certainly very young.  If it’s too much, I don’t know because if you look with the uptake of somebody thinking of his first concert, which was at the age of fourteen, then actually twenty-one is not too bad in comparison with such an age to start a performing career.  [Laughs]  I started at fourteen in Padua, with I Solisti Veneti, even before I started the major part of my studies in Milan at the Conservatory of Music.  But since fourteen years old, I conducted every season in Italy.

BD:    How do you divide your career now between operas and concerts?

RC:    Basically, I devote three-quarters of the season to the symphonic activity, especially in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and a quarter to the Bologna Teatro Communale activity, for an opera production each year.  But I would say it’s something which I like to do; I certainly do not regret to balance it that way.  After my American debut in ’74, I came back in ’76, ’78, and ’79 and in that time I was conducting basically opera during the season.  Although I am Italian and it’s something I love and I would never leave, still I felt it was time to balance it differently.  Now the activity with the Concertgebouw Orchestra causes me to reduce categorically opera, and in this respect I’m pretty pleased, so far.

BD:    How much time in the year does the Concertgebouw take?

RC:    Basically around four months a year.  It’s a really full time engagement mentally, musically and physically.

BD:    From the vast array of symphonic and concerto literature, how do you decide which pieces you will play this season, and which ones you’ll put off ‘til next season, and maybe which ones you’ll say, “No, I don’t want to do them at all”?

RC:    You know, this is a long process.  It’s like love affair, a first sight love affair relationship.  Basically when you’d like to do something, in terms of repertoire, to perform something or to repeat something you’ve been performing before, you feel it spontaneously.  There’s no element outside yourself to suggest or to ask you to conduct this piece or another piece.  Generally, I consider myself particularly devoted to the late Romantic music and the modern music, as well as the extreme avant-garde music.  But I like as well to think about settecento, you know, mila settecento music, old music, generally, but not as much as the late Romantic music.

BD:    So this put you in a good position to work with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, which is, essentially, a late Romantic orchestra?

RC:    In a way, yes, although I have to say I started it much earlier, when I took over the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra as Chief Conductor.  There I really did develop this repertoire for nearly ten years, so this is a continuation of what I started back then. 

BD:    No matter what, you have a huge amount of music to select from.  How do you decide, "This score, yes; this score, no?"

RC:    I have no specific answer, actually; I can only tell you an example.  So far I’ve been conducting a lot of Mozart, although within this season there’s very little.  But for over fifteen years I’ve been performing symphonic music of Mozart — very carefully, and not very often.  But only this year, I’ll conduct my first Mozart opera in Bologna, and it’s Don Giovanni.  And why did I decide to do that?  I have not exactly any sort of a cool, technical answer.  I can only tell you it is an opera which I’ve been thinking and dreaming about and also studying for over twenty years.  And somehow there is a clock inside myself which told me, “Now, Riccardo, it’s time to try.”  Good or bad it’s going to be.  It doesn’t matter; your clock inside tells you it’s time to go.

BD:    So it’s an experiment?

RC:    Yes.  It certainly is the first time I will conduct a Mozart opera, so it’s something absolutely new, although as I said, I’ve conducted between twenty and thirty symphonic works.  But it’s a different kind of experience, for sure.  Therefore it’s something new, and if I feel, spontaneously, this kind of sensation inside.  I think it’s the right moment.  But why and when those things happen, I think every individual musician has different timing in those things.

BD:    I see.  But being Music Director of the Concertgebouw, you obviously, occasionally, must be forced into doing some things you might not want to do.

RC:    Actually, not forced because it’s a very flexible orchestra in terms of repertoire, as well as repertoire choice.  What I consider sort of obligation, or let’s say a must for a Chief Conductor, is to continue and to try to prolong the long tradition in terms of late Romantic music.  I’m doing a lot of avant-garde music, but this is a new line that’s started with my tenure.  The late Romantic school, especially Strauss and Mahler and I would say Bruckner as well

is really a sort of obligation for a Chief Conductor of that orchestra.

BD:    And you are now branching out into Zemlinsky and Webern?

RC:    Yes, of course.  We are developing that, and also Schoenberg.  I think they recorded Verklarte Nacht long ago, or Pelleas und Melisande.  We would like to continue it, to put all of that on disc, yes.  But certainly the relationship between Mahler himself and this orchestra was so close, and therefore it continued through one hundred years.  It’s been non-stop, and it continued through the whole history with the four chief conductors before me.  Therefore I think this is certainly a must for the Chief Conductor in Amsterdam.

BD:    Do you feel that when you conduct a Mahler symphony, you are in competition with the memory of Haitink or the other previous conductors?  [See my Interview with Bernard Haitink.] 

RC:    I don’t believe in ghosts of the past.  I believe in great lessons of the past, but I think every lesson, new or old, is a different one.  Everyone has his own interpretation and everyone finds his own way.  When I did conduct and record the Mahler Sixth Symphony, of course I had to establish for the orchestra my own way of doing it, which certainly is different from Mr. Haitink, no doubts about that.  But I’ve had no difficulty in that respect, as well as doing a Brahms symphony or a Mozart symphony or a Haydn symphony.  Even a Bruckner!  I’ve been doing quite a lot of Bruckner there, and it’s an orchestra which is ready and willing to have new ways, new ideas, new interpretation lines, and it

somehow now you’re mature or now you’re not.  In a different way, I believe that the sensation of a musician changes through years.  I will feel a Brahms symphony differently in ten or fifteen years than I do now.  I already do feel, today, a Brahms symphony differently than I did ten years ago.  I do not mean that that relates purely and only to maturity.  I think it’s a development that a musician brings himself, and through the years we change progressively; in which direction, I don’t know.  I think there is a danger that sometimes you might lose the focus of the piece, getting old instead of getting more on the focus.  There are other examples of the opposite, but it’s not predictable.

BD:    Do you wish to disown some of the recordings or performance tapes that were made many years ago?

RC:    Some I do.  Some I do.  I would be silly and even selfish to say, “No, I am proud of all of what I did.”  This is not true.  There are some recordings which I would like maybe to repeat and to do again, that’s for sure.  But there are also recordings which I did when I was much younger that I feel I could not do even as well today because the experience, in a certain way, would have taken away the freshness, the spontaneity.  Depending on the repertory, even the lack of knowledge in terms of deep musical reason sometimes adds a degree of emotion and a distinctive light inside the music-making itself.  This is between the conductor and the orchestra, which I find, sometimes, very special and maybe unrepeatable.

BD:    Do you try to get the same effect on recordings that you do in the concert hall on the night of a performance?

RC:    I try to reproduce the same intention in terms of emotion and deep conviction of an interpretation.  But I generally try to get more precision than in a live performance; more precision in terms of performance itself, and also more precision in terms of details.  I’m a little bit maniacal in that respect, and my recording company knows that very well, having been with them exclusively for over ten years.  And I think sometimes the beauty of digital sound is even a stronger temptation to go more and more into those things, to be able to reproduce something that even the concert is not able to.  For instance, we might be able to pick up small details in the orchestration which sometimes, due to acoustical reasons, you cannot pick up from the hall just by listening to a concert.  And the major difficulty, I think, is probably not only that, but the reproduction of emotions.  That sometimes is very difficult.  I am not, as everybody else is now, in favor of live recordings.  On the contrary, I am in favor of studio recordings, but in that respect, I know how difficult it is to reproduce the degree of emotion compared the concert the night before.  When it happens

one of the arts, if not the art of communication in terms of sentiment.  I think that’s probably the first point to aim to.  In whatever country you are performing, through the music, through the form, the expression of the music, especially classical music, I think you can deal directly with people, and to the soul of people, which is even more important.

BD:    So then you’re always trying to touch the soul of the audience?

RC:    Yes.  It is something which is automatic in connection with the music-making process.

BD:    On the night of a performance, do you have any expectations of the audience that is behind you as you conduct?

RC:    You always have expectations from the audience.  You can never predict what the audience is going to bring to you or to give to you.  Take a piece like Das Lied von der Erde, which we are doing on this U.S. tour.  We are doing it only six times, which is fine on a tour of fourteen dates, but that is quite a lot because it takes so much and demands so much from the performers!  Really, you end every night completely empty with nothing more to add.  Not one note.  You are really squeezed inside.  It’s very penetrating and even very painful, especially the sixth Lied, the Abschied, which is really, sometimes, irresistible if you let too much emotion to run into your heart.

BD:    That final song is essentially half the piece.

RC:    Yes, it is.  Therefore, in that case, we expect from the public commotion and emotion, but not glamour.  It’s different.  If you do a virtuoso symphony, of course you expect something else from the audience, but every piece of music needs a special and a different kind of reaction.  I think it’s very important, this relation between the meaning of a success in different works.  After Mahler, after especially Das Lied von der Erde, which is the farewell to life for Mahler and probably the farewell of life to everybody’s feeling, just by listening to the incredible darkness and tragic feeling of the last song you do not expect a glamorous “Bravo!”  We also have a different program with the Semiramide Overture of Rossini.  After such a sparkling piece that is brilliant and joyful, then you want exactly the opposite reaction.

BD:    How are the audiences different from Italy, to the Netherlands, perhaps to London, to America — all over the world?

RC:    I think every country has its own way of expressing itself, you know.  And in Italy, there is an enormous background and culture for opera.  In Germany and in the Netherlands, they are especially devoted to symphonic music.  I think America is an example where you have both because of your music activity, because of your amount of theaters, amount of concert halls, and symphony orchestras.  You really have in your hands the possibility of both, which is a wonderful challenge, actually, for the States.  And I think it’s very special, in that respect, to have a country with so much music-making, in both opera and symphonic ways.

BD:    Are we up to it?

RC:    I won’t name them, but there are seven major symphony orchestras in the world, four of which are in the States.  So this is for me the answer.

BD:    [Laughs] Hooray for us!

BD:    Let’s shift over to opera just a little bit.  When you conduct a symphonic concert, you are essentially in control.  When you conduct opera, do you relinquish any of that control to the stage director?

RC:    Unfortunately, yes, especially more and more in these days.  And I think this is a fashion which has to stop, because it could be the death of opera, I believe, if the producer has more and more to say, even more than the conductor, about opera, about staging, about how to take over an interpretation.  The major secret, I think, is really to have a meeting and discussion between the conductor and producer

BD:    You mentioned that you like to do avant-garde music, so the big question:  Where is music going these days?

RC:    Someone once said that music-making will certainly bring us to silence.  I don’t remember who stated that; it was a very important musician, though.  So important, that at that time, maybe ten or fifteen years ago when I heard such a statement, I thought, “My God, he’s right!  What a scary sentence.”  The music, avant-garde music especially, there is only way to go if you do not change — to go to silence.  I really deeply don’t believe it, and my activity in Amsterdam with the Concertgebouw Orchestra proves it, because we bring from three to four world premieres a year.  I think this is a very important point to continue.  You have to try to bring to performances new languages, new identities of compositions and composers.  Music is, as I said, an indefinite art, and many, many ways have to be discovered to compose.  At the moment there is a new wave in Italy and also in Holland, of a Neo-Romantic.  I think it is also in the States.  This could be one of the ways of discovering new lines, new ideas, for avant-garde music.  But I also like the middle avant-garde, like Rudolph Escher, who is a very well-known Dutch composer who died a few years ago from cancer.  I think he was a very, very important composer.  I really like to devote my time, as far as my schedule allows me, to discover new composers as well as look into the so-called middle-aged composers, like Petrassi or Dallapiccola.

BD:    Are there some composers, then, that you are championing?

RC:    I would say particularly Luciano Berio, whose music we’ve been performing a lot with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, as well as Alfred Schnittke, the Russian composer.  [See my Interview with Luciano Berio.]

BD:    You just recorded some Berio, so tell me a little bit about his music specifically.

RC:    That was interesting because we performed the world premiere of Formazioni, which was born to be performed in Amsterdam for the ninetieth anniversary of the orchestra.  However, Luciano’s speed of writing obliged us to wait until the one hundred years centenary!  He took it really slow, this composition, but it is one of the major symphonic works of Berio.  It is a reflection of his lack of trust in the symphonic orchestras, in terms of their position on stage; you know, classical position on stage, or you could say formal, typical symphonic position on stage.  "Formazioni" means different formations, you know, blocks of players placed in a certain way as he wanted, which makes, if I remember, six to eight different formations of players on stage.  This makes an incredible effect, of course.  It was very difficult to rehearse this piece, very difficult to perform, just because of the position on stage.  But I think the result is overwhelming and is a tryout to solve the formula of the classical orchestra on stage.  He believes music will never go to silence, but he thinks the orchestra itself, as an instrument of the past, on stage in the classical position, is a mausoleum object.  So, it’s time to change it, and that’s why he’s now composing symphonic music always in different formations, but never in the classical position of the orchestra.  The Schubert-Berio piece we are bringing on tour in the States at the moment, called Rendering, is a different kind of music.  This is the "Tenth Symphony" of Schubert, his last sketches before he died.  They were written for the piano and Berio arranged them for orchestra.  So there we have, really, the typical symphony orchestra of the Unfinished symphony and there’s no craziness in terms of stage position.  He feels particularly committed and responsible for Schubert in this respect.  So he orchestrated all the sketches of Schubert and he has strung them together with Berio passages in between.  It is like an old mosaic with certain parts in color, then the gray color plaster comes through and then again the colorful original mosaic comes back.  That’s the idea of this piece, and in that case, Berio really used all his art, his knowledge of instrumentation to try to reproduce Schubert’s style.

BD:    Is conducting fun?

RC:    Sometimes.  It used to be fun for me probably because I started so young.  In a way it’s becoming less and less fun and more and more serious business.  Sometimes it is still a very moving art.  I would say that the fun part probably is related more to my past years than the present.  But if you asked me in terms of satisfaction, in terms of sometimes feeling that I reach the goal of an interpretation, that happens more often now, particularly since I became Chief Conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.  There is really a very special relationship and a very special understanding in music terms.

BD:    I want to be sure and ask you about your father, Luciano Chailly [photo at right].  He was a famous composer, so do you perform some of his works?

RC:    I used to at an early age.  Now we’re sort of separate from each other in terms of understanding, in terms of thinking about life and thinking about music-making.  We had a sort of mental split which sometimes happens between father and son.  So at the moment, I am not.  But he was, of course, my first teacher of composition, therefore he’s the man who gave me the basic knowledge of music in a very severe way, actually — the typical old-fashioned style of teaching, you know.  Very severe.  And that was a great help for me in terms of a very severe base of knowledge! [Laughs]

BD:    I hope that you come back to his music eventually.

RC:    I am following his music, of course, and he is a very good composer, particularly for opera.  I think he’s written over fifteen operas which are performed very much in Italy, and some of which are also performed around the world.

BD:    Thank you for sharing some of your time with us.  I appreciate it very, very much.  I wish you lots of continued success!

RC:    Thank you.  Thank you very much.

BD:    Will you be back in Chicago?

RC:    I hope so.  There are not yet plans.  I hope also to one day be able to guest conduct in the States again.  At the moment I’ve deliberately reduced, just to be full time to the commitment in Amsterdam.  I have to really make the time available for the Concertgebouw Orchestra and for my family.  One needs to find more time for living, together with the music-making.  I used to guest regularly in the States and it would be nice to come back one day to Chicago. 

Milan-born Riccardo Chailly studied at the Conservatorio in Perugia, Rome and Milan, specializing at the Siena summer courses with Franco Ferrara. From 1982 to 1989, he was principal conductor of the Berlin Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester, and from 1982 to 1985 principal guest conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1986 until 1993, he led the Teatro Comunale of Bologna, where he conducted many greatly successful opera productions. In 1986 he has been appointed chief conductor and in 2002 conductor emeritus of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. From September 1999 to 2005 Riccardo Chailly was the Musical Director of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. In September 2005 Riccardo Chailly became chief conductor of the Gewandhausorchester and music director of the Oper Leipzig. Riccardo Chailly is a conductor whose activities range from the symphonic to the operatic repertoire. He conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the London Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris. He also performed at the world's most famous opera houses, including La Scala in Milan (where he made his debut in 1978), the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera and Covent Garden in London (1979 debut), the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Zürich Opera. In 1984, Riccardo Chailly opened the Salzburg Festival, where he also conducted the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1988, 1996 and 1998. Has also conducted at the city's Easter Festival. Riccardo Chailly led the Concertgebouw in numerous tours to the main European festivals (Salzburg, Lucerne, Vienna Festwochen, and London Proms) as well as to Japan, Korea, China, and North and South America. In 2001 he returned to conduct the Berliner Philharmoniker. In 2002 he led the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi in his first European tour, in France, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland, and in 2003 in Japan and Bruxelles, both with great success of critics and audience. In January 2004 he toured with the Orchestra to the Festival de Musica de Canarias. In May 2005 he led the Orchestra on a European tour to Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, Germany, Austria and Hungary. In 1994 Riccardo Chailly was entitled Grand'Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, and was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1996. During the 10th anniversary as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in November 1998, he was knighted by Queen Beatrix, receiving the title of 'Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion.' In Italy he was entitled, also in 1998, ‘Cavaliere di gran Croce della Repubblica Italiana’. In 2003 he received the “Antonio Feltrinelli” award by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei of Rome, for his work as conductor in Italy. In November 2005 he was awarded his second Toblacher Komponierhauschen and the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik by Germany. Riccardo Chailly has an exclusive contract with Decca. He has recorded a broad repertoire on CD which won many prizes, including Gramophone Awards, Diapasons d'Or, Edisons, the Academy Charles Cross Award, the Japanese Unga Knonotomo Award, the Toblacher Komponierhäuschen and several Grammy Nominations. Recently he was declared 'Artist of the year' by two important magazines, the French magazine Diapason and the British magazine Gramophone. With the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi he has recorded several CDs, including a new recording of orchestra transcriptions by Luciano Berio. September 2005 saw his first release as Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus with a live recording of his inaugural concert from the Gewandhaus itself featuring works by Mendelssohn. Future projects include Brahms Piano Concertos nos 1 & 2 with Nelson Freire in Spring 2006 and the Mendelssohn and Bruch Violin Concertos with Janine Jansen in Autumn 2006 – both are with the Leipzig GewandhausOrchester. Decca Records, November 2005 --

This interview was recorded at the Drake Hotel in Chicago on September 28, 1990.  Portions were used on WNIB (along with musical examples) in 1993, 1998 and 1999.  The transcription was made in 2008 and posted on this website in October of that year. 

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here.

Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001.  His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.