Recording Mozart without a safety net
Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu talks about making a CD from a live concert,
Hannu Lintu was spending a couple of days relaxing on an island near Helsinki. The Finnish conductor was clearing his mind before beginning something very new — for him at least. For the first time, he is participating in the recording of a live concert.
“I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m not nervous, but I am interested certainly. It’s an experiment for me.”
He is talking about the CD he will make with the National Arts Centre Orchestra and his good friend, Angela Hewitt.
Together, they will record two piano concertos by Mozart, the C minor and the E flat major. This is the first recording by the NACO in many years.
While the recording process has him thinking about all the things that can go wrong, he is comforted to be working with Hewitt.
The two have worked together before, most recently at Hewitt’s annual summer festival of music in Italy, where they did do the E flat concerto. In a previous interview, Hewitt did express how she enjoyed working with Lintu. He feels the same way.
“Naturally I find it very stimulating. When you travel all around the world and you have lots of concerts and the soloists change all the time you meet a new soloist and you have to build the relationship during the rehearsal process. It’s always luxurious to work with someone you know already.
“Angela is someone I know well, and I think we have a very honest musical relationship.
“We can really also be critical and can discuss the ideas and especially during the recording process, it is very fruitful.
“It’s a great feeling when you have good connection with a soloist that you do know well.”
He hasn’t done a lot of live recordings — although as the music director of the Finnish Radio Orchestra, his work is often be live-streamed. But putting something down on a CD is more permanent, somehow.
“It’s very challenging. When I listen to the first edits of a studio recording (for example), I notice things I haven’t noticed before. Sometimes the tempo is not exactly what I thought it was.
“This worries me in the case of live recordings. It sometimes happens you just get carried away by the concert situation and the audience makes you do different things.”
For a perfectionist, which Lintu admits he is, this recording thing might be a bit trying.
There are two concerts and “we have to make each in the same way, because possibly we have to combine those.” Add the fact that the musicians play differently between rehearsal and performance and the concerns can grow.
“Of course we are perfectionists. Everything has to be in tune and we have to play together, but then perfection for me is also that I hear the musical things that I want to hear.”
But the conductor has the best seat in the hall, he says.
In this case, it means he gets to hear a great player performing at the peak of her powers backed by a very good orchestra playing Mozart.
“I used to be a pianist myself and I still play for therapy. I just play some Bach or Mozart when I am tired and I actually played the C minor concerto myself. And so there is a special tie to this piece.
“The E flat, I didn’t know it very well until we played it at Angela’s festival in June.
“That’s the first time I really studied the score. I was amazed at how deep it is. It is one of the most fascinating concertos that he wrote. You immediately notice the connection to the big operas like Figaro and Don Giovanni.”
Lintu has an unusual relationship with Mozart.
“I am a Mozart fan but I very seldom conduct his symphonies because I have a feeling that I destroy Mozart. I conduct the piano concertos because the soloist takes part of the musical responsibility and I conduct the operas.
“But I am a dramatic character and sometimes I have a feeling I’m too musically violent for the symphonies.”
Maybe when he is older (he is now 45), Lintu will tackle the symphonies. It is evident that he takes his job very seriously. He wants to do the it well, and that can put a demand on an orchestra.
“I want them to take it seriously, too. For me, rehearsal is not just about producing some sounds and just playing together. I want serious music making in the rehearsals, too.
“I imagine that can be sometimes tiring for the orchestra.” But too bad, basically.
Maybe his serious nature stems from his “Finnish-ness.”
“We are very serious. It’s probably me, also, because I still can’t believe that I am really a conductor. I’ve wanted to be one since I was nine years old and I still sometimes have to pinch myself that it is really true. I am really a conductor and they are paying for it and I am working with great orchestras.
“I may relax when I become older.”
Lintu is single. Conducting is not a pas de deux, he says.
His single-minded mission started early.
Lintu started out playing piano and cello, and performed in youth orchestras, so he knew what a con- ductor does. But around age 9 he went to the famous Savolinna Opera Festival in Finland, 500 kilometres north of Helsinki.
It was during a performance of Verdi’s opera Don Carlos that Lintu found his passion. It was conducted by Leif Segerstam, one of “the popes of Finnish conducting.
“I could see directly in the orchestra pit, and I was watching him through the performance. I saw something I had never seen before. I saw him keeping together this huge machinery. There was a reason for him to be there.
“That was the moment when the seed was planted ... I am sure.”
He enjoys working the NACO, says Lintu.
“They are a great bunch. They have very rare combination of being musically capable and sensitive and at the same time being nice people, which is actually very rare.
“Usually with orchestras, the better they are, the less nice they are.”
But that doesn’t mean he will leave Finland.
“I am Finnish, which means I am very attached to my country, mainly for linguistic reasons. I need to hear the Finnish language and I don’t hear it anywhere else.
“I could live anywhere, London or Paris. But I love Helsinki, it’s my hometown. I can go 30 minutes and be on an island in the sea.”
With that he was off to take a sauna.