Manfred Honeck On What Makes A Great Bruckner Conductor

Few conductors tackling the music of Anton Bruckner have benefited from an induction that involved a decade playing in the Vienna Philharmonic under such giants as Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Carlo Maria Giulini and Zubin Mehta, learning the music from the inside. Manfred Honeck played viola in the orchestra [his younger brother, Rainer, is one of its Concertmasters] before pursuing a career as a conductor. He has been Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony since 2008. Ahead of a European tour that brings Honeck back to Vienna, I chatted with him about this year’s big anniversary composer. 

Honeck long held ambitions to step out of the ranks and swap the bow for the baton. “Conducting was always a dream of mine!” he begins. “Even before I joined the Wiener Philharmoniker, I had already conducted the Austrian Youth Orchestra and founded the Wiener Jeunesse Orchester, which still exists actually, but I was far away from really understanding conducting at that time.” 

The musical spark came early. “I remember when I was a young boy,” Honeck recounts, “I went to the New Year’s Concert, standing at the back of the Musikverein. I was surrounded in the Stehplatz by adults and I couldn’t see anything. There was an usher who saw me and picked me out of the crowd and positioned me in front of them – in that moment, I had the best view of Willi Boskovsky and the Wiener Philharmoniker and went home thinking to myself that either I would become an orchestral musician or a conductor. I want to thank this usher, who cannot have realised what a big role he played in my life.”  

“In parallel to this service of playing in the Philharmoniker and at the Wiener Staatsoper, I was conducting professional orchestras like the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and in Germany. It was only a question of time as to when I’d make the decision and that came when Alexander Pereira, who was Intendant at the Konzerthaus, was appointed as director of the Zurich Opera House. He called and asked me if I’d like to go with him, so I knew I had to take this chance. I loved playing in the Philharmoniker though. To experience all these fantastic conductors, it was the best school for being a conductor!” 

These giants all had their different approaches to conducting Bruckner. “Karajan was especially keen to polish the sound, with a lot of beauty. Creating a church-like sound was very important for him. There’s even a CD – I think it was Bruckner 7 – and on the cover you see Karajan and in the background you can see me among the musicians in the Musikverein. We played the Ninth under Lenny on tour and again with Giulini, who got us to play with this strong, deep string sound. All these conductors had a very good feeling for Bruckner. Even if their interpretations were very different, Bruckner himself always convinced you. He’s very hard to destroy, somehow.”  

What makes a great Bruckner conductor? “That’s a very difficult question,” Honeck explains, “because technically, from the baton, how you beat, Bruckner is very easy. It’s not like Stravinsky’s Sacre or Mahler. The same is true for Mozart.”

On the page, indeed, Bruckner looks pretty straightforward. There aren’t complex time signatures and rapid changes of tempo. But pacing those tempi can defeat many. “You have to understand that the tempo comes automatically if you understand the context in which it was written, the spirituality that was in the man and his music and to understand that spirituality. If there is contrapuntal writing, like a fugue, then understand that the second theme in the fuga is also important, the counterpoint is important so you must give it a life; if you take it too quickly, then you have a problem. The same is true with the folk music, you have to know which tempo or in which kind of style it was played.” 

We discuss the musical DNA that runs through Bruckner’s music: the tremolando strings, the ‘three against two’ rhythms, the long crescendos. “The silences in Bruckner’s music are also important. Bruckner has these blocks, these long phrases and you have to build them into a castle, a single structure. When you start with Bruckner, you already have to be thinking about the end, so then you get a clean long line and can connect these blocks together. It’s not one block, next block, next block; that would destroy Bruckner. You need to be able to connect the phrases together so that it becomes organic and logical.” 

Bruckner’s symphonies are often described as ‘cathedrals of sound’ and his chords often have an organ-like texture, indicative of the composer’s religious fervour. “Bruckner prayed every day, making a sign whenever he prayed an Ave Maria. In the monastery of St Florian, he was connected to the liturgy. It’s where he learnt to sing and to play the organ, to learn about counterpoint. This all had an influence – I can show you exactly where it appears in his scores, reflecting his religious beliefs, always with an eye towards heaven, an eye towards God.” 

Honeck writes his own extensive liner notes for his CDs and in the latest Pittsburgh release – Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony – he cites a particular new discovery. “Why, in the first movement, does Bruckner wait nearly 20 minutes [bar 391] to introduce the timpani?” he asks me. “There have been other moments where he could use it, but… no timpani. For a long time I did not understand, and then I suddenly got it: he refers to the liturgy. Bruckner went to Mass every day, of which the central part is the Eucharist, and at the moment the timpani starts, he writes “sehr feierlich” – very celebratory, very solemn – so it has a special meaning for him.  There is a crescendo for 12 bars and a diminuendo of 11 bars which is where the priest on the altar holds the bread and wine up and down and then, four bars before the timpani comes in, there is a diminuendo, which describes the moment when the congregation gets down on their knees. Someone who recently bought the CD said to me, ‘Manfred, I now hear this moment completely differently’ and that’s the point when I believe it’s worth the effort to write the notes. But they are only my suggestions; somebody else can see it completely differently. There are many routes to the same destination!”  

“But it’s also important not to forget that Bruckner also played folk music. And this always brings me to the point that I said to myself you cannot exclude any one of these pillars from Bruckner’s life: you cannot say Bruckner is only spiritual, or that Bruckner is only organ, or that Bruckner is only folk music. This would be completely wrong. So yes, the sound of a cathedral, the sound of an organ is an important part of Bruckner, but it is not everything. Wiener Schnitzel is important to all Viennese but to live on Wiener Schnitzel alone is impossible!” 

I note that Bruckner’s folk music often refers to Ländler. “Ah, but which kind of Ländler?” counters Honeck. “There is a Steirische Ländler, from the south, there’s a Bayerische Ländler, a Tyroler Ländler, many different types and Bruckner knew them. There’s even a yodel included here and, in the first movement [bar 221], I referred the violins to Hungarian music. I told them they had to play this like a csárdas. A Hungarian csárdas in a Bruckner symphony? For some people, this is sacrilegious, but you shouldn’t forget that the Austrian Empire was not the Austria of today. It included Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, so Vienna was the musical crossroads. Think of Brahms with his Hungarian Dances. Bruckner also heard this Hungarian music, so no wonder that he incorporated it.”

Bruckner was a simple man, who didn’t fit very easily into Viennese society. How much was he caught in the crossfire of the cultural battle between supporters of Wagner and the supporters of Brahms? “There were a lot of musicological waves with Eduard Hanslick at the centre. Nowadays we can’t understand why they would fight each other. The Wiener Philharmoinker had the same – some older colleagues told me about some of the fights within the orchestra, stories they’d got from their own teachers. Bruckner’s music was so unique, so different. Suddenly a guy brings in Wagner tubas or these strange chords and starts symphonies with a tremolando – you can imagine. It was a shock for them, so about half the orchestra didn’t like it. 

“Bruckner was new. He came from Upper Austria – Ansfelden, St Florian, Linz. Even though he was very humble and would later changed things in his scores, Bruckner was very sure of his own mind. He was very self-assured and other people did not like that. When he came to Vienna, he did not ‘kiss the hand’, so to speak. He did not follow the usual norms. For example, he always wore short trousers. His students once bought him a new suit and put it under the Christmas tree but they didn’t hear anything for months and so they asked him. He replied, ‘Yes yes, you sent me a suit, but it was too long so I cut it already.’ He wanted to have short trousers – the most expensive suit and he cut it! It’s a simple example but it’s him. He didn’t want to change. He was true to himself.”

To Honeck, recordings are important “as a document of how an orchestra plays at a given moment” and since he took up the helm in Pittsburgh in 2008, he has sought to record plenty of the core repertoire. “The Symphony is the most important cultural institution in Pittsburgh and to have no document of their work was not good.” I ask about the orchestra’s stengths. “The PSO has the ability to load every phrase with energy and to fill it with context for what I believe the composers want to show – if it’s about love, if it’s about darkness or death or triumph, then they really believe it. They go for it in every moment and that’s one of these things – they go to the edge when you ask them to. They want to be challenged.”

As well as recording, touring is another important aspect in promoting what the Pittsburgh Symphony can do. “It’s also important that people want you to tour,” Honeck explains. “For example, this year we are the only American orchestra invited to perform at the Salzburg Festival. We are ambassadors for Pittsburgh and our donors and sponsors very much support that. When you have something to say, let’s go out and tell the world. The Steelers can never come to Europe or Asia because their football league is in America, you know, but the Symphony goes everywhere we are invited.” 

The ten-concert tour concludes, to bring us back full circle, in Honeck’s Vienna, playing Mahler’s First Symphony to open the Konzerthaus season. “We tour every second year and it is a tradition that I am thankful for. What a joy it is for the audience also to hear orchestras from different continents. Music brings people together, it is the best language in the world.” 

Click here to see the events on the Pittsburgh Symphony’s European tour.