On a sunny autumn afternoon, in the alpine Schloss Elmau overlooking the first powdery dustings of snow on the Wetterstein mountains, I had the great pleasure of interviewing the violinist Christian Tetzlaff, who was performing a concert in Elmau. Tetzlaff was clearly in the mood to talk: we dived directly into intense discussions of music and life.
Benedikt Zacher: We’ve just spoken about small children, with yours hopefully having their nap right now. Yesterday, my four-year old decided that he wanted to dance, so I sat at the piano and played a Schubert waltz, only for him to interrupt me straight away and say “No, Dad, don't play elegant music, play cool music!” I think that's an interesting classification – how do you categorise music?
Christian Tetzlaff: My little one always says “Party Music” as against classical. But seriously, the usual separation into “serious” and “popular” music hits its limits pretty quickly, as you can see if you take the example of a classical radio station that only broadcasts music suited for your car radio, missing out all those deep, slow movements: that's more like popular music. You hear things like “Classical music chills me out so nicely”.
For those of us who make music with body and soul, that's absurd, because we want to sharpen up the antennae of the listener rather than to depress them. Antennae that show them "Here is something that moves me deeply. But what is it that moves me so deeply and makes me cry, how has the composer touched me and brought something that was buried inside my soul to light?" As musicians we also have a cathartic duty to introduce people to existential questions and show them how to come to terms with them; it can be a joyful, but often a painful, process. In the end, that's what the composers share: coping with the struggles of life. When I'm in schools, I always ask the kids "Why do we listen to sad pieces?" – the answer comes straight back "because when you cry, you feel better". And that's an important aspect of music: the sharing of grief as a religious idea of mankind. And the zest for sharing greater joy and love.
For me, the important difference between classical and pop music is that pop tends to place an individual artist or band in the spotlight and idolises them, whereas classical music addresses each individual listener, with their different stories and broken dreams.
Classical concerts are naturally more unique than pop concerts, but is it perhaps a modern invention that we listen to concerts in large dark rooms, eyes and ears glued to a brightly lit stage? If you think back to the soirées of Schubert or Mendelssohn, music seems to have been a far more sociable pastime. Would you wish for more interaction with the audience and for smaller, more intimate settings?
It depends on the works. Brahms first tried his symphonies with reduced instrumentation, but was also happy to hear them in a big concert hall with 16 first violins later on. There are many pieces where I can barely keep still in my seat, but during a Schubert Lied, for example, I’m glad that I can be all ears, fully immersed. If you make music deeply and honestly, anything is possible. Sometimes, it even works in large halls. It depends on how concentrated you are and on how many ears are engaging with the music. As soon as you are in a large hall, the aspect of a religious experience comes into play, when many people are gathered together for a deep musical experience. The one thing that doesn't work for me, and which seems to be the case for 80% of concerts, is when the musicians feel that the only thing that matters is them, with the composition being relegated to the status of mere material. You can easily tell by whether the artists are playing what's in the score or not. Listeners who don't know the score well or can't read music, might admire it as "artistic freedom". But for most cases, it is simply laziness and showing-off; following the motto "I don’t like this part being played piano, I get more applause when I play loudly". If you trample over the minimal instructions that the composer has written in the score to protect himself and his ideas from faulty interpretation, then you might have missed the point and are probably in the wrong job.
Didn't Joseph Joachim himself complain to Brahms about the second movement of his Violin Concerto, because the main theme is introduced by the oboe, and the violin plays mere variations?
No, that was Sarasate. On the contrary, Joachim and Brahms struggled over every note. Brahms expressed things like "If I write a double-slur, it's still a sigh; a triple-slur is a rhythmic grouping of three." You don't often find those kinds of differences between violinists, because many of them rigorously follow the editions of famous teachers or players. Consulting the original score is as important as learning one's mother tongue. And even with an interpretation that's true to the original, there is still a big scope for artistic freedom. You have to play the wonderful main melody piano, because that's the way it's written. But I can play the melody melancholic, longing, joyful or fulfilled, which makes a big difference.
But with such requirements, might you not be asking too much of a large part of the classical audience, who are happy to identify with famous artists and admire them? Are we not running the danger that classical music will no longer be loved by ordinary people and become the preserve of a narrow cult?
You often hear these arguments, but I don't understand why. At all times, only 5% of the population engaged intensively with classical music. For me as an artist, the last thing I'm doing when I play a concert is to pursue some commercial or other strategic agenda. When I play, I am falling into a kind of trance and I live the music in the moment.