Marin Alsop

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the conductor Marin Alsop. Music director of both the Baltimore Symphony and the Sao Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, she is a maestro with a mission. Music, she believes, is a powerful vehicle for social change. Lucky then that she's such an accomplished driver. She had the good fortune to be brought up in a household that exuded possibility and was filled with music. Both her parents played professionally. She took up piano at age two, swapped to violin at six, and then at the ripe old age of nine, having watched Leonard Bernstein at work, made the decision that conducting would be her career.

Presenter1:09

Much later she would go on to be mentored by the man who had inspired her.

Presenter1:14

It apparently annoys her a bit when interviewers ask why there aren't more women conductors none the less, her capacity to maximise the few opportunities that she was given as a young woman, making her way in an exclusively man's world, gives one a flavour of her indomitability.

Presenter1:29

Her day to day job, after all, is working out how to convince one hundred experts to do what she wants. She says maybe it's being an only child. You want to bring people together and create this big family feeling.

Presenter1:43

I don't know what it is, but I always gravitated towards organizing. So, Marinolso, let's explore for a moment that sort of triangular relationship between the composer, the conductor, and the orchestra. You've said that

Presenter1:56

Connecting with the composer is is a vital part of the work you do, of course, and I heard you once say that you've you almost feel like you could ring Beethoven up and ask him about his music. You feel that close to it. Tell me more about how you achieve that proximity to the composer.

Marin Alsop2:10

Well, the the role of the conductor, my job, is to really be the messenger for the composer. So consequently I need to feel that I can justify every note that he or she has written. And in order to do that, first of all I have to understand why.

Marin Alsop2:29

Why did the person write this piece? You know, I think of it as almost like a magic key to open the door to a piece of music. Then I can really go inside this edifice and try to figure out why every room is there, why the ceilings are this high. And I mean, I wish I could know what meal Beethoven had before he wrote a certain piece, you know, how he was feeling, how his digestion was. I mean, small things like this can actually impact the way a creator functions.

Presenter3:00

We understand what, you know, a a a violinist does or a clarinet player. You know, they they they practise and they practise and they practise again. What does a conductor do to to prepare?

Marin Alsop3:10

I do. Practice, but it's a different type of practice. Gesturally, it requires a very, very sophisticated grasp of the physicality of, you know, how you're going to relate to the orchestra. Of course, I often I don't even know the orchestra, you know, it's like a blind date with a hundred people. You have no idea what it's gonna be like. So it's a lot of daydreaming. I'm trying to justify this job I have, but uh I'm not doing very well, am I? I'm gonna trust you implicitly.

Presenter3:37

Let's have your first piece of music, man, I'll solve. What have you chosen, and why?

Marin Alsop3:42

Well, this is a very special piece because this was the moment in my life when I suddenly understood that music has the capacity to move us as human beings and move me. I was probably eleven or twelve years old and I was at a summer chamber music festival and I was walking down the hallway of the dorm and something caught my ear and the C D of this piece, the um B Flat Sextet by Johannes Brahms, was playing and I sat down outside this door and I remember for the first time just being moved to tears by music.

Presenter5:22

That was part of the string sextat number one in B flat major by Brahms, played there by the Amadeus Quartet, with Cecil Aronowitz and William Pleith. We the audience is used to seeing the conductor from behind. I mean sometimes it's the case now that the conductor's image face on is projected, but usually we just see the back of the conductor. Not so the case for audiences with you. You interact. You choose quite often to talk to the audience. That that's, I'm presuming, very deliberate on your part.

Marin Alsop5:46

Well, I enjoy communicating with audiences. I think especially when there are new pieces of music, contemporary music, that are challenging to access for anyone, especially people just stepping in from their jobs or the street and trying to understand what language this is and what's going on. So I think a sense of context and uh a little bit of an entree point is always helpful.

Marin Alsop6:12

It's like when you know a few words in a foreign language and suddenly you hear them and it's very comforting.

Presenter6:17

It's very interesting to me that you care about that. You care about people coming in who might not automatically be predisposed towards it. Why do you care about those people who might not really be informed and might not even

Presenter6:29

Be sure if they should be there and

Presenter6:31

maybe don't even really like classical music but are giving it a go.

Marin Alsop6:35

Well, I don't actually buy into the idea that anyone could not like classical music. I believe that every human being is is born with a capacity to experience and really connect with this kind of great music. I mean, we're talking about poetry in music. And, you know, to me, the fact that we as classical musicians have made that inaccessible and and this sense of elitism has overtaken our industry, I I think it's I think we've done a terrible, terrible disservice to the world. You know, people get very upset when audience members clap between movements and things like this. This doesn't bother me in the least. When Beethoven's symphonies were premiered, if people liked a phrase I mean, I'm not advocating this, but they would clap in the middle of the piece. I I think that making music together is one of the purest forms of societal connection that we have available. And when we're not encumbered by, I don't know, the bad mood we had at home or the you know the the bill that we couldn't quite remember to pay and all those silly things that get in the way, I think there's a a sense of freedom, almost as though collectively we can we can

Presenter7:51

And soar. Let's have your next uh disc Marin also. Tell me about your second piece of the morning.

Marin Alsop7:56

Well, this is fun. This is much more about the environment that I grew up in, which was a very liberal home life with a mom who was pro women's lib, and uh she loved this tune, and me too. Aretha Franklin's R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Speaker 18:20

Quick and dumb, trying to get on me.

Speaker 18:24

Just an element. R E S P C Turner.

Presenter8:46

That was Aretha Franklin and R E S P E C T respect. You said, Marin also, in your speech at the last night at the Proms in twenty thirteen, that although you didn't really grow up with the trappings of privilege, you believed that you had the greatest advantage of them all. You grew up in a house this was in New York's Manhattan

Presenter9:04

That you said was filled with music and possibility. Tell me more about that.

Marin Alsop9:09

Well, my parents were incredible people. My dad was from a small town in Utah, one of eight kids, and they really didn't have two dimes to rub together. And the one thing that the family believed in was giving music lessons to all the kids. So my dad was the next to last kid. And as his older brothers and sisters discarded instruments, he would pick them up. And so he ended up playing saxophone, clarinet, flute, violin, and viola. And when he went to a music festival, I think he was twenty, twenty-one years old, he immediately fell in love with this girl playing the cello. And that was my mom who was at the festival. She came from a family of five, also not very well off. And he followed her to New York because she was going to school there at Juilliard.

Presenter10:03

Explain to me. I mean, your parents were two professional musicians. They were pursuing the life professionally that they loved, but there wasn't a lot of money around. And yet, I.

Presenter10:13

I read there was a concert hall in your

Marin Alsop10:15

Oh, well, you know, this is the thing. Uh, this was a great gift also. Money was never an important factor. I I always had the sense that

Marin Alsop10:25

we could manage no matter what. And my parents were motivated always by the idea of something. So when they got enough money to buy our first little house out in Westchester,

Marin Alsop10:38

My dad said, but there's nowhere to play chamber music. So, you know, he dug a huge hole out in the yard. And over the course of a couple of years, he built this enormous living room, 40-foot living room, with cathedral ceiling. On this tiny little house, I mean, it was absurd. But this is where we played chamber music. And eventually, later, when they had a house upstate New York, this same concept of chamber music and sharing music with friends expanded to him building a concert hall in their backyard. This was very, very funny. So this was it was very much a kind of do-it-yourself, and if you build it, they will come kind of growing up, which was an incredible experience.

Presenter11:23

And they sat you down at the piano, I know, when you were two, and you played that, but you didn't really love it, and then you took up the violin, and then it was aged nine.

Presenter11:32

This is not apocryphal, is at age nine you decided you were going to be a conductor.

Marin Alsop11:33

Nine, you decided you

Marin Alsop11:35

Yeah.

Marin Alsop11:36

Well, you look, I I knew I had to be a musician. I mean, that was clear already, right?

Marin Alsop11:41

And uh

Marin Alsop11:42

When I was nine, m my dad I mean, they took me to a lot of concerts, but the first concert I really remember

Marin Alsop11:49

was the one where Leonard Bernstein conducted. And I think he wore a turtleneck. He didn't wear the typical concert attire. He looked really hip. And he was jumping around a lot. I l I liked that. And he then turned around and talked to us. I thought, of course, he was speaking only to me. But there was something about his passion and his enthusiasm.

Marin Alsop12:13

And his charisma that just drew me in. And I immediately turned to my father. I remember this moment, and I said, Ah, Dad, I'm going to be a conductor.

Presenter12:23

And on that note, let me hear about your third disc then. Why particularly have you chosen this?

Marin Alsop12:28

Well, I've chosen the fourth movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony with Bernstein conducting. I think Bernstein's relationship to Mahler and his complete devotion to every single piece he conducted, but especially to Mahler, is all consuming and and for me Bernstein was this inspirational, all-consuming figure.

Presenter13:56

That was part of the fourth movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony played by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted there by Leonard Bernstein. You were at Juilliard then on this junior programme as a musician, Marinol Sopen, and you saw, as you described it, this inspirational, all consuming figure in Leonard Bernstein, and you told your music teacher

Speaker 114:08

So

Presenter14:15

Fizzing with enthusiasm that yes, I know what I want to do. I want to be a conductor. And he or she said what.

Marin Alsop14:21

Yeah.

Marin Alsop14:22

Well, she said Oh, well, you're too young to be a conductor and then the most shocking news of all, and girls don't do that.

Marin Alsop14:32

So that was a bit of a bust, I have to say.

Presenter14:38

So you're nine, and you think about it, and you go home and you say to your parents, My music teacher said.

Marin Alsop14:43

Yeah, I said, you're not going to believe what happened. I you know, because my parents were quite keen on the idea. And when we got home, I told my mom uh that day after the concert, Oh, I'm going to be a conductor. She said, Oh, great You know, that was her response. And uh when I said, Well, you know, my violin teacher said I girls can't be conductors and my mother, oh my god, she was really so hoppin' mad. I'm gonna sue them, they can't say that to you, that's ridiculous, mama And uh I had no idea if she was gonna react to it. She was really angry and uh my father I don't remember his reaction then, really, because my mother was so on fire, but the next morning when I came down for breakfast, my father had gone out and bought me this wooden box, which I opened up and it was filled with batons.

Presenter15:35

And when was it that that you met Leonard Bernstein for the first time?

Marin Alsop15:40

I saw him, oh, I don't know, dozens of times from a distance, but I was terrified to meet him.

Marin Alsop15:47

I think it was a combination of things. I I don't know if you remember the first time you had a terrible crush on someone. Yeah, and you you're afraid to be in their presence because you you you you're rend rendered speechless. You know, you can't So, I mean, ultimately I met him a few times. My father played on uh this rather infamous studio sessions of Westside Story. If you watch the video, uh you can see my father's in the second stand of first violins. And what you don't see, of course, is that I'm in the back of the room. He took me to all the sessions and he introduced me to Bernstein, but I mean, you know, I I just shook his hand and said Maestro and I played under him. Also he conducted City Ballet once when I was playing and in my twenties. But finally I met him when I was uh in my early thirties and I was accepted as a conducting student at Tangwood and he so exceeded all of my expectations that i it was a true gift to study with him and and get to know him as a human being. Tell me then about this next piece that we're gonna

Speaker 215:53

You know you

Speaker 116:00

You know you

Presenter16:53

Then to hear a marinal sop.

Marin Alsop16:56

This is an excerpt from Bernstein's seminal composition, Mass, and it's a piece that was premiered in 1972 and he was roundly criticized. And I believe it's one of the great statements of twentieth century music, not only musically, but also politically, and you'll hear that in this clip.

Presenter18:21

Part of Leonard Bernstein's Mass played by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with the Morgan State University Choir and the Peabody Children's Chorus and Jubilant Sykes, all conducted by my castaway today, Marion Allsop. You had, I think it'd be fair to say, very few proper opportunities in those early years when you were a working musician and you knew what you wanted to do, but the chance to do it was not often there. You used this great phrase once when you were talking, uh, saying that you have to maximise opportunities. Tell us how you maximized opportunities.

Marin Alsop18:53

Well, I think when you have only a couple of opportunities, you know, you tend to try to wring the most you can out of those. And it's amazing what what you can do with very few opportunities, I think. And really it was thanks to my friends that I was able to start my own orchestra. And that's what I finally did.

Presenter19:14

How do you sort of toss that phrase off? That's how I started my own orchestra. How does one start well in your own orchestra?

Marin Alsop19:16

That's how I started my own orchestra.

Marin Alsop19:19

Well, you know what? I mean, it started off rather casually. You know, I'd talk people into coming over and playing through Mozart symphonies and stuff like that. But my apartment was very small, so that was tricky. And, you know, people gradually tired of that. You know, there wasn't enough beer and pizza to motivate them. But my friends, they all said, you know, but you're really you're pretty good at this. You should do it.

Marin Alsop19:44

I also had a back up plan, this crazy plan B, that if the conducting didn't work out I would be a rock and roll musician. But, you know, there wasn't a lot of call, especially in those days, for a rock and roll violin. So um I I was trying to find somebody to write some music for this imaginary rock and roll band I had.

Speaker 119:52

Right.

Marin Alsop20:03

And I found a guy I thought he was a really good writer um and I said, Why don't you write something for my group? And mind you, I I didn't even have a group, so I was making it all up on the spot, and he said, Okay, sounds good So I got about ten of my friends together, all string players.

Marin Alsop20:18

And Gary Anderson, my new friend, he wrote a swing chart for us to play. But, you know, we were all from Juilliard. We didn't know anything about swing music. We didn't know that you actually had to swing swing music. No, I'm serious. It would be like And the first gathering. We were so bad that Gary I thought he was gonna have a heart attack from laughing so hard. I was so embarrassed. But I said, Come on, you guys, let's stick with this. And we started playing in jazz clubs. I was crazy. And this band we called it String Fever. And this was sort of the start of organizing bigger groups for me rather than just a trio or a quartet or a sextet. And when I went on from that to create my own orchestra, every single member of String Fever played in my orchestra as well. And you know, being surrounded by people who cared about me and who weren't afraid to tell me what was good and what was bad in a very constructive way was the best education as a conductor I could have ever had.

Presenter21:25

And nobody ever said to you, these people who were your good friends and who were supporting you, you know the conducting thing, it's Walter Mitty stuff. You need to you need to know.

Marin Alsop21:31

No, never.

Presenter21:35

And you never thought about giving up? Never.

Presenter21:38

Next piece of music, Marinolsop, we're on your fifth. Tell me about this.

Marin Alsop21:41

Well, since we're talking about this idea of swing music, when we started uh String Fever, I started listening like crazy to jazz and especially um jazz violin players. And my favorite was you can imagine, of course, it was Stefan Grappelli, and I used to go hear him play live all the time. And this particular tune is a solo of Grapelli's to Duke Ellington's tune, It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing. And I spent an entire week transcribing note by note this solo, and I could I believe that if you handed me a violin right now, I could actually still play it.

Speaker 222:42

Yeah.

Presenter23:21

That was Stephan Grappelli playing the Duke Ellington number. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. Um, Marin, you had been grafting away and doing your thing and gradually making it work in the way that you could for yourself. You came to public prominence really, though, in two thousand five when you became uh the first woman to be appointed musical director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter23:41

I know you've been through this a hundred times, and I kind of imagine you probably don't want to go through it again, but I should let people listening know that at the time you were not really welcomed with open arms.

Presenter23:52

Um you started work with them in two thousand seven, and I wonder if I can ask you what the key is to winning an orchestra round?

Presenter24:01

Oh.

Marin Alsop24:02

Oh, well, I that's that's probably the hundred thousand dollar question. Again, I think that honesty and sincerity and a real desire to enable the musicians to be the best they can be and also c to connect with their communities and their audiences. Uh the the situation in Baltimore was very, very different from anything I had experienced before. I I was music director of several orchestras prior to Baltimore, but Baltimore is the major orchestra, one of only fifteen in the US, so that was a a huge appointment.

Marin Alsop24:42

I mean, it's it was so hurtful and so shocking because it you know, I had guest conducted them and it was great. We always had a great rapport. So it came out of left field in such a strong way, and I had worked so hard in my career, you know, with the few opportunities that I had, that it felt like overnight, you know, I was I was being questioned. And and and I don't know that they didn't like me. You know, the musicians had terrible relationship with the management and the board and

Marin Alsop25:13

This just became a catalyst to voice so many deep wounds that they had.

Presenter25:20

And at this moment, that was presumably the the greatest moment of your career at that point.

Marin Alsop25:24

Right at that point. Exactly. So I think it was doubly hard. And I don't and as I said to the musicians before I signed the contract, I went to them and spoke to them privately. And I said, you know, I don't know if I will ever recover from this, I get over this. But I do know that you don't have a clue who I am or what I can do for you. And, you know, I outlined what I thought was possible to do. And, you know, I went in and I tried to create an atmosphere of success because I felt that's what would heal them the fastest. And, you know, we we created a real buzz. And, you know, all these experiences are important. And in hindsight, while I wish I could have avoided it, I'm not sure it would have been good for it to not have happened. And, you know, I'm very proud to say that I I love the orchestra and I've just signed a contract through 2021, so I guess we're over the hump now.

Presenter26:29

We're going to listen to your sixth piece of music now, Marin also. Tell me about this. Why have you chosen this piece?

Marin Alsop26:34

Well, this is um

Marin Alsop26:36

This is a piece that I played as a freshman at Yale. I had a chamber music seminar course. And I remember when I was assigned this piece, and I thought to myself,

Marin Alsop26:49

God, I I hate contemporary music. I was only sixteen at the time. I remember telling my mom and dad, Oh.

Marin Alsop26:56

I hate new music. I'm never going to play contemporary music. It was Bartuck. And of course, as it turns out, I fell in love with this particular piece, with Bartuck in general, and it really opened a whole new door for me to contemporary music, um and I'm a huge advocate.

Presenter28:10

Bartock's contrasts with the composer on piano, Joseph Zegetti on violin, and Benny Goodman on clarinet. Given, Marin also, that your job as maestro is leadership distilled, I've heard you say that you didn't really know anything about leadership until you became a parent. What what happened?

Marin Alsop28:26

What happened?

Presenter28:28

Yeah.

Marin Alsop28:28

Well, I think we all think we know something about leadership and then when you begin

Marin Alsop28:34

parent, you realize you don't know a thing. You know? Don't don't you agree? It's really a you know, for those of us who think, you know, we're we're quite insightful and intelligent, uh parenting really

Speaker 128:36

Uh

Speaker 128:38

I do entirely.

Marin Alsop28:46

Has to be the great equalizer.

Presenter28:48

I am worried about how much logistics there must be involved in your home life, because your partner, Kristen, is a professional horn player. You are musical director of two orchestras in obviously two different countries, and then you have your young son who's just about to go into adolescence. I'm guessing logistics. You know, who's, where, when? Is that a big part of family life?

Marin Alsop29:09

Well, I mean, I have to say that uh Kristen has been very understanding and supportive of my career and she takes the bulk of the workload and the responsibility for looking after our son Auden. And uh, you know, it was really important to both of us that we be present for him rather than having people come in at nannies and things like that. So it's I think it's worked out

Presenter29:35

Fairly well. I don't know if you sat Odin down at the piano when he was two, like your parents sat you down.

Speaker 129:40

Uh

Marin Alsop29:40

I know. You know, I vowed I would never do that to anyone and of course, you know, here we are. Did you practice today? I mean, I I didn't we didn't it wasn't quite that bad, but it was pretty close. Um, he started violin when he was three.

Presenter29:57

You started this initiative called Orchids in Baltimore, which has professional musicians going out to mentor kids in underprivileged areas, giving them instruments, letting them use those instruments, take them home, practice, be part of an orchestra. Why is it so important to you?

Marin Alsop30:15

Well, it's important uh on so many levels, I think, because Baltimore is uh at least eighty percent African American and uh in the orchestra when I got there we we had one African American and it's because in order to achieve that kind of prowess on an instrument, kids have to start very early and they don't have access to this kind of teaching and even the instruments. And I do think and I fully expect that it probably won't be in my time uh as music director, but I fully expect in in the next couple of decades that there will be a a few kids from this program who end up in the symphony.

Presenter30:53

Time for your next piece, then. We're going to hear your seventh of the morning. Tell me about this.

Marin Alsop30:57

Well this is the slow movement from Robert Schumann's piano quartet and this is a very very special piece for me because I often played this with my parents, my mother on cello and my father would play viola and our dear friend who was you know I I had known since birth he played in a trio with my mom when she was pregnant, Seymour Bernstein. So this is a very very special piece.

Presenter32:26

That was the start of the third movement of Schumann's piano quartet played by the Beauzar trio with Samuel Rhodes on cello.

Presenter32:33

It's been clear in talking to you, Marin also, how um fundamental your parents, both musicians as you know, were in encouraging you in everything that you did.

Marin Alsop32:41

You did.

Presenter32:42

Very supportive of your talent. How often did they make time to come and watch you conduct?

Marin Alsop32:46

Oh, that was their favorite thing to do, I think. They weren't critical ever, you know, they just thought it was fantastic. And, you know, it's especially moving because I lost them both this year. And my mother died on January twenty third, and then my father died ten days later. So, it was really a hard loss. But, you know, the fact that they

Marin Alsop33:13

that they could be so present for me. And they often played in my orchestras when I couldn't afford a couple of musicians. They always played for free. So I felt that they they participated in my career in a very in a very rewarding way.

Presenter33:32

Let's hear your final piece, Marinolsop. What are we gonna hear?

Marin Alsop33:35

Well, it's sort of full circle now, coming back to Brahms. And this is an excerpt uh from The Brahms Requiem, which to me is a piece that speaks to the greatness of the human spirit and the fact that it's non-denominational and and that Brahms had originally thought he'd like to call it a human requiem. I think uh this appeals to me not only musically but intellectually, emotionally, and in every possible way.

Speaker 234:18

Oh praise.

Speaker 234:30

The Savior's Lord.

Presenter35:10

That was my castaway Marion Alsop conducting the M D R Leipzig Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra, and that was part of Brahm's Requiem.

Presenter35:19

As you know, Marinelsaw, we give all of our castaways some books to take with them to the island. They get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of their own to take along with them. What's your book going to be?

Marin Alsop35:31

This took a lot of thought, of course, as everyone I'm sure says, but I think I would take the collected writings of Carl Jung so that I could really explore the stories of the Bible and explore Shakespeare on every level.

Presenter35:33

Does everyone

Presenter35:47

Well, that is yours then.

Marin Alsop35:48

And a luxury too. What would you like a luxury to be?

Presenter35:50

Okay.

Marin Alsop35:51

After a lot of thought I think I would ask for a complete pottery studio. My mom so loved pottery and that tactile experience, and with that I could create not only practical things, but also art.

Presenter36:07

Yeah.

Presenter36:08

What a terrific idea. That, then, is yours. And if you had to save just one disk of the eight that you've chosen today, which one disk would it be?

Marin Alsop36:16

Oh, I think I'm going with Mahler and and Bernstein. See, I get

Presenter36:20

Two for one, really. Marin Alsops, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Marin Alsop36:22

That's a good idea.

Presenter37:08

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.