DaCapo from the Start: Matthias Georg Kendlinger Explains

BY MARTIN ANDERSON

Some assignments that come from the Fanfare editorial office have the ring of routine about them; after all, nor every label looking for attention from the magazine’s esteemed readership is going to be doing something of commanding interest. So when I was asked to speak to Matthias Georg Kendlinger, founder and conductor of the K&K Philharmonic Orchestra in Kufstein and leader of a label, DaCapo Austria, with a catalog of Beethoven, Schubert, Strauss (Johann II!), marches, and opera choruses, I wasn’t expecting much of it. But when the latest DaCapo release arrived (CD 917), one of the freshest and liveliest accounts of the Eroica I’ve heard in quite a while, with an emphatic appendix in the form of a fine Egmont Overture, my eyebrows and expectations rose in equal measure.

Our conversation—a chat over Skype, where we soon abandoned English because Kendlinger was much happier in German—took the form of a gradual regression to uncover the steps that led to the founding of the label. The first question was an obvious one.

Q: Why found a label that concentrates on repertoire that’s in every other catalog already?

A: Very simple: to get our productions all over the world. We founded our orchestra in 2002 and began the recording series in the direction of the classics. But so far we’ve produced only popular and mainstream material, and this was the first year that we began to work with symphonic repertoire.

Q: Are you referring to DaCapo CD 912 with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and Schubert’s “Unfinished,” billed on the cover “No. 7” in the new manner?

A: Exactly: that was the first symphonic CD we tackled.

Q: Let’s go backward before we go forward—if these recordings reflect the work of an organization, you might usefully tell us something about said organization, starting, as always, at the beginning.

A: OK. We founded DaCapo in 1994 with the idea of putting on concerts all across Europe.

Q: Did you know there’s also a Danish label called Dacapo?

A: I don’t know who started first. The difference is that the Danish Dacapo is purely a label, whereas we are an all-embracing cultural undertaking. To begin with, we would buy in the productions, but after a certain time we weren’t happy with their quality and so we decided to get involved with the productions ourselves so that we can stand up for what we put on and bring to the customers and can continually improve it. So with one thing and another we founded our own symphony orchestra and our own opera chorus and a ballet company. Right at the very beginning we wanted to be an arts agency, providing artists. But I soon gave that up, because it wasn’t something for me. So in the first year we switched to presenting concerts. The very first thing we put on was Phantom of the Opera in Innsbruck—two days of musical.

Q: And you conducted that?

A: Good God, no! In 1995 I didn’t know anything about conducting; I wasn’t even aware that I might be heading in that direction. In those days we were putting the concerts on, promoting them, everything that involves. Gradually it evolved toward opera and operetta, buying in the productions in the first place. But after a while we began to realize that these touring productions were not very good quality, and that brought me to the point where I said either I stop, or I start something where I can decide the quality myself so that I can go to the concerts I put on with a clean conscience. That’s when we started our own productions—though not with our own orchestra at that point. We brought in the artists, put the production together ourselves, and then went on tour, not yet to Europe as a whole but in the German-speaking countries.

Q: Was it still an Innsbruck-based organization?

A: Yes, that’s where we started.

Q: And that’s where you still live?

A: We now live in Kufstein, which is 70 kilometres from Innsbruck; we’re exactly an hour away from Munich and Salzburg and Innsbruck. It’s a very lovely area. Anyway, we then began to run into another barrier. With the ensembles we were buying in, I would notice things and say, “I want a better flute” or “This second oboe isn’t good enough” and so on. I noticed that these orchestras weren’t happy with my demands, and said, “No, only we decide that.” So once again I came to the point where I said I either give up or make the decisions myself. That’s when we took the risk of founding this orchestra, in 2002. And once again I found myself thinking, I wouldn’t do it like that; I would take that more broadly; I would do that bowing differently; and so on. And once more I came to the point of either giving up or taking it up myself.

Q: So you now have an orchestra based in Kufstein?

A: No, the orchestra is Ukrainian—we founded it in Lemberg [Lwiw in Ukrainian, Lwów in Russian], a Ukrainian border town with one million inhabitants.

Q: Indeed—that’s where Mozart’s son Franz Xaver lived.

A: Exactly! We don’t have that many good strings in Kufstein—just good wind-players!

Q: Anyway, why Lwiw?

A: It was coincidence. In 2001 a group of children from the Chernobyl accident came to the Tirol to recover and stayed in a village near where I live. My wife speaks Russian and was asked to translate for these children. We were just opening a new office, and the teacher who was with these children came to the opening. He invited us to come to Lwiw, told me they had very good musicians there and said it would be good if something could come of it. I already had a meeting planned in Kiev and so I switched my destination. Right from the start I felt at ease there, as if I were at home. Lemberg is a very beautiful city, the center especially; it used to be called “Little Vienna.” So it began with these children from Chernobyl. We had begun with “blind auditions,” with over 300 musicians playing behind a curtain. But we had only a half of the musicians we required. So we had some more auditions in the autumn, but had to begin rehearsing in October 2002. That’s how the orchestra started.

Q: So when did you yourself pick up the baton?

A: [A dry laugh] That was in 2005, three years later. I was sitting in my own concerts with all these ideas about the music, about the interpretation. I had been a performer for so long myself, and since then had just been sitting and watching.

Q: Ah-ha—what had you played?

A: Light music. I made my living as a musician playing dance music, for parties. I began playing accordion when I was four, then six other instruments came along. This kind of light-music group is usually a quintet or a sextet. For Glenn Miller a trombone was necessary; other pieces required a trumpet; and so I picked up the instruments as I was required to learn them.

Q: That’s how the careers of Adolf and Fritz Busch began, playing in the Kapelle Busch, the family orchestra.

A: Really? Interesting. This wasn’t quite a family orchestra, although my brother did play in it.

Q: Did you have a formal musical education, then?

A: A formal one only with one instrument, the clarinet. There was a teacher in our village band, and I studied with him. So no music college or anything like that.

Q: OK—that’s explained; now let’s get back to 2005.

A: Right. I clearly then had something of a hurdle to overcome. I obviously wasn’t entirely fluent, wasn’t sure if I could manage it and what it was going to be like. My wife was very supportive. She told me, “Try it and see how it goes, and if it doesn’t work, then you’ve not lost much, either.” So the first time I held a baton in my hand was for one of the traditional march-concerts we have here on May 1. Just by chance it was the Radetzky March , which was already well lodged in my head: I had heard it at least 200 times! So I conducted without a score, and it went very well. First, it met my own expectations, and the musicians and the people seemed to like it as well. So the next step was to decide what program I would do for my first concert, and I decided on famous marches. That was the first CD I recorded [277], after half-a-year of conducting—not just simple marches but symphonic ones as well. That was in 2006. And things just carried on from there.

Q: Why were the first CDs recorded for DaCapo such crowd-pleasers—opera choruses, Strauss waltzes, that kind of thing?

A: Because we get no official support, so we have to fund everything through ticket sales and have to put on programs that the public wants. It carried on like that until we began to play quasi-symphonic concerts in Lwiw and founded the Beethoven Days there [the Tiroler Beethoven-Tage] last year. In Lwiw we can tackle things that are directed at the broadest public. The Beethoven Days is our kind of symphonic leg-up, since we concentrate on Beethoven and his contemporaries, but we allow ourselves excursions—Dvořák is going to be there this year. But our first step is to serve the composers of the classical Viennese school. Indeed, the first symphony I chose to conduct was Beethoven’s Fifth. A few conductor colleagues I spoke to asked if I might not be a bit mad, since it’s the most difficult there is to conduct. It was difficult—it was quite some ride, to begin with this symphony. But I wanted to begin with something I liked. I have quite a different way of tackling things I haven’t studied; musically, it has its advantages and its disadvantages. But there’s another way of looking at it, another path. We started this first CD with the Beethoven Fifth and Schubert Seventh with a recording engineer from Deutsche Grammophon. The recording was planned over two days, but the Tonmeister from Deutsche Grammophon didn’t think we would do it, since he said each movement of a symphony normally requires a day to record. And at the end of our first day we had recorded both works. So in the evening we discussed what we should do the next day—go home or do something else? And the next day we recorded the Eroica and two overtures. The downside is that there are aspects that could be done better, but that was how we started, as chance would have it. The recording engineer said he would have to ring some colleagues, because they wouldn’t believe him that we had done the work of 12 to 15 days in two. Of course, if we had had more time, we could have played things more often, edited things in, and used those two days to improve the quality. But I don’t do too much editing; I don’t like works that are patched together. These are our initial productions; they are as they are, and can serve as a memory of how it was. And even though I know how it could be improved, I’m proud of what we have achieved. If you do what you can, it’s honest work. You only have to take those old Berlin Philharmonic recordings of Furtwängler and Karajan and so on to hear that technically they weren’t so far advanced either.

Q: What are the next releases in the pipeline?

A: The recording of the New Year concert is ready, and the DVD will be edited in two weeks. That’s the first time it has been done in HD [high definition]. And the project after that is a new CD of opera choruses. Then after the Beethoven Days we have two more days of recording! Then there’s another recording date, this time in Stuttgart, where we’ll record the “Haffner” Symphony of Mozart and the Dvořák Ninth—and if there’s any time left, we’ll do Beethoven Seven! So we want to stay true to our system and yet get better all the same.

Q: Why are you tackling such central repertoire rather than less familiar fare where the competition won’t be so stiff?

A: I’ve never taken the easiest path! Always the most difficult one. Naturally I’ll get plenty of blows to the stomach, but I think it’s the best way of growing. Perhaps my knowledge of the repertoire isn’t wide enough, but usually when I hear an unknown work that has been resurrected, I know why it’s not known. And I’m not someone to go in for early instruments and that kind of thing; not that I’m denigrating it—everyone hears music differently—but I think it’s a bit illogical, like going back to eating goulash with your hands. It might be very interesting to see how something sounded in the 17th century, but for me, for someone living today, it’s not so very interesting, I must say.

Q: You are plainly not a man to rest on your laurels: I understand that you have begun to compose as well.

A: For me as a musician it is important to express myself this way, to pick up topics that concern us all. With my music I want to move people, evoke emotions, create space for one’s own thoughts and experiences. This is the aspect from which I compose. For example, while I was working on my first piece, the symphonic poem Der verlorene Sohn , my wife was inspired to create a pictorial composition—friends and family even said the music would fit well with film and ballet. So finally in 2006, a performance combined this text with a choreography by our long-term choreographer, Gerlinde Dill, premiered in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. In December 2008, that was spontaneously followed by my President Obama March in the Berlin Konzerthaus—a piece of joie de vivre I dedicated to the 44th President of the United States as a hopeful and confident signal. I’m working on a choral piece at the moment, which is 80-percent finished, at least as far as the tunes are concerned. The work is called Manipulation , because that is the thing that has killed the most people, whether in war or in the church or through the media today. I wanted to structure the symphony so that the first part is called “Situation.” The second part is a funeral march for everyone who has died because of this manipulation. The third part I call “Thema”; there’s a sung text with chorus and soloists. And the fourth part is the positive future.

Q: How would you describe your style to someone who doesn’t know your music?

A: I can’t describe my own compositions; you can’t assess yourself.

Q: Well, is it tonal, for instance?

A: Tonal and melodious, although there are atonal passages; I’ve tried to build them in where confusion reigns—only there. Apart from that, I’m not such a great pal of atonal music. Anyway, we’ll have to see what it sounds like.

DaCapo now has a U.S. distribution arrangement with Spinning Dog Records (spinningdogrecords.com), which is beginning with the Beethoven and Schubert CD, the Eroica and Egmont disc, The Most Beautiful Opera Choruses (915), and the New Year’s Day concert (913). DaCapo’s Web site can be found at dacapo.at, and Kendlinger’s own Web site is at matthias-georg-kendlinger.at. If he is already generating recordings as impressive as that Eroica , the progress of his label and his own evolution as a musician will both be something to watch.