aspect of it.’
The great question hanging over her career is whether she will take on another US music directorship after her 14-year stint at Baltimore, where she championed outreach and tried to achieve greater diversity in both the orchestra and the audience. Two plum jobs in American musical life are currently up for grabs – the chief conductor roles at the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As a native New Yorker, the former would be a glorious homecoming, but because of her association with the Chicago Symphony’s summer festival in Ravinia it was the latter post that seemed more likely, and indeed at one point she was warm favourite to land it.
Those hopes now seem to have receded, and there are persistent suggestions that some of the musicians in the Chicago Symphony are opposed to giving her the top job. What is undoubtedly true is that some critics are openly hostile. ‘There is one very good reason not to hire Alsop,’ wrote Lawrence Johnson on the Chicago Classical Review website in February. ‘A world-class orchestra deserves a worldclass conductor. And, to be brutally honest, despite her occasional successful nights, Alsop is not on that level.’
Other Chicago critics are more supportive. One tells me Alsop has strong supporters in the orchestra too – ‘Among 100 orchestral musicians you will always get 200 opinions,’ one UK orchestra veteran tells me sagely – and the Chicago Tribune’s Hannah Edgar believes she would be a groundbreaking appointment.
‘It would represent a really interesting shift for orchestras everywhere,’ says Edgar. She believes Alsop would establish a connection with the city, encourage collegiality, take classical music out of its ‘bubble’ and resist the conservatism of musical culture in Chicago.
‘It’s important to follow your heart in deciding which offers to accept’
Alsop is tight-lipped about her prospects in Chicago and New York. ‘Let’s see what happens,’ she says when I ask her whether another American music directorship in on the cards. ‘You never know in this business. I do feel quintessentially American. That’s part of my DNA. It does feel funny not to have my roots or my feet planted in America, but I have to say I’m really enjoying this time a lot. You have the chance to breathe and look around and experience different things.’
Would it break her heart to be passed over by the Big Two. ‘Break my heart – Idon’t know about that,’ she says quietly. ‘I’m happy to have good relationships with both orchestras, and to be chief conductor at the Ravinia Festival. That gives me access to the orchestra. You just never know.’
Like all conductors, Alsop says she tries not to obsess about her ‘career’. ‘Each offer and each situation is so dramatically different,’ she insists. ‘I had never anticipated going to Brazil for example [as the São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor, 2012-19]. That was so off the map for me, yet I enjoyed my tenure there tremendously. It’s not just about the music-making, although that’s the main draw. It’s also about the community connection and the life experience. Often when my manager says, “That might not be the best career move”, that’s my motivation for accepting it. It’s important to follow your heart in these things.’
Alsop has been a crucial agent for change in classical music. Her mentor in the 1980s was Leonard Bernstein, and she is made from the same mould in terms of her evangelising, energising, democratising mission, with the added ingredient that she has almost singlehandedly made it normal for women to conduct orchestras. But her supporters do not want her to be seen only as the pioneer who kicked open doors for other women conductors to march through. That, they say, would be to patronise her and downplay her musical talents, as some critics are wont to do.
‘She creates a sense of occasion and excitement for the audience,’ says Gillian Moore, artistic associate at London’s Southbank Centre. ‘It’s important she is seen as someone who has led the way for change, but I don’t want to emphasise that too much because she should be viewed as a fantastic musician as well.’
‘She is a very collaborative conductor,’ says Kira Doherty, the Philharmonia’s second horn and president. ‘She likes to speak to the musicians when she’s on the podium. She’s very funny, very witty, and can be very deadpan as well. That goes down well here. There’s also a no nonsense style about her. You get a sense that she’s confident in what she’s doing, but it’s not a case of “I will impose this on you”.’
Alsop is the antithesis of the tyrannical old maestro. ‘Sometimes the more insecure a conductor is, the more tyrannical they become,’ says Doherty. ‘I’ve had instances with other conductors where a player has been singled out and almost picked on. With Marin it’s not like that at all. If she makes a mistake she says “Uh, I made a mistake. Let’s do it again.” There’s no shame in that. It’s a sense that we’re all human and we’re all working towards this, but underpinned by a clear competence in what she’s doing. She knows herself and no longer has to prove herself.’
Does Alsop feel less pressure now there is a new generation of women conductors joining her on the podium? Does that make it easier to be seen as a conductor pure and simple rather than some great standard bearer for women in music? ‘I’m happy to have company,’ she says laconically, ‘and I’m happy that these opportunities exist now, but it really is only the result of the #MeToo movement. Progress was incremental and painstaking for hundreds of years. Let’s try to continue on this positive trajectory.’
Alsop is taking nothing for granted, and continues to promote fellow female conductors at Ravinia, London’s Southbank Centre – witness that beautifully orchestrated masterclass in May – and elsewhere. She is far from assured that the battle for proper female representation is yet won. ‘You just have to look at the numbers,’ she says. ‘The disparity is clear’. The Moons Symphony is released by Signum Records on 7 October; Alsop’s recording of Schumann Symphonies Nos 1 & 2 with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra is also released on Naxos on 28 October.
Out of this world
Music across the universe
Gustav Holst The Planets
Another suite in seven movements, each inspired by a planet in the solar system, except Pluto which was undiscovered when Holst wrote the suite during World War I. As Holst was more interested in the planets from an astrological rather than an astronomical perspective, Earth is not included.
R Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra
This portentous 1896 tone poem was originally a musical interpretation of Nietzsche’s book of the same name. But the opening sunrise theme has become synonymous with space since its use by director Stanley Kubrick in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey and because the BBC used it as the theme music to its coverage of the Apollo space missions.
Janáček The Excursions of Mr Brouček to the Moon and to the 15th Century
Based on the novels of Czech writer Svatopluk Cech, Janáček’s comic opera, had a troubled composition history and received only a lukewarm reception at its premier in 1920, but has now entered the repertoire. Think The Wizard of Oz with more demanding music.
Debussy ‘Clair de Lune’
The third movement of the Suite bergamasque was inspired by Paul Verlaine’s poem of the same name. Our moon is of course associated with many famous pieces of music: the ‘Song to the Moon’ in Dvořák’s Rusalka; ‘Blue Moon’; ‘Fly Me to the Moon’; ‘By the Light of the Silv’ry Moon’, and a thousand others.
David Bowie ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Starman’ and ‘Life on Mars’
Yes, the guy was obsessed by space, but coming of age in the 1960s how could you not be? Bowie also starred in the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Breaking the glass ceiling
Top women conductors of today
Susanna Mälkki (left)
Born in Helsinki, the 53 year-old was principal cellist with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra before developing her conducting career. In 2016 she became the first female chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra.
Oksana Lyniv
In July 2021 Ukrainian-born Lyniv was the first woman to conduct at Bayreuth, and this year became Teatro Comunale di Bologna’s music director.
Dalia Stasevska
Born 1984 in Kyiv before moving to Finland, Stasevska turned to conducting in her twenties. She became the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s principal guest conductor in 2019 and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor in 2021. She led the Last Night of the Proms in 2020 and was set to do so again in 2022 before its cancellation.
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, she became, aged 29, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s first female music director in 2016.
Karina Canellakis
Born in New York in 1981 to a conductor father and pianist mother, in 2019 she became the first woman to conduct the opening night of the Proms, and in 2020 was named the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s principal guest conductor.
Eva Ollikainen
The 40-year-old Finn is chief conductor of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and made her Proms debut in August 2022.