Anne-Sophie Mutter: I prefer women conductors
NewsThe German violinist has been speaking to Bild-Zeitung in Berlin:
‘I’m more geared towards playing with female conductors as well. Perhaps the last bastion will fall when the New York Philharmonic announce their new boss. I don’t believe in filling positions based on gender, age or origin. There is also a good generation of young (male) conductors at the moment, including Lahav Shani from Israel. This is a wonderful development that only happens every 30 or 40 years.’
She added: ‘I do not share Yehudi Menuhin’s opinion that a good musician can also be a good conductor. Conducting is not a part-time job.’
Stick to the playing, love. These grandiose statements are not that interesting, you know
Really? How many conductors have you played with Love ? Your vast experience ?
Is not Mutter the favourite female conductor of Mutter?
There was a forgettable recording of some concerto, where Mutter and Karajan could not agree on the tempo. And it was released…
Mutter seemed to think it was amusing, how she competed with Karajan for the players.
Poor music.
“She added: ‘I do not share Yehudi Menuhin’s opinion that a good musician can also be a good conductor. Conducting is not a part-time job.’”
Article shows photo of her with Barenboim.
Quite clear message.
Everything Barenboim does is 80%. Never understood the hype. And believe me, I’ve heard my share of his work the last 50+ years.
Well, if so, then his 80% are equal to (most) other conductor’s 150%. And which hype? I’ve heard him often, and except for the very last couple of years when he overloaded himself physically (and mentally?), he usually was great, often a genius.
I ´ve played under some great conductors who were poor musicians(Maazel was the prime example).I´ve played under many great musicians who weren´t the greatest conductors,technically.I always preferred the latter bunch.Good musicians don´t need a traffic cop.They need someone with an artistic vision who is able to share it with them and makes them a part of it.
Now if I said I preferred men conductors, I’d get slated wouldn’t I. But guess all is fine when you say you prefer women conductors.
So woke these days, the alarm clock industry is dying.
Yes, these are the times we live in. Yesterday I read an article by a scientist who is investigating whether Schubert was homosexual. Apparently this is very important. Apparently everything is important, gender, skin color, sexual orientation, just not the music anymore.
Oh absolutely – and don’t forget the politics! That’s just as important as their gender and sexuality, and far more important than their music!
Who cares whether Schubert was gay or not. It’s a non-event.
My distress is the fact that he died at 31 years of age.
To say it’s irrelevant is as ignorant as making it the major issue it isn’t.
But it’s a relevant piece of a puzzle one always tries to solve when digging beneath the surface of musical creations, trying to ‘be the composer’ in order to find access to the music to the fullest. Always an ideal, always subjective, but the aspiration is the drive.
It’s almost as if, historically, there’s a difference in the predominance of men and women conductors, which carries on until today.
You are not very familiar with human history, biologically and culturally, are you?
Cry me a river……
With respect, I don’t think the headline reflects what she is saying.
She is answering the question “Which conductors would you NOT play with?”
She replies that she is more geared to playing with female conductors AS WELL.
She goes on to say that there is a good generation of male conductors, at the moment AS WELL.
So really, she is giving a diplomatic answer to avoid naming any conductor.
Come on, don’t disturb us here with listening to what she literally said. We want to feed our preconceived opinions, not learn what she actually thinks.
Whatever she thinks gets down to this; she’s entitled to her opinion. Full stop.
All this hype about young Shani.
They’re not really doing him a favour.
He will allways be referred to as Barenboim’s foster child with the limited main-stream repertoire.
Just after the opening concert of the IPO yesterday- Shani conducted a great Beethoven 9th, and he conducts a lot of non “main-stream” repertoire – just orchestras today are less willing to take risks
So when Danny leaves our world, he can be the big boss.
That”s a great wake up call. 9 years ago she was invited to open the season of the israeli Phil with Mazur. Eventually he was indisposed and Shani took over, (it was his debut with the orchestra) and Mutter refused to play with him and cancelled. Zubin later remarked it was not sportive on her part.
Which means that now his career is big enough so she allows him to play with her.
The IPO would sound great with any conductor.
I am betting that Borda has one more rabbit to pull out of her magical hat of a career before she retires, and yes, as Mutter suggests, it will be a woman music director for New York.
(On top of a renovated hall in NY that is getting very positive reviews, a spanking new hall in LA, a Latino music director, which already cemented her legacy…)
None of which actually means anything. No one ever criticizes major public works events in public, such as the “renovation.” It will be as bad as before, in different ways. Which is to say, adequate, as it was never that bad to begin with. It would have been so simple to fix, but then they could not raise so much money! Everything has to be overdone to be overfunded! Except that takes money away from others who need it.
I remember Celibidache treating her so badly that she walked out of rehearsals with the Munich Phil and cancelled her performance. Later, in an interview in El Pais, he called her a “violin playing hen.”
Celibidache was the biggest prick i ever played for.She made a great career without him.
And all this only because she was a Karajan protegé
Celi really needed that kind of twist, the old hurt elephant. He couldn’t have gone along with a Karajan protegé anyway. The music making was not the issue. The list of people in the music biz Celi did NOT insult publicly is very short.
“I don’t believe in filling positions based on gender, age or origin.”
Even more so in today’s very woke times, I respect her comment. By contrast, things in general are becoming so woke, I feel like my eyelids are being forced open with toothpicks.
A couple of years ago she refused to accept female concertmasters for the Heidelberger Kammerorchester, her favorite accompaning band….times change….
Nowhere in the article she says she “prefers” woman conductors.
Her remark about “good musicians” and “good conductors” reminds me of the old joke about the sign over the backdoor stage entrance to the opera house:
“For musicians and singers”
🙂
Her statement does not pass the “shoe on the other foot” test.
You’ve forgotten the big asterisk for that test – whites and men don’t count.
The interview is with BZ which is almost but not exactly the same as Bild.
Has Anne-Sophie heard something on
the grape vine about the next music
director of the New York Phil ? Could
the next music director be JoAnn
Falletta ?
I wouldn´t think so.I don´t think Mrs Falletta has conducted the NYPO so far…My first though was Susanna Mälkki,who conducted the orchestra as recently as at the start of the year and made a big impression with the orchestra and the audience.
“I don’t believe in filling positions based on gender, age or origin.”
We might interpret that to mean that she feels a number of lesser current conductors got their job because only older white males were seriously considered.
Used to like very old male conductors, if memory serves well.
sounds pretty sexist….definitionally so.