Riccardo Muti: by Susan Gould ... The young Italian maestro sets down his conditions for recording.
"I Will Not Record Anything I Have Not Already Pulled Through a Live Performance"
by Susan Gould
BOTH OF us found the situation amusing: Though I have reviewed every op era Riccardo Muti has conducted in Florence since my arrival there in 1970 (he has appeared there regularly since 1969) and have attended many of his symphonic concerts, our first meeting took place only last fall-in Philadelphia, my home town and the site of his 1972 American debut.
In this country, Muti's engagements have been exclusively symphonic. He explained that it is pure chance that his only records so far released (he is an exclusive EMI artist) are vocal: Aida with Caballe and Domingo (HF, February 1975), the Cherubini D minor Requiem (HF, December 1975), and Ballo in maschera with Arroyo and Domingo (reviewed this month). He has already done or will be doing the symphonies of Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, the two G minor sym phonies of Mozart, and two Mozart piano concertos with Richter. The Mozart concertos will be done at Salzburg, the others in London with the New Philharmonia, of which he has been principal conductor since 1973. (In 1977 he will also become principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.)
"The Aida was a gift from heaven," Muti said. "I had conducted it in Vienna, in a well-prepared version, and Domingo and Cossotto, from that cast, were with me again. Caballe is very intelligent and knew just what I wanted: to combine her bel canto with the drama of the word and of the ac cent necessary in Verdi. We were able to do it all in big chunks. I always lis ten to playbacks right away, because sometimes it is all right the first time; more often, even if we thought we had the right feeling or sound, we were wrong, and it is best to know immediately.
"People say that in recording any thing is possible, but that is not true. We can make certain that details are more or less as we wish, but in ten days it is not possible to create the atmosphere for a massive work, which should be built over a period of weeks working together. That is why the Aida, having a head start in performance, worked out so well. I will not, in fact, record anything I have not al ready pulled through the experience of a live performance. The Cherubini Requiem was a pet project of mine. I admire Cherubini tremendously and feel he is undervalued outside of Italy; Beethoven himself considered him a great composer. However, my plans cannot include more Cherubini until I conduct more live, so for now I am planning a Macbeth next July, and after I do Nabucco at the Maggio Musicale, I will record it, in 1977. I hope to find casts for a William Tell and L'Africaine." The thirty-four-year-old maestro was well prepared for an operatic career. He conducted Paisiello's L'Osteria di Marechiaro while still at the Milan Conservatory, in 1965. After receiving a degree in composition, he spent a great deal of time playing the piano for the voice classes of soprano Maria Carbone, a singer of the Neapolitan school from which had come Caniglia and others. ("Like them or not by today's standards," Muti says, "they did know how to sing.") His work with Carbone taught him the technical problems of singers, and their repertory, and to this he added his own feeling for holding things together. His Florence repertory has included William Tell, L'Africaine, I Puritani, Don Pasquale, Macbeth, Forza, Ballo, and Cav and Pag, and he has been a regular guest at the Vienna State Opera and at Salzburg.
He has plans with Covent Garden and the Bavarian State Opera and was approached by the Met after his 1972 William Tell at the Maggio Musicale. But he is cautious.
"Actually, I conduct more concerts than opera, and I am hesitant about doing opera in too many places. I am wary of the methods of production today, of the way singers can be destroyed by the way they are misused by theaters, and, if I don't find the particular conditions that will guarantee a first-class result, I won't accept the offer. If I go to the Met, it means two or three months in one place with one opera, and it may be that I can be of more use elsewhere, perhaps in concert work."
Knowing that Muti began recording only after much persuasion, I asked whether he considers a record a valid musical document.
"No, records have seemed to me a betrayal of the musical fact, which must be born, go through its life, and die in a single sweeping arc. The record cannot do this; there cannot be creative liberty, because we are so preoccupied with the perfect sound. O, Dio, naturally we must try to get as close as we can to technical rightness, but if the recording becomes only a technological fact, like missiles and moon landings, then we are betraying music itself.
"I would very much like to make live recordings, preferably of a new production that has gone through months of maturation, with singers who are sure of what they are doing.
Of course that presents technical problems, and there is also the danger that the singers would forget the action to poke their voices into the best microphone, as some do in normal recording sessions. Yet it would be worth all the problems just to achieve that immediacy." Did Muti perhaps think more highly of recordings as a youngster? "No, recordings had 'very little effect on me as I grew up. I always preferred reading scores at the piano. The rare times that I did listen to records, it was because I had an interest in them as documents of a particular conductor. My father had a fine tenor voice, and when he could take time away from his medical practice he would sing with amateur groups, something that unfortunately does not exist so much in Italy any more.
They would study for months before performing, and so he learned every note of the things they did, such as the Verdi Requiem. This had more in fluence on me than any recording.
And when I was at the Milan Conservatory, I had the chance to hear live operas and concerts and to play with groups of student musicians-so again, few records. Now I would not have time to listen; and now, especially, it is of more value for me to read scores." And now, of course, Muti himself is one of those "particular conductors" of whom people want recordings as "documents"!
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(High Fidelity, Feb. 1976)
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