PARALLEL CAREERS

LEFT NICOLAS AUPROUX. MIDDLE MURIEL CHAULET. RIGHT CAI LEILEI

It’s a sad fact that many musicians had a less than busy September. But Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider was not one of them. ‘I had more than a dozen performances in four weeks,’ says the Dane who made his name as a commanding violinist with a touch of old-school greatness. In none of those performances was he wielding his violin.

It was in 2015 that The Strad last caught up with Szeps-Znaider, when he went by the simpler name of Nikolaj Znaider. He restored the original ‘Szeps’ in 2018, having been advised to remove it for commercial reasons as a young violinist and having experienced pangs of conscience for his murdered Jewish ancestors ever since. More and more, we were hearing from Szeps-Znaider as a freelance conductor of high-level orchestras. The ‘next logical step’, he told Charlotte Smith six years ago, would be a contract as principal conductor of the ‘right orchestra’.

NICOLAS KOCH FUTTRUP

‘BEING A MUSIC DIRECTOR IS ABOUT FINDING A WAY OF THINKING, AN APPROACH TO MUSIC MAKING, OVER A NUMBER OF YEARS’

He has now taken that step. Szeps-Znaider opened his music directorship of the Lyon National Orchestra on 17 September 2020 with a programme that bore little relation to the one originally planned. It wasn’t quite the triumphant launch he expected, for positive as well as negative reasons. ‘Your inaugural week as a music director is supposed to feel like a big thing. This didn’t – not because it wasn’t a big thing, but because we had hastily arranged three weeks of work in the summer. So it felt like we’d already started,’ he says. Those three weeks included a ‘very moving’ free concert for the healthcare workers of Lyon in July.

Afew months later, we meet in a café next door to the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where Szeps-Znaider has spent the morning teaching, having recently embarked upon a guest professorship. He will be returning to Lyon in a matter of days for another three weeks, but following France’s recent lockdown, the cavernous Lyon Auditorium will be empty but for equipment that can livestream the performances to subscribers. ‘What is really important for orchestras everywhere is to remain present,’ he says, ‘to produce something now and maintain that direct relationship with the audience.’

Szeps-Znaider’s professional experience as a conductor stretches back a decade and a half and includes the role of principal guest conductor of the Mariinsky Orchestra in St Petersburg. Lots of ‘perfect chemistry’ and ‘love at first rehearsal’ clichés surround the appointment of a new conductor, and his arrival in Lyon has been no exception. So what’s the reality, in the rehearsal room? ‘Like everything, it’s always easy in the beginning!’ he says with a wry smile. ‘We are still in the process of really getting to know each other. That’s why being a music director is interesting: there’s nothing you can implement over a week or two months; it’s about finding a way of thinking, an approach to music making, over a number of years. Things have not been made easy by the restrictions we are facing now. If you had told me a year ago that I would have to conduct an orchestra sitting in the way the orchestra is sitting, or with the reduced rehearsal time we are subjected to, I would have dismissed it as impossible. Of course, it is possible even if it’s not ideal. This whole thing has reminded us of what’s important: having the chance to make music.’

He refers to each week in the immediate future as having ‘a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, a plan A minus and a plan B plus’. But despite that, there have been advantages to the many adversities visited upon the world of orchestral performance. ‘Not that this whole thing hasn’t been a disaster for everybody, but we have seen how flexible and creative we actually can be, and as a result all kinds of things have popped up,’ Szeps-Znaider says. Can he envisage the orchestral world’s long planningwindow shortening? ‘I hope so, because yes, it is absurd: how do I know what I want to play or conduct in three years? I have no idea. If that goes, it will not be such a terrible thing.’

There are also implications for shorter-term schedules, which in many cases have become just as inflexible. ‘The orchestral “week”‘ – in other words, how rehearsals and concerts are placed – ‘has evolved in a particular way in each city, but is there a chance to reimagine it so that it produces different experiences?’ he asks. ‘Everybody wants to win new audiences, but we can’t expect an audience that has no relationship with classical music to come in and listen to a Bruckner symphony and be moved. There need to be some intermediary steps.’

His urge to consider the place of the Lyon orchestra in its community is clear. That, he says, is a priority over any notions of international reputation. But his repertoire plans are not without idiosyncrasies. He reels off a list of ‘discovered’ composers (all female, all French – very politically astute) and outlines what were to be the themes of his inaugural season: Lyon’s place on the silk road and its longing look over the mountains towards Vienna, the conductor’s own spiritual home, where he studied as a young violinist for three years.

There was plenty of opportunity for Szeps-Znaider to immerse himself in Viennese repertoire earlier in the year. In May, he organised and participated in a chamber concert with members of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the first music to be heard at the Danish Radio Concert Hall in Copenhagen since the March lockdown. On the menu was Brahms’s First Sextet and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. Just one journalist was in the hall, but the concert was broadcast on television, radio and online. ‘It was so touching,’ he recalls; ‘I remember going to the hall, nobody there but the six of us, and thinking, “Is it going to be strange? Is it going to feel foreign, maybe?” And it didn’t. It felt so natural and so powerful.’

‘EVERYBODY WANTS TO WIN NEW AUDIENCES, BUT WE CAN’T EXPECT AN AUDIENCE THAT HAS NO RELATIONSHIP WITH CLASSICAL MUSIC TO BE MOVED BY A BRUCKNER SYMPHONY’

Playing chamber music in an empty Danish Radio Concert Hall during the pandemic was ‘so natural and so powerful’

NICOLAS KOCH FUTTRUP

Szeps-Znaider’s professional experience as a conductor stretches back a decade and a half

NICOLAS AUPROUX

Spending six months mostly at home for the first time since 1996, Szeps-Znaider has rarely been more active in Denmark, where he was born in 1975 to Polish-Jewish parents. By chance, he was booked years ago to make his Royal Danish Theatre conducting debut (which owns his ‘Kreisler’ Guarneri ‘del Gesu’ violin) in the company’s Danish-language production of Die Zauberflöte. The theatre’s opera season has so far proceeded exactly as planned, with one or two personnel changes, and the production duly opened on 30 August. During the run, Szeps-Znaider has been working with the Royal Danish Orchestra, an ensemble Constanze Mozart claimed played her late husband’s music better than any other. ‘It was a lovely month,’ he reports of the rehearsal period in August; ‘I left my home in the morning and came home early evening, like normal people. For the first time I felt like I had a normal job.’

Opera is one domain in which a musician trained as a solo violinist could be said to lack experience. Szeps-Znaider has years of work at the Mariinsky Theatre, Dresden Semperoper and other houses under his belt, but in this case he is having to negotiate a technically complex production by Barrie Kosky, a double cast and a new translation. Have there been compromises? ‘Yes, but opera itself is a compromise – when you have people doing music while running around, that’s a compromise. It’s about how you manage those compromises, and I love the processes involved. It is very different from a week with a symphony orchestra. There’s nowhere to hide, and you get inside it in a completely different way, first through piano rehearsals, then piano and stage, then orchestra alone and then putting the whole thing together.’

Dealing with singers can be challenging, he says: ‘They are constantly worried about opening their mouths as they’re not sure what’s going to come out – a worry that’s different from any other and something I have sympathy for.’ But discussing it allows Szeps-Znaider to voice his holistic ideas about music making which eff ectively render the situation, genre and personnel irrelevant. ‘When I ran my Nordic Music Academy, I would conduct rehearsals in the morning, teach and play chamber music in the afternoons and then do a concerto in the evening. I distinctly remember one day thinking, “This is all the same thing.” OK, the function is different, but the essence is sharing, having your antennae out – and that’s just as much the case in opera. If your musicians are alert, there are no problems. The problems come when people are too stuck in what they are doing, in their own head. It’s the same with everything.’

Opera’s necessary multitasking, its tendency to have performers learning physical actions at the same time as learning words and music, could be considered a danger zone in that sense. Performances are separated by days, and there are long runs; is there a risk of autopilot? ‘Things can become ingrained as habit, because of the nature of the thing, and the fact that there’s lots of room for big things to go wrong. But I feel there’s more danger of autopilot in a symphonic programme that’s repeated across three nights. In any situation, if you try to lock into a way of doing things you just end up repeating something that gets steadily less interesting. There are a couple of well-known musicians who do it well – who do it the same every time – and somehow it actually works. What takes more discipline, as Menuhin said about Furtwängler, is to maintain a fluid form. Because then you constantly have to be aware of dosage: how much? If you take time here, what does that mean when you get to this point later on? Th at takes in-the-moment awareness, whereas locking yourself in is kind of easy. It goes against my basic idea of music.’

‘AS A MUSICIAN, IF YOU TRY TO LOCK INTO A WAY OF DOING THINGS YOU END UP REPEATING SOMETHING THAT GETS STEADILY LESS INTERESTING. WHAT TAKES MORE DISCIPLINE IS TO MAINTAIN A FLUID FORM’

These are conversations Szeps-Znaider may well be having with his violin students at the Royal Danish Academy. His guest professorship was another opportunity presented by the pandemic, as the academy’s head of strings, Tim Frederiksen, sought to take advantage of having a world-class soloist with time on his hands less than six miles away. ‘I always hesitated to teach, because of time but also because of the idea that I’d be responsible for a student’s development,’ Szeps-Znaider says; ‘but I enjoy sharing what I have learnt with others, and the timing made sense.’ I ask if he has talented players to work with; his answer is typically holistic: ‘Talent is one thing, and there are some very gifted people, with potential. What really interests me is the attitude towards learning – that determines how far you actually go.’

OPERA PHOTOS CAMILLA WINTHER. CIRCLE PHOTO LARS GUNDERSEN

‘THERE ARE SOME VERY GIFTED PEOPLE WITH POTENTIAL. WHAT REALLY INTERESTS ME IS THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS LEARNING. THAT DETERMINES HOW FAR YOU ACTUALLY GO’

As for his own violin playing, he maintains that it’s inseparable from his conducting: ‘Performance is narrating, so in that sense it is the same thing and the learning process is the same.’ He has said in the past that instrumentalists who conduct have to train their brains to look at music in a different way, so how does he find the practicalities of juggling two careers? ‘It’s not easy. I have half the time and double the tasks – perhaps with a bit of overlap.’ He can normally go ‘very quickly’ from an engagement conducting to one playing, he says; ‘I feed off multiplicity, being forced to adapt to new things. I’m not sure I could find the same nourishment in a small, limited season, and in that sense I’m looking forward to things ramping up again.’

Two points of repertoire came up in Szeps-Znaider’s conversation with The Strad six years ago. The first was his burning desire to record the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto. That (and a recording of the Sibelius) remains unfulfilled. He recognises that the world of recording was changing before Covid, and probably will change even more after it. ‘Recording has a different function now,’ he says, referring both to the wealth of material being made by audience-restricted orchestras and the scarcity of the traditional record contract. ‘There is a time element too – in preparing for a recording I am very meticulous.’

The other was Bach, in whose music the Dane said he had not yet been able ‘to find his voice’. Still the case? ‘Th at relates to recording, actually,’ he responds; ‘I would have to make a project of recording them all, living with them’ (he’s referring to the Sonatas and Partitas). ‘One thing I would love to explore would be to play Bach on the sort of instrument he wrote for, to feel what that is like. It is the same reason I said no to teaching all this time: if I do it, I would want to do it fully. You can easily do something on the surface that makes it sound historically informed, but of course it has to be more than that. To know musically what to do with that enormous amount of music, on your own, with nobody to hide behind, to find your voice in that repertoire – well, that is a challenge. You’ve given me an idea there. You could have just cost me three years of my life!’