Maestro Ashkenazy sounds off

Czech Philharmonic conductor blasts 'lack of motivation'

By Alan Levy
The Prague Post
(April 24, 2003)

This interview almost didn't happen. A late January
get-together for a mellow look back at his five years as
chief conductor and music director of the Czech
Philharmonic was canceled by Vladimir Ashkenazy's
management in London because the maestro didn't
have much good to say about the orchestra he leaves in
June.

Since I'm known to some as "The Travel Agent of the
Guilt Trip," I e-mailed Ashkenazy about moral
obligation, inconvenience, etc. and he phoned me an
hour later. Together, we hammered out one sentence that was all he'd have
to say about the
Czech Philharmonic in an interview we rescheduled for April: "In five
years I gave them all
my heart, but by and large I had no response."

For our April interview, when he was passing through Prague for the final
concert of a
seven-city tour with the European Union Youth Orchestra, the celebrated
pianist-turned-conductor was wearing his trademark white turtleneck (his
performance uniform,
too) when he welcomed me at the Prague Marriott hotel. Compact, trim and
all business at 65,
he was pleased when I pulled out the agreed-upon quote and asked if he
wanted to make any
modifications or additions.

As I read it back to him, his cheerful, blond Icelandic wife objected
that the phrase "by and
large" didn't do justice to a handful or more of musicians who shared her
husband's ambitions.
So we rephrased the ending to read "... but I have a very strong feeling
that I got very little
response."

"Having said that," he went on, "I could add that there are some
wonderful players with whom
I've had very rich contact that I'll never forget. Musically, there have
been some wonderful
concerts and for this I'll always be grateful. ... But I was told by many
members of the
orchestra that they lack motivation. When I asked why, they said they are
paid very little [on
average, 17,000 Kc/$600 a month].

"I can only guess that having been the elite orchestra of communist
Czechoslovakia, now they
find themselves competing with world-class orchestras out in the open --
even here. I may be
wrong, but I feel a lot of resentment coming from them. Yes, their jobs
are safe, but they see
they're paid very little and not much appreciated for being a great
orchestra -- at least when it
started. If you lack motivation, it's bound to affect the performance.
Motivation is important
everywhere. It's why smaller armies sometimes win wars."

"Should anybody's job be safe in the arts?" I wondered.

"That's a very interesting question. You know, I conduct a lot in
Germany, where musicians also
are civil servants with lifetime job security. But they never, never lack
motivation. They give
their hearts to every note of music. ... You can't relate your life to
how much you're paid. It's a
great pity that this is the case here. You see, I'm worried for the
future of the orchestra,
because to compete with the greatest orchestras in the world you have to
give your best every
time. It's scary -- but I wish them only well. I'd hope they think about
what I'm saying to you
and take themselves in hand -- their own hands."

"Did you try to take them in hand?" I asked.

"I tried to explain to them what the West is like. Money isn't just lying
in the street waiting for
you to pick it up. You have to earn it. Nobody owes you another recording
or concert gig. You
have to deserve it. But misunderstanding of the West is tremendous in all
the ex-communist
countries: ignorance and lack of readiness to understand and adapt to the
New World."

Mahler 7, Tchaikovsky 5

Now the dam burst -- with example following example:

"You know that the recording business is trailing off nowadays. But I
collaborate with a small
label in Japan, Octavia Records, that's happy to record the Czech
Philharmonic, too. They've
issued 10 CDs of the orchestra. Well, they wanted to record Mahler 7
[Symphony], which isn't a
hot ticket like Tchaikovsky 5. Octavia could pay the orchestra only
$20,000 [now 580,000 Kc].
The orchestra wanted $25,000, so they dug in their heels and stonewalled
it.

"We held a meeting. One musician stood up and said:
'So you want us to record for nothing!'

"All I could do after that was write a personal check
myself for $5,000 to save the recording. But not one
person in the orchestra said 'thank you' to me -- or even
mentioned it.

"Another time was on a Japanese tour. The orchestra
had a free day before traveling to the next concert. But
there was a typhoon warning. So the management
asked them if they could possibly fly to the next
destination a day early, because if they couldn't fly the
next day, then they'd lose the concert. They insisted on
being compensated for losing the free day -- even
though the flight was just an hour and a half and they
had the same amount of free time remaining, in any
case, but at the other end. The Japanese never forgot
this. Our negotiations with them are tougher now."

Babi Yar in Babylon

The absolute summit of Ashkenazy's five years with the
Czech Philharmonic was scaled early this year with a
cycle of Soviet compositions called "Music and
Dictatorship: Russia Under Stalin," featuring works
mostly by Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.
They were written to glorify, yet undercut, a system that
threatened their careers and their lives. Its high point
was Shostakovich's monumental 13th Symphony, with
its setting of Yevgeni Yevtushenko's epic poem
protesting anti-Semitism, Babi Yar. Sung in Russian in
Prague's Rudolfinum and New York's Carnegie Hall,
Babi Yar was preceded in New York by Yevtushenko
himself reading in Russian and English.

"With the concerts in New York and London," said
Ashkenazy, "I also conducted a symposium explaining
that era and I'll do so in Vienna in June. But not in
Prague. The orchestra management refused to schedule a symposium here.
What a pity!
Czechoslovakia and my country went through this difficult period
together. Why couldn't we talk
about it?"

Blaming general director Vaclav Riedlbauch for the veto, Ashkenazy went
on to lambaste him:

"We had a very successful tour in the United States. Three consecutive
nights in Carnegie Hall
sold out. But Riedlbauch didn't even come; he had 'other commitments.'
Nobody ever heard of
a major orchestra coming to New York without its manager."

("I'll answer the second accusation first," Riedlbauch replied in a
telephone interview. "That's a
very stupid sentence by Mr. Ashkenazy, because he knows we had such
problems financing
the U.S. tour that we had to cut down the number of musicians. So it
would have been
presumptuous for me to come along.

"As for the symposium, the reasons he gives for having it are also
reasons for not having it
here. People here know about it.")

The afternoon after his EU Youth Orchestra concert, Ashkenazy phoned me
from Ruzyne
Airport: "I'm really sorry you couldn't come, but here's what you missed:
Those kids played
Rachmaninov's Second Symphony, the exact same piece I conducted with the
Philharmonic a
year ago in the same hall. And I'm sad to say that last night it sounded
10 times better. Why?
Because they were motivated."