Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to Issue 31: Love and Disorder.
It was a real treat to discuss Mozart’s masterpiece Don Giovanni with the brilliant David Stern back in October. David is Music Director of Palm Beach Opera and founder of Opera Fuoco – the independent, Paris-based opera company. He has also been Music Director of the Israel Opera in Tel Aviv, the Opera St. Gallen in Switzerland, and previously led the Philharmonie Südwestfalen in Germany. David has an infectious passion for Mozart, in particular the Da Ponte operas. Notes covered Don Giovanni in its very first issue, but David’s focus on the piece’s articulation (one of the most contentious issues in the performance of Mozart’s music) is likely to take your understanding of the piece to a whole new level. He prepared numerous examples in advance for us to discuss (we focussed on Act I), which I don’t think has happened before in any of my interviews with conductors. His experience and knowledge is vast and he was thoroughly entertaining. Have a score to hand, because David dives deep!
Next we have Friedrich Haider. It was wonderful to catch up with him – I first interviewed him back in 2019 on Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s opera I gioielli della Madonna. For over 20 years, Friedrich has been an ardent Wolf-Ferrari advocate – he first stumbled across his music in an antique bookstore in 2001, where he found the vocal score of Il segreto di Susanna in old box of music. Haider’s indefatigable enthusiasm has ensured that Wolf-Ferrari’s music has steadily increased in popularity over the years. Opera Holland Park’s production of Il segreto di Susanna was first performed in 2019, and returned for the 2024 season. This time he chose to discuss his new orchestrations of a selection of songs by the same composer. Haider himself formed the song cycle by selecting specific songs from Wolf-Ferrari’s songbooks, and has named it Quando to vidi (‘When I first laid eyes on you’). The cycle has now been recorded with the soprano Bianca Tognocchi, and is beautifully orchestrated. More information can also be found in this recent video.
And lastly, something a little leftfield: an article of my own on organisation. This is a topic that has frequently arisen, in various guises, in many of my interviews and discussions with conductors over the years, but isn’t usually discussed as a subject in its own right. Our clarity of thinking has a huge impact on our productivity, efficiency, creativity and even our mental and physical health, so I have endeavoured to relate this vast topic to aspects of the conducting profession. The lighthearted article draws on a variety of sources: responses from conductors; feng shui masters; professional organisers; personal experience; well-known non-musicians; and a small selection of relevant quotes from the Notes’ interview archive. I hope it’s useful, and feel free to email with any of your little secrets for future reference!
As ever, huge thanks to David and Friedrich for such interesting suggestions. I hope you enjoy the issue.
Dr Hannah Baxter (Editor)