Marin Alsop

0:00Hello, I'm John Wilson. You're about to listen to This Cultural Life. Episodes are released weekly, wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episode first on BBC Sounds, seven days earlier than anywhere else. Do subscribe to This Cultural Life on BBC Sounds and make sure you have push notifications turned on and we'll let you know as soon as new episodes are available.

0:31Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which the world's leading artistic figures choose the most important influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is the American conductor Marin Alsop, mentored by the great Leonard Bernstein. Marin Alsop was the first woman to lead major orchestras in the UK, South America and in the United States, becoming principal conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007. Nominated for Grammy Awards five times, in 2013 she became the first ever woman to lead the last night of the proms and is now regarded as one of the greatest conductors in the world.

1:13Marin Alsop, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you, it's great to be here. You were born in New York City in 1956. Both your parents were professional musicians. Is music your earliest memory then? Oh, yeah, definitely. Everything in life had music in it. We lived in a very small one-bedroom basement apartment on 107th and Amsterdam. In Manhattan. In Manhattan, and somebody was always practising, so you couldn't escape music, you know. They were both orchestral musicians? Yeah, my father was the concertmaster of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, and my mother was a cellist there.

1:49My dad also played saxophone and clarinet and flute, and he was an incredible whistler. And he did some commercial work, you know, as a studio player, and he had a habit of always whistling, you know. It was very annoying to my mother and myself. But fortunately, a contractor heard him on one of these sessions just whistling, you know, on the break. And he ended up getting hired to do all these Irish spring commercials.

2:22So he made more money whistling, I think, than he made doing anything else. So we tried to be more tolerant of the whistling from then on. But in terms of the day, I was going to say the day jobs, I presume if they were both orchestral musicians, it was night jobs very often. Were they working evenings a lot? Yeah, they were out every night and all weekend, of course, also for rehearsals. And in addition to their positions at the New York City Ballet, They also did lots of gigging, and my mother taught cello. Where were you in the evenings? Yeah, that's a good question. I was more, I spent many, many evenings backstage at City Ballet.

3:01Maybe every season I would see 40 Nutcrackers, you know? I mean, I just grew up there. You were steeped in this stuff. Yeah, and my parents, I don't think there was ever a day that they resented or regretted what they did. they felt, I think, blessed every day. Were they encouraging you to play at home as well? You know, my mom was a cellist, my dad a violinist, and I think that they must have been sitting around and, you know, just saying, like, boy, wouldn't it be great if we had a pianist? So let's make one. So that was why I was born. I was born to fill out their trio, but it didn't quite work out that way because I hated the piano.

3:40It was big, it was clunky, it was lonely, it was isolated. you know, all those things. I retired from piano when I was six. In retrospect, it's super important to find the right instrument for a child. And not every instrument, it speaks to every child in the same way. But violin was definitely my instrument. Did it seem almost predestined from a young age that you would follow in their footsteps, that this was, it was inevitable that you would be a musician? Yes, there was really never any question. I think I'm the only person who was accepted to Yale University, whose parents said, why would you want to waste four years going to Yale?

4:23I said, well, you know, I actually want, I'm interested in other things, too. I'd like to learn about, you know, politics and the world and literature. And they said, but why? I mean, go to conservatory. I mean, really, my parents were freaked out when I got into Yale, and I decided to go. I transferred after a couple of years to Juilliard. But you were doing maths at the end initially. Isn't that how you got in? Maybe it was going to be something like that. But I think also it was my way of just torturing my parents slightly with the threat that I might not be a musician. And was it always music, music, music at home?

4:58What about other cultural influences, books, films, theatre? Nothing. There was nothing. It was music, music, music. My mother was quite well read. I don't think my dad, he must have read a book at some point in his life. But he was an intuitive, kind of very gifted, natural talent. My mother was quite bright. She loved languages and reading. So I did get that bug from her. But really, it was music. And it's so all-consuming, being a musician. It's hard to escape because you're steeped in it all day long. You have to practice every day. If you skip a day, you fall behind. And then when you compound that with earning a living and gigging and freelancing, I mean, it's pretty all-consuming.

5:42And if it felt inevitable that you would follow in their footsteps in some way, did that feel like a liberation or an obligation? Did it feel like some kind of pressure that you would have to live up to them? I think probably both. I think being the child of very well-known people, it's always hard. And I feel for my son, who's just 21 now, and I think often back on my childhood that you're always introduced as, oh, this is the child of blah, blah, blah. And I got such a kick out of it, you know, later as my conducting career took off when they would introduce my parents, you know, as parents of.

6:27On This Cultural Life, Marin Alsop, I ask my guests about their formative creative influences and experiences. And your first choice that you've brought to the programme is the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. And he eventually became your mentor, but when were you first aware of who he was? I first saw Leonard Bernstein on the CBS programme that was every Sunday afternoon when his young people's concerts were broadcast. And here is Mr Bernstein. I really loved watching that.

7:04The thing about Bernstein was that he defied the rules and I was already finding classical music very rigid and very rule-oriented but I had this sense that Leonard Bernstein was going to break all of the rules and that drew me to him. I was probably 8, 9 years old. I was enrolled in Juilliard Pre-College. on Saturdays. So I was playing in the orchestra and I was already now getting in trouble. I guess people were complaining that I was trying to lead the orchestra from the back of the second violins. The director would say, you know, you have to stop smiling and don't move so much. Again, it was all about don't do this, do that, you're too, too that, too that.

7:50Then my dad took me to one of the Young People's Concerts, a live performance, and I got to see Leonard Bernstein in person, and I thought, oh, he's jumping around like a crazy person. He's having the best time, and no one is yelling at him. I need to be the conductor.

8:15It was a freeing experience, and he immediately turned around and started talking to me, I I mean, talking to the audience, I thought he was talking to me. Isn't that fun? It's like a ride in a roller coaster, full of laughing and good humor. It leaves you breathless, makes you have a good time, makes you smile. I was so excited to, you know, feel his passion and his engagement. His personal charisma as well. Yeah, it was amazing. And I turned to my dad and I said, I want to be a conductor. At that moment? Yeah, that was the moment. It was like a religious calling, you know, it was a light bulb going on.

8:53I never changed my mind. Not once. Not one day. And my dad said, OK, sure. No problem. So he embraced it totally. Oh, totally. He didn't say, oh, Maren, this may be a problem. Never. As long as I was going to be a musician, I was good to go. Had I said, I want to be a mathematician, that would not have gone well. But you're nine years old. You go home that night and you say to dad, this is it. This is what I want to do. How do you then follow up on that? How do you pursue that dream at that age? Well, I would ask my dad to either take from the library for me or purchase the little miniature study scores because I was already playing in the orchestra.

9:35And, you know, we were playing Mozart symphonies and a little bit of Dvorak, and I would get the score and try to follow along, even at that age. I should tell you that, you know, I went to my violin teacher because I was very excited about my career path at nine years old. And when I told her, she said, well, you know, you're too young and girls can't do that. Ever. Yeah. This was daunting to me. I never considered the concept that some avenue would be closed to me because of my gender. That was really shocking. And I told my parents and they were so furious. My mother was hopping mad. And my dad, who was much quieter, when I came down for breakfast the next day, he had gone out and bought this beautiful wooden box.

10:26I still have it. And I opened it up and he had filled it with batons. Conductor's batons. Conductor's batons. And I'm sorry, I'm going to tear up a little bit because it was so affirming. And I never needed them to say another thing. That was it. We've got your back. They always played for me for free, you know, because a conductor needs musicians. And they played in every orchestra I started, in every chamber group I tried. They were my musicians in the trenches always. But it's interesting when you were describing that box and opening it, I was just thinking what a beautiful and loving gesture that is.

11:09But it was obviously something that was so powerful to you then and remains powerful now, doesn't it? It does. I think having people that believe in you is so essential for one's success and for one's sense of self. There's so many young people that grow up without that support system or they don't have an opportunity to entertain what their dreams might even be. I try to give back to young people to create these moments that they can discover their passion always. That was potentially a devastating knockback from that teacher who said to you, girls don't do that, you're not allowed to do that.

11:50And then that act of affirmation from your father set you straight. What's the next stage, though? Because really, institutionally, it was still difficult at that stage for a girl to go, this is what I want to do. So to be so young, you know, 10 years old, it's still a strange pursuit at such an early age. I really just tried to train myself in a way because I watched my parents. This is what they did. And this is what I learned from, you know, from studying a musical instrument is that you have to become your own teacher. You have to start to motivate yourself. You have to make a plan. You know, you have to practice every day.

12:29You know, there are steps that you can set in motion. That's the great gift of learning an instrument. You know, you figure these things out. And so I started studying scores. When I had friends around, when we were playing chamber music, I'd say, can we play Mozart's symphony and let me conduct? I would sort of talk people into, you know, my parents would play along and their friends would play. So it was sort of this ad hoc ragtag thing. And it wasn't really until I was an undergraduate at Yale that I started getting friends together to read through symphonies. And, you know, the challenge with conducting, unlike being a violinist, is that you don't have an instrument.

13:13Yeah. So you can't practice and you can't figure anything out. Well, is that right? You can't practice. I mean, it seems an obvious thing to say. You can't practice without musicians in front of you. I mean, you can practice the gestures, but you can't develop a sense of the instrument, you know, and you can't, you can imagine, but you can't really experience the delay of giving a downbeat and having someone respond. How to create a legato, how to change tempo with a large group. You know, all of these things, you have to have hands-on experience. and there were just simply no opportunities. But eventually you did join a conducting course at Juilliard.

13:59No, I would have liked to have joined and I applied several times. I finished my undergraduate at Juilliard in violin performance and got my master's. And then I applied three times for the conducting program and I got close every time. Oh, rejected? I got rejected, yeah. On what basis? Well, I didn't have any experience. You know, it's an incredible catch-22. So I decided, OK, maybe school is not the way, certainly not Juilliard. And I decided to just start my own orchestra, but to house it at Juilliard in Alice Tully Hall downstairs. So I started my own orchestra that performed in Juilliard.

14:42I want to talk about that a bit later, but just in terms of rejection, which seems astonishing now. one of the world's great conductors being rejected three times, as you say. Did it occur to you at the time that it might be because you're a woman? I'm sure somewhere I thought it a few times. But I also understood that I really did have no experience. And so each rejection, while quite devastating, was motivating. And I tried to get feedback from the committee. You know, I got quite far in all the auditions without much experience. You know, I think that this is an important lesson for all young people because the road to success is, I think, much more profound when you have really dramatic failures along the way.

15:35Because you're challenged about whether you want to continue doing this. It questions your foundational motivation. And I never lost the drive, even though everyone was saying, no, no, no, no, no, I don't think so. You're fortified by the failure or rejection. Fortified might be a little bit strong, but I certainly found that I wasn't deterred. I wanted to work harder at it and try to figure it out. So that's exactly what I did. Let's just get back to Leonard Bernstein. You didn't meet till much later on when you were at Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts. What do you remember about that first meeting with him?

16:16Well, I had met him a couple of times because my dad played under him. And, of course, he would say, you want to come to my dad? You can see him. He's in almost every frame of the West Side Story, that famous with Carreras. My dad was sitting in the second stand of First Violins. And so he's in all the shots. but you don't see me but I'm at the back of the room. Were you there? I was there in the back. Really? That famously thought. Quite terrifying.

16:53You're ahead of me. When you look at the music you sing wrong words. How's it? Coming. Coming. I'm saying calm, calming. John, please don't do this. Don't give elocution lessons over the microphone, okay? 32. My dad said, do you want to meet Leonard Bernstein? I said, absolutely not. I don't want to get... I was so scared, you know. I mean, he was terrifying. And my first encounter as a conductor with Bernstein was in 1987 at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival. Now, I got accepted into a conducting workshop, and this was my first encounter with Bernstein.

17:48There's a clip in which he's talking about introducing pauses. That's it. But the interesting thing is, you actually take issue with him, and you challenge him. I really want those spaces before the piano each time. Each time? Not this time. I think not. Yes. Why not all the time? You didn't just say, yes, maestro. Well, now let's review this a little bit. Challenge is a strong way. I was just trying to make my case. You stood up for yourself. I stood up for myself, yeah. And, you know, I think in the long run, that's something that he liked about me, you know, ultimately. Well, that shows strength, given that you had seen what he could become.

18:29Yeah. But I could feel that he was kind. He was a very affectionate, generous human being. Very tactile as well. Very tactile. I mean, he would have had a tough time in these times, for sure. See if you can do it. It's a little hard. I know, a little tricky, huh? Will you stay here, OK? Also, I do the... How did the relationship develop then? Well, then I was accepted to Tangoet for the next summer. and it was funny because I was then picked to share a program with Bernstein and you know I excited is doesn't come close I was sure I was going to have a heart attack and miss it um I was so excited but I was also worried that he might remember me from Schleswig-Holstein so he came in the room you know and all the television cameras and oh you know I mean there There were a billion people.

19:25And he said, now, where's this Marin? And I was like, you know, I just put my hand up. And he said, don't I know you? And I thought, I'm just going to say nothing. I just shrugged my shoulders. And I thought he didn't remember me. We went on to become very, very close. But I never mentioned Schleswig-Holstein. I never mentioned Beethoven's Second Symphony. When he was opening the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan, he asked me to come and do Beethoven's First Symphony on the first half of our program. And a couple months before, his people called me and said, Maestro said he'd like to see the second symphony again.

20:08So he knew the whole time. Of course, he remembered everything. You know, I thought I had gotten away with something, but not at all.

20:20OK, now what do you think that music's all about? Can you tell me?

20:28That's just what I thought you'd say. Cowboys, bandits, forces, the Wild West... Leonard Bernstein understood the social responsibilities of classical music and he was wanting children to have access to great music through those televised concerts that you grew up with. You led the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for 14 years and set up the Ork Kids outreach program. How much of that was inspired, do you think, by seeing Bernstein? You know, I think a lot of who I am was inspired by him. Being able to be around a great human being that's not only an incredible artist in his discipline, but also a great citizen of the world.

21:13You know, I had the great fortune to spend a lot of time with him at home in New York. It was so formative to watch him stand up for what he believed in. And I saw how dedicated he was to education. And he believed that every child has the capacity to be a genius and that it's all about a roll of the dice, whether you have opportunity or you don't have opportunity. And when I went to Baltimore, of course, you know, I was again struck by the lack of diversity on stage in a city that's predominantly African-American. And I just thought it can't be that there aren't talented kids. It has to be about opportunity.

22:02And so I started with 30 first graders in West Baltimore, and today there are over 2 ,000 kids playing musical instruments, going to music colleges, and contributing to programs in their communities now. Bernstein was right. It's all about access and opportunity.

22:38Your next choice, Maren Orsop, is Carl Jung's book, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Why is this so important to you? It's so interesting that I would have chosen that, huh? Especially since we're talking so much about the maestro. That is such an archetype in our collective unconscious. Even for me, when I think of the maestro, I don't think of someone that looks like me. You know, we think of the very tall, you know, salt and pepper hair and some unidentifiable accent, right? You know, so it's interesting that it sort of ties in in that strange way. But for me, it was when I was an undergraduate at Yale that I came across the writings of Carl Jung.

23:27and it opened up a whole area for me to explore about the darker sides of ourselves and about the world of dreams, of hopes, of aspirations. And of course, so much of our world is based on these gender stereotypes and that was very liberating for me to read and feel connected to the world in a very different way. Do you think your understanding of Jung, having studied it, has helped you navigate a path through your career, through the world of conducting? I think it's helped me understand people's perceptions. Also have an empathy and a compassion for why people judge each other in certain ways.

24:16There are a lot of psychological aspects to being a conductor. One has to deal with a large group of people. So there's that sort of group mentality. But also you have to deal with a large group of experts with very, very strong egos. So I think the Jungian piece has been very helpful throughout navigating those waters. And you have led orchestras all around the world. Does each orchestra have its own collective personality? It's a great question. I think the answer is yes. It may not be that easy to articulate, but I think it's something that I can usually sense very quickly. And I think when I'm able to be open to that, it gives me great advantage to be able to build on their strengths right away.

25:12Well, Maren is also taking on another job. She's been appointed music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in the United States, but there her appointment has been greeted with some controversy, as the musicians are divided on whether or not they want her. Well, I spoke to her earlier this morning before her rehearsal in Bournemouth. Given the reaction of some of the orchestra in Baltimore, is she looking forward to joining them? Well, I'm looking forward to it because I've always had a wonderful... From what I understand, when you took over the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, there was resistance to your appointment from within the orchestra itself.

25:46How did you win over the players and did you employ Jungian techniques? I don't know that I employed Jungian techniques. I think I needed every technique available to survive that appointment. What was wrong, first of all, in their eyes? What were they protesting about? You know, it's a little bit, again, difficult to really articulate because I tried to dissociate myself from the controversy because my appointment became a catalyst. It was like a lightning rod for all of their grievances over decades. And they were a very aggrieved orchestra. orchestra. At that time, they had been the longest striking U.S.

26:34orchestra in history. Lots of resentments, lots of mismanagement boards. You know, I mean, I can't, when I started considering the offer to become music director, there were$16 million in debt. Their audiences had dwindled to 50%. They hadn't made a recording in 10 years. They hadn't been on tour. I mean, you know, there were so many things wrong. And then, you know, this appointment and the musicians, I think they just glommed onto this as a way to vent. And I could see that, and maybe that's the Jungian part. It was very hard not to take it personally. You know, they came up with things like, I don't have a good ear, or I mean, sort of stupid and untrue things.