“Every day with this orchestra is special”
Kirill Petrenko on his work with the Berliner Philharmoniker

Kirill Petrenko has now been chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker for five years. To mark the occasion, we spoke to him several times over the course of the current season. Standing in front of this orchestra will never feel “normal” for him, he says. He also spoke about his training in Austria, where the sound of the Viennese music tradition is “enough to drive you insane”, about de-escalation and conflict management in opera, and about the fragile moments of happiness his work affords him.

Exploring extremes · Ideal interpretations

Maestro Petrenko, you have been the chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker for the last five years. Does this feel a long time to you?

No, not at all. I had already worked closely with the orchestra in the three years before my appointment, but for me it’s still all as fresh and as surprising as it was on the very first day. And I don’t believe that I shall ever feel as if this is an established relationship, because our work together always feels very much as if it is taking place in the here and now. Every single day we challenge each other all over again.

What happens during these moments when you challenge one another?

I have to challenge the orchestra and take the players to their limits – in the positive sense. It’s a matter of leaving our comfort zone behind us and exploring extremes. At the actual concert, we might take a step back from this. But essentially, I see it as one of my principal functions to draw on the whole of the orchestra’s inexhaustible potential.

And how does the orchestra challenge you?

With everything that each and every player brings to the interpretation. There are very different ways of looking at how a particular phrase can be played. One player may prefer to take more time over it, another may want to play a certain passage in a more effective way. I am offered a lot, and I have to combine it all into something which reflects what is in the score.

What happens when what the orchestra wants doesn’t conform to your own ideas about the piece?

I turn up for each rehearsal with a carefully-prepared idea of what I want to achieve. If I did not do so, I would feel lost in the presence of so many great musicians. But then we work towards a synthesis. I take in all that the players have to offer me, and we talk about it either at the rehearsal or afterwards. Every player who is invested in the interpretation must feel comfortable and have the impression that they are valued and that they have the opportunity to show what they are capable of. I have to incorporate all of this into what the composer has written.

Do you have a particular technique for pushing the orchestra to its limits?

In a way I try to provoke the musicians – and to make them constantly aware of the fact that we are a very special orchestra. At every desk are musicians who are enormously talented and who have incredible charisma. In my view this involves a certain obligation. We must delve into the score and draw out of it what the composer wanted. More, in fact. When we are rehearsing, I often tell them that we should never play safe where their own potential is concerned. The players feel encouraged by this.

Have there been times in your work together where you have come close to what you consider your ideal interpretation?

There have been many such times, both during rehearsals and at concerts. I expect a good deal from these musicians, as they do from me. Despite this, there have been moments when my expectations regarding beauty or homogeneity have been surpassed. It is not so much the case that a particular passage turns out to be perfect, more that the demands of the composer are comprehensively aligned with the abilities of the musicians. These are fragile moments of happiness, and they cannot occur every evening, of course.

Can you give us an example?

There was recently one such moment at the end of the second movement of Dvořák’s Seventh Symphony. I had always wanted the movement to die away pianissimo but there was never enough time at the rehearsals to work on this passage in detail. But then suddenly, at the very last concert in the series, it sounded… not just as I had imagined it, but even more beautiful.

Generally speaking, how important is the time factor?

Every interpretation has to mature. We always spend two days working on a piece, which is not very much. But the orchestra’s interpretation continues to evolve from one concert to the next. Especially by the end of a tour, when we’ve played the same programme on multiple occasions, the evening often turns out to be unforgettable. Smetana’s Má vlast, for instance, is a very difficult piece and we spent a long time struggling to get it right. We played it in Berlin and in Prague, then set it aside before taking it on tour with us last autumn. Then, at the final performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London, we made a quantum leap forward with this work. These are very special evenings, when everything comes together: the quality of the orchestra, the maturation process, and also a bit of luck. This, too, is something that we need – sometimes you can move mountains, sometimes you are a little tired, and then you simply do your best. But on that particular evening in London, everything worked.

By “everything”, you mean expression, technique, beauty and so on?

Sound, organic growth, perfection, passion, emotion and also the harmonious relationship between the orchestra and the conductor. These things may not always come together perfectly, but when they do, these moments remain with you for the rest of your life.

How often do you try to do things differently at the concert from how you did them in rehearsal?

We actually do this every evening, only I don’t take major risks all that often, and certainly not in the comprehensive way that might in theory be possible. This is the drawback of the high expectations that audiences have of us. These expectations weigh heavily on us, but we have to learn to deal with them. You can’t change direction at a concert with one-hundred percent spontaneity. I am still learning how to get the balance right. Perhaps there will come a time when we are able to take more risks.

Bruckner and Mahler · Jewish roots · Training to become a conductor

You launched this season with Bruckner’s Fifth and in May you will be conducting Mahler’s Ninth. Many earlier conductors specialized either in Bruckner or in Mahler. What about you?

Mahler has always been close to me as a result of my background, my training and my career. But Austria, which is my second home, opened up a further perspective for me by virtue of the fact that as a young man I got to know Vorarlberg, away from the country’s main centres. I studied not only in Vienna but also in Feldkirch. And we lived in Bregenz and Hohenems.

Bruckner, too, came from the provinces.

And you can hear this in his music. His symphonies are tremendous musical landscapes; there are valleys, mountains, blocks of ice and rain. You can understand this better if you are familiar with places like Vorarlberg and know the people there. I was often in the mountains, and as a student I got to know many of the smaller towns. These are very different from the Imperial and Royal Austria that you find in Vienna; this is a simple, deep-rooted world that is still very close to nature. I always think of my time in Vorarlberg whenever I conduct a work by Bruckner.

And what about Mahler as a composer who was very much at home in the big city?

Mahler became important when I went to Vienna to study. At the Musikverein, at the Konzerthaus and at the State Opera, his spirit was always present. I had always revered Mahler, and this made me love his music even more.

To what extent have you been influenced by the Viennese Mahler and Bruckner tradition?

There is a special connection between the Golden Hall of the Musikverein, the State Opera and the Viennese sound: this sumptuous, bittersweet sound is enough to drive you mad, and it invariably gives you gooseflesh and butterflies in your stomach. I’ve been to countless Mahler concerts, and obviously I’ve heard plenty of Bruckner, too. You become familiar with a certain “sound picture” in which the music dissolves and everything slowly vanishes: the interwoven lines of the instruments, the voices, the harmonies. There is a certain Jugendstil decadence about this sound, a quality found everywhere in this city. Think only of the Secession building that you might pass after a Mahler concert. Or the State Opera, where Mahler himself was the director. These are places that breathe a true spirit of authenticity, where you can feel that you are drinking from the source.

Are there aspects of Mahler’s personality to which you have felt particularly drawn?

His Jewishness has always played an important role for me, since there is naturally a connection here, even though my family had no links with the Jewish religion during my childhood and adolescence in the Soviet Union. We were familiar with a couple of customs and religious holidays, but only to the extent that these were observed by my grandparents and by my great-grandparents. I was not able to develop any relationship with this religion, something that I now find a great pity. But I felt this longing for a religious dimension in my life, something that I can also sense in Mahler’s music. It’s not a religious feeling in a denominational sense, but more of a longing for a sacred element as such, a longing for the Creator spiritus that Mahler invokes in his Eighth Symphony. You can find this in every one of his works.

How close are you to Mahler’s world of emotions in general?

With Mahler there is this feeling of being a stranger. I feel the same way too. Mahler famously described himself as “homeless three times over: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans and as a Jew in the whole of the world”. This is a feeling with which I too became familiar after I emigrated from the Soviet Union.

The Jewishness you hear in Mahler is not just a religion, but a cultural tradition, too.

Yes, it’s impossible not to hear this. Some people say that all of Mahler’s music is Jewish. I think they’re wrong. Of course, there are certain elements of klezmer music, elements that he picked up as a child in Bohemia, where he heard Jewish dance bands and then took these elements over into his own music – think of the wind music in his First Symphony. But these are mere artefacts. Mahler’s music is not Jewish; it’s universal.

You have just said that you have no connection with the Jewish religion. Not even to this Jewish sound world?

Not even that. In the Soviet Union we had to do everything we could to hide the fact that we were Jewish. Wherever I went, I never stopped hearing anti-Semitic remarks – on the bus, in the supermarket and at the cinema. This was very unpleasant. Of course, my parents kept reminding me where I come from. But I never had any contact with any living tradition of Jewish musical culture.

Do you regret this?

Of course. But perhaps I can still make up for lost ground. Only in Israel do I feel that I’m Jewish. But as a very different kind of Jew from those in Israel.

May we return to your training in Vorarlberg and in Vienna? What do you actually learn when studying to become a conductor?

First of all, there is the technique of conducting. This is important – but it’s the sort of thing that you can grasp after only two or three sessions. Conducting is something that you can learn only with practice. Of course, you don’t begin at the conductor’s podium in front of an orchestra. In Vorarlberg I worked as a répétiteur and accompanied every instrument you could imagine. I also conducted an amateur choir made up of senior citizens, I seized every opportunity to gain greater practical experience. In Vienna I also attended the rehearsals of a number of great conductors. Unfortunately, it was too late for me to hear Karajan or Bernstein, but I did hear Harnoncourt, Abbado and Muti. I learnt an incredible amount from them.

Can you give us an example?

I was already working as a conductor and was appearing at the Met where Riccardo Muti was rehearsing Verdi’s Attila. I sat in on every rehearsal. It was interesting to see how he familiarized the orchestra with the music, how he brought everything back to the vocal element, to the rhythmic elasticity of the music and to elegance of phrasing. As I say: conducting is all about practice. Theory is of no help here.

But this also means that you can test the validity of your interpretational approaches only in the theatre and on the stage.

Yes, as a conductor you are not actually producing the sound. You are literally left hanging in the air. If, as a pianist, I play a particular passage in five different ways, I know at the end of this process which is the right way. As a conductor, on the other hand, I don’t have any immediate way of checking to see if what I am doing is any good. For this, I have to stand in front of an orchestra. Only then do I notice – sometimes to my horror – that a particular idea isn’t right. This is why a conductor is constantly questioning himself and his interpretation.

And what do you do if an idea proves to be unsustainable? Do you try out something else the very next day?

I try to work with the experiences that I have gained in rehearsal. This may involve taking a radically different approach if a particular tempo isn’t working. You are in constant competition with yourself. You keep having to reject your own approach, and to persuade yourself to adopt a new one. This self-questioning never stops. Unfortunately, this is very hard.

The Biennale of the Berliner Philharmoniker · The emotional worlds of the “Pastoral” Symphony · Individuality and contemporary music

In February, under the title “Paradise Lost?”, the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Biennale will be devoted to the way in which nature is currently under threat. In general, do you think that culture has any chance of drawing people’s attention to the issues of the day?

Yes, I think it does. One hundred percent. Ever since Greek antiquity this has been one of the principal functions of art. Art must never be self-sufficient. Every piece of music has a message that is related to the world around it. I have no idea of the extent to which a particularly good interpretation can achieve this aim. But there are enough examples of the ways in which works of music have had an impact.

Which works are you thinking of?

Take Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” Symphony, which really gave strength to the inhabitants of a city that was under siege in the Second World War. I wish there were a lot more works that could speak to us in our current situation.

You yourself are conducting Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony at the Biennale. Here is a work that used the resources of the early nineteenth century to explore the theme of nature. Is the approach that you adopt to a work like this one different from the one you’d adopt to an abstract piece with no programme?

If a composer has provided a programmatic narrative, this naturally has implications for the interpretation. But in Beethoven’s case, it is important to remember his comment that the symphony is “more the expression of feeling than painting”. There is a decisive difference between this and an earlier work like Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, which imitates nature in such highly effective ways. Of course, the “Pastoral” contains a Scene by the Brook with birds singing and all that. But what Beethoven wants to show us here is above all the pleasure that we feel whenever we hear birds singing and the fear that we sense at an approaching storm. This already looks forward to Romanticism and to its idea that music should first and foremost express feelings.

As part of the same programme you are also conducting Miroslav Srnka’s Superorganisms, a work commissioned by the Berliner Philharmoniker. What must a new work be like for you to be convinced by it?

What I’m looking for in any new work is a distinctive personal message. It mustn’t be a piece in which the composer simply demonstrates all that he or she can achieve with an orchestra by laying it on as thickly as possible: here a col legno effect, there some harmonics for good measure. What is most important for me is that the composer’s individuality is instantly recognizable. This is also possible in works that are very straightforward and tonal. In 2023, we gave the first performances of Ishjärta by Lisa Streich. The means that she uses are far from unusual, but the piece has a real personality to it.

How do you recognize individuality in a work? Is this a question of feeling?

Not just that. Most of these composers are still alive, and so I can talk to them in person. This helps with my assessment.

Madama Butterfly · Puccini and beauty · Experiences of opera

You will be conducting Puccini’s Madama Butterfly both at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden and afterwards in Berlin. The protagonist, Cio-Cio-San, is unusual as an operatic character: she starts out as a victim of circumstances and of her lover, Pinkerton, but by the end she has become a tragic heroine. How do you see this character and this role?

This role is hugely challenging – and these challenges are not just of a vocal kind. The Cio-Cio-San of Act One could hardly be more naïve, it seems. She is actually still a child – she says that she is fifteen. But behind this lies her strength, her unshakeable belief in the ideal of love and of marriage. It is on the basis of this maximal incorruptible strength that the role is built up, a role whose ambiguity makes it so hard to interpret. Her initial naïveté is purely superficial. Cio-Cio-San must behave in this way because custom demands this of her. Her entire situation in society is terrible – not so very different from the sort of human trafficking today that forces children into prostitution.

You mean that Cio-Cio-San’s resolve in the final act is already prefigured at the start of the opera?

Yes! From start to finish, she demonstrates an incredible degree of willpower and dedication. This is also clear from the tragedy of her own child, a child she hands over to the very man who abused her – but she does this in order to open up a way forward for this person, and give him a chance to be happy. This is an instance of martyrdom of an almost religious grandeur.

Puccini wove echoes of Japanese music into his score. How do you view these?

You often get this Far Eastern colouring in music written at this time: in Mahler, Strauss, Zemlinsky and Debussy, for example. It doesn’t require any special treatment here, since it is an integral part of the work. Of course, Madama Butterfly contains pentatonic scales and Chinese percussion instruments as well as a Japanese gong. But Puccini is not interested in imitating Far Eastern music – only in creating a framework for the tragedy, which could otherwise unfold anywhere in the world: in Germany, Croatia or Australia.

Puccini is a composer whose music is instantly recognizable. What are his trademark features for you?

With Puccini there is this perfect mixture of the Italians’ art of writing for the human voice, late Romantic harmonies, and the sort of instrumentation that one might associate with a large orchestra. If you take these three things together, then you’ve got Puccini. Then there’s the fact that with him, nothing is exaggerated. There’s no need, because he had such a great feel for the dramatic. In this he differs from the later representatives of verismo, whose music always had to be overtly graphic.

Even with Puccini you find elements of verismo, a movement in music that wanted to show real life, not an idealized version of it. At the same time, we have this incredible beauty with Puccini, a beauty that seems removed from the real world. How do these two things fit together?

With Puccini, beauty is never an end in itself, but always a part of his conception. Cavaradossi’s famous aria “E lucevan le stelle” could be found only at this point in Tosca, when he is alone and taking his leave of life. The aria starts with no more than motivic fragments before his great vocal phrase begins. In short, the beauty of this aria emerges only gradually. It is measured out very carefully in order to support the dramaturgy. Puccini was looking for truth, not beauty.

Is Puccini difficult to conduct?

To be honest, no composer is more thankful to conduct than Puccini. Every opera is difficult, of course, but a Puccini opera ultimately has a lot to offer a conductor. There are an incredible number of details that you can mould into shape. I remember my work on Il trittico. It is a joy to ensure that every aspect of a work serves a purpose and that everything is placed in the service of the drama.

Your career seems to have taken a similar course to those of Herbert von Karajan and Claudio Abbado, both of whom started out, like you, as opera conductors and later became the chief conductor of the Berliner Philharmoniker. To what extent did your work in the opera house help to prepare you for this role?

I had the great good fortune to work in the theatre from an early stage of my career, and then really to learn the tools of my trade in Meiningen. By this I mean not just the technique of conducting but also an understanding of the theatre as a living organism. There are so many different things that you must keep an eye on simultaneously: the orchestra in the pit, the singers on the stage, the acoustics in the auditorium and much more besides. A conductor’s trade goes far beyond just beating time. There is also the question of how to deal with interpersonal relationships – with the chorus and with the ensemble. You gain experience of psychology and of conflict management. How can you de-escalate a situation? When do you have to praise a singer to his face, even if he has given a terrible performance? You learn all of this in the theatre. Anyone who starts his career here is armed for life.

It goes without saying that performing an opera means living and breathing with the music. How do you manage to breathe together with an orchestra?

This comes with practice. At some point a musician will say to you: please breathe with us. As a young conductor you ask yourself: “What does he mean by that?” But then you understand that a conductor’s hand movements must also include breathing. It’s not just about beating time by moving your hand up and down, you also have to mark the air in between. If you can’t breathe with your singers, they won’t give a good performance and won’t want to work with you again. Singers breathe in very different ways. Some of them need a lot of time to breathe in, while others are more short-breathed, and with them you barely notice that they are breathing at all. This is an entire science of its own.

You mean that at each performance of an opera you constantly have to work out whether the singer in front of you breathes quickly or slowly?

Of course. Every singer needs a different kind of upbeat. This depends on the size of their body, on their vocal register, on their adaptability – all of this has a bearing on the tempo.

Is it the same when you are conducting a symphony orchestra?

It goes without saying that a trombone can’t breathe like a harp. Here, too, there are the most disparate instruments with the most varied types of breathing. This is why it is sometimes so hard to ensure that a chord actually sounds together. It’s because everyone is breathing differently.

Future prospects

Maestro Petrenko, we began our sessions by looking backwards but would like to end with a glimpse into what lies in store. What kind of a future do you want for yourself with the Berliner Philharmoniker?

I feel an undying reverence for this orchestra, because they are all such damned good musicians. When you stand in front of them in their entirety, you need to be in good shape mentally. But I also get lots of very positive feedback from them. Time and again, the players tell me that they’ve enjoyed a particular concert. This helps to resolve many of my of doubts. Of course, I wish that I could be more relaxed in this regard but, to be honest, I have my limitations. It makes no difference how many years we may continue to work together, it will never feel normal for me to stand in front of this orchestra.

Is there also a positive, productive force at work here?

Yes, there is, at least to the extent that every day with this orchestra is a special one. I am all the happier if we can achieve something great in the process. This is the most important thing for me: To have the feeling that through my work I can do something good for the orchestra. I have the impression that so far, the musicians consider this to be the case. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to continue my work here a day longer. With an orchestra like this one, you can’t play for time. My greatest wish is that this continues to develop. The more often we scale new heights, the happier I shall be.

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_{Kirill Petrenko has been the chief conductor and artistic director of the Berliner Philharmoniker since the start of the 2019/20 season. He was born in Omsk in Siberia and went to school there before continuing his studies in Austria. He began his conducting career by working in the opera house, with key positions in Meiningen and at the Komische Oper in Berlin. From 2013 until 2020, Kirill Petrenko was general music director of Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.}