{"id":11177,"date":"2020-03-24T15:37:55","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T14:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.riccardomuti.com\/2020\/03\/24\/intervista-sul-chicago-tribune-il-ruolo-della-musica-in-questo-periodo-difficile\/"},"modified":"2021-06-01T08:39:38","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T06:39:38","slug":"intervista-sul-chicago-tribune-il-ruolo-della-musica-in-questo-periodo-difficile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.riccardomuti.com\/en\/2020\/03\/24\/intervista-sul-chicago-tribune-il-ruolo-della-musica-in-questo-periodo-difficile\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview in the Chicago Tribune: the role music plays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti on life in Italy amid coronavirus, the role music plays<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u2013 by Howard Reich | March 23, 2020<\/p>\n

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The last time Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Riccardo Muti conducted a concert, Feb. 23 in Orchestra Hall, few of us realized that the music was about to stop.<\/span><\/p>\n

By March 12, Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered a halt to large gatherings in the wake of the deadly coronavirus, shutting down large Chicago venues such as Symphony Center. A few days later, Pritzker expanded the moratorium to bars and restaurants, meaning that live music went silent across Illinois.<\/span><\/p>\n

After Muti\u2019s last CSO concert, in which he performed Beethoven\u2019s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 and Nicolas Bacri\u2019s \u201cOphelia\u2019s Tears,\u201d the conductor returned to his home in Ravenna, Italy \u2013 and has been there ever since.<\/span><\/p>\n

Italy now stands as the coronavirus\u2019 epicenter. And Muti marvels at the country\u2019s heroes and grieves for its dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Italians have shown in this difficult, difficult time a great sense of discipline and courage,\u201d said Muti, speaking by phone from his home.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor people that generally are considered extroverts, we are giving an image of a country that when it\u2019s the moment \u2013 when the moment becomes very serious \u2013 we are like one person. So, of course, there are a few people that still don\u2019t obey the rule, but this is a very small minority. To see the Italians to stay outside the pharmacy or market \u2013 all in line, distant, at least one meter, it\u2019s something that we – it\u2019s a new experience for us.”<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause generally people know that in the past, even when we have to go to a bus, instead of having an English line full of discipline, we have an assault. But now, in this moment, everybody is trying his best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, as the casualties mount and the disease spreads, there\u2019s no escaping the pandemic\u2019s toll. Especially in Muti\u2019s homeland.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cItaly, where many people die in the hospital, they cannot even have the comfort of the relatives,\u201d said Muti. \u201cThe husband or the wife or the father or the son cannot go to say the last goodbye, to hold the hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo people die in absolute solitude. And the other day, I saw on television, Bergamo \u2013 one of the cities more in trouble \u2013 in the evening a long line of (Army) trucks full of coffins, a long line going to the cemetery. And now the cemeteries are full. And people don\u2019t know where to put (the dead).”<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we start to analyze the situation, in every detail, it\u2019s so tragic that we should really be more than desperate. Where do you find comfort? Where?\u201d<\/p>\n

For Muti and for listeners around the world, some comfort and consolation, escape and hope, can be found in music. This is why, he said, we all have seen so many videos of Italians singing together outside their apartments \u2013 physically separated but united in song.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNapoli, the city where people were outside the balconies singing \u2013 that is not a sign of superficiality,\u201d said Muti. \u201cIt is the typical way of the Italians, and especially for the Neopolitans, to find a way through the music, through singing, to push away the evil.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any case, we remember the phrase that I told you one evening: St. Augustine, he said: \u2018Cantare amantis est,\u2019\u201d which roughly translates as \u201csinging belongs to one who loves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or as Muti interpreted it, \u201cIf you love mankind, if you love nature around you, you feel that you can sing the glory.\u201d<\/p>\n

So the conductor \u2013 whose post-Chicago concerts in Japan, Vienna and Paris were canceled \u2013 also turned to music. Now he can spend time at the piano playing Schumann, Chopin and Debussy, he said. More important, he has immersed himself in one of the most profound and mysterious works ever penned: Beethoven\u2019s \u201cMissa Solemnis.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Muti is scheduled to conduct the CSO in the massive composition Sept. 24-26 in Orchestra Hall, toward the beginning of the next season. He finds that the current grave moment \u2013 in which millions, including himself, are confined to home \u2013 may be ideal for trying to understand an epic work that ponders nothing less than humanity\u2019s place in the universe.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow my mind is completely in \u2018Missa Solemnis,\u2019\u201d said Muti. \u201cGoing back to the score after so many decades \u2013 I started to look at the score in 1970. Then I left because it was too complicated.” To clarify, he then said, “Not complicated, because I was a very good student of counterpoint, and \u2018Missa Solemnis\u2019 is the triumph of counterpoint.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it was too mystical, too deep, too high. I was not able to \u2013 to conduct is one thing, to move the arms. (But) to go deeply into this kind of mysterious music, where counterpoint becomes not just an exercise but all these lines so full of intensity. It\u2019s clear that Beethoven in the \u2018Missa Solemnis\u2019 has reached the highest level not only of inspiration, but also the craft. His technique as a composer \u2013 using the counterpoint and winning against the rules of the counterpoint itself!”<\/p>\n

\u201cNow that I\u2019m studying the score, after having for years conducted so much music of different composers, I am approaching this score with a new perspective, with a deeper understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 78 and arguably at the height of his powers as conductor and interpreter, Muti indeed seems well-positioned at last to take on a work he never has performed before.<\/span><\/p>\n

Earlier this year, he explained to me his reluctance to take on the \u201cMissa Solemnis\u201d by citing his friend and fellow conductor, Carlos Kleiber. As Muti recalled, Kleiber told him \u201cthere is certain music that should remain on paper, should not be brought to life, because it\u2019s so deep, so metaphysical, that it\u2019s impossible to create in reality what you feel (by) looking in the score.\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what has it been like for Muti finally to confront this masterpiece \u2013 at a time when the entire world is in crisis, facing the sobering truths Beethoven contemplated in the \u201cMissa Solemnis\u201d?<\/span><\/p>\n

Com’\u00e8, allora, per Muti, affrontare finalmente questo capolavoro, in un momento in cui il mondo intero \u00e8 in crisi, trovarsi faccia a faccia con quelle verit\u00e0 che fanno riflettere e che Beethoven contemplava nella Missa Solemnis<\/em>?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a full immersion in \u2013 I cannot say heaven, because it would be too rhetoric(al) to say this,\u201d explained Muti.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s like you\u2019re alone in the Sistine Chapel, without other people near you. You can deeply absorb this masterpiece.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important in this moment, because I have time\u2026 I don\u2019t have to go to the rehearsal, to have a meeting or to prepare for travel, to go there, to go there. It\u2019s a dedication completely to this work. And fortunately, I can look at these notes with much more understanding than before.”<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m not saying I\u2019m enjoying, because it\u2019s a verb that I hate. Too much in America: enjoy the fish, enjoy the wine.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIn front of a masterpiece like the \u2018Missa Solemnis,\u2019 you don\u2019t enjoy. You just go deeply in the music. It is so metaphysical, mysterious now. \u2026 It\u2019s like the last sonatas of Beethoven, the last quartetti. In an area where the air is very pure and very refined and very subtle.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like to be on the high mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this music, said Muti, he hears echoes of earlier works by previous masters, their influence shaping the \u201cMissa Solemnis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beethoven\u2019s magnum opus is \u201ca demonstration of his great ability \u2013 like Mozart in the last movement of \u2018Jupiter\u2019 Symphony,\u201d which indeed in its final pages seems to sum up the tragedies and beauties of life itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr Verdi \u2013 the finale of \u2018Falstaff,’ when he uses the fugue for the demonstration of great ability to use the academic forms, but being able to win against the academy. \u2026 And after (Muti conducted) so many masses of Cherubini, you understand why Beethoven had such great respect for Cherubini.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sooner or later, the scourge of the coronavirus will end, and we\u2019ll all be left to pick up the pieces of what remains. Muti sees great challenges not only in getting to that much longed-for moment but in facing what comes after.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly, everybody will go in the streets, everybody will be like lost people,\u201d said Muti, trying to envision how we rebuild.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we are all in a tunnel. I don\u2019t know if some of the scientists, doctors can (yet) see the light at the end of the tunnel. But unless it\u2019s the end of the world, at a certain point we have to see this light. From this enormous tragedy, I think that people are learning to respect each other, to be kind one to the other, much more than before.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now the question I ask to myself: Is it possible that after this great tragedy, mankind will come out better in the sense that we, after this fear, we understand the importance of life, the importance to love each other, the importance of culture, the importance to help the poor people, the nations that are in trouble? To come out better?\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Muti wonders whether the pandemic \u201cis sort of a general rehearsal for mankind. That tomorrow a war, based on the virus, can destroy completely mankind in a few days. So maybe this will be a lesson.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for his colleagues and friends in Chicago, where Muti has been CSO music director since 2010, he said that he misses them greatly, that the separation makes him \u201cfeel lonely \u2013 it\u2019s a terrible feeling.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He advises them to stay away from the 24-hour TV news reports, as much as possible, and to spend more time reading and listening to music. In addition to his study of the \u201cMissa Solemnis,\u201d he has been preparing for his upcoming CSO performances of Florence Price\u2019s Symphony No. 3 (April 23-28) and the world premiere of CSO composer-in-residence Missy Mazzoli\u2019s \u201cOrpheus Undone\u201d (April 30-May 3).<\/span><\/p>\n

Should those concerts be canceled, Muti will schedule them for whenever the music-making resumes, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, the crisis injures everyone and \u201ccertainly it\u2019s very, very difficult for an orchestra, musicians that for decades every day have been together, sitting one near the other, suddenly to stay away one from the other \u2013 it\u2019s tragic,\u201d said Muti.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThen when this period will end, this tragic period, then it will not be easy to put together again the orchestra and to start again to find the emotions that we have abandoned,\u201d and that the musicians express through music.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause psychologically, it\u2019s possible that we will be different immediately after this disease disappears.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe return to normal life will not be something that in 24 hours (will be) very easy to find. But then we will find ourselves again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Howard Reich,\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/em>, March 23, 2020<\/p>\n

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