INTERVIEW: "Antony Hermus: Culture makes us human"

‘Music can make society warmer and closer. I would like to contribute to that in any way I can’.

Following interviews with Marc Albrecht, Lorenzo Viotti and Hartmut Haenchen about “conductor’s life in Corona-time”, Franz Straatman interviewed Antony for Place de l’opera. You can read the Dutch interview here, or read the English translation below.

ANTONY HERMUS: 'CULTURE MAKES US HUMAN’.

Lowlands was in his calendar, as was Tristan und Isolde, his debut in the USA and Mahler's eighth symphony. Cancelled. Nevertheless, Antony Hermus says with gratitude that he still has quite a few weeks of work as a conductor until Christmas. Provided corona does not draw another line under the bill. A discussion about the crisis, new ideas and the importance of culture.

Recently Antony Hermus was sitting in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw listening to the European Youth Orchestra, in a hall that can hold 2,000 visitors, but where now a maximum of 350 fans had taken their seats. An experience he will not lightly forget, especially not because of the dedication and creativity of the thirty or so young musicians.

‘I know some of them. The tour that was planned with the whole orchestra was cancelled. That didn't stop a group of strings from organising something themselves in the Concertgebouw. I deeply admire how they managed to overcome the setback due to the corona period. From nowhere they created a wonderful programme, including Richard Strauss' Metamorphoses for 23 strings and a concert for four violins and orchestra by Vivaldi. Well, I'm a Vivaldi-hater, but I was completely wrapped up in their great playing'.

FARM RENTED

Creating opportunities, developing ideas: these are the themes that constantly recur in a conversation about what a conductor, a musician can do in the imposed emptiness of corona time. Together with Ed Spanjaard and Karel Deseure, just like Hermus professors of conducting at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, a plan was developed to get the directors at home to 'wave' again.

Hermus: 'Our students had not conducted physically since mid-March. There were a lot of online lessons, but that's not the same. So we rented a farm in Otterlo with two halls and enough bedrooms to accommodate everyone corona-proof. Eight students, three mentors and the musicians of the mini orchestras (string quartets and pianists) worked together intensively for seven full days. You can study all kinds of scores, but in order to develop yourself further you have to do it physically. It is about the physical and mental interaction between a conductor and the musicians in order to bring the notes to life in the best possible way'.

Hermus himself experienced how he developed in the practice of ‘waving’ when he went on an internship as a 24-year-old music student from Tilburg at the opera house in Hagen, Germany. Starting with accompanying singers as a rehearsal pianist, he went through a ten-year apprenticeship. In this school he got to know the opera company in every fibre of his being. After five years he was asked to become chief conductor. ‘I was 29. Everything I conducted there was a first time.'

After those five years as chief conductor he was offered an extension of his contract, but he said no. ‘I needed a new, fresh breeze’. He found it in Dessau, a city the size of 's-Hertogenbosch, but with an enormous opera house, one of the largest theatres in Germany. ‘I was there for six years. In my last season we did the complete Ring. It was easy to do that with such a huge stage and orchestra pit'

BUILDING UP TRUST

Opera was in his blood. He learned to deal with the ideas of all kinds of directors. ‘I was lucky enough to be able to work with theatre makers who started from the music. I am always present early on at stage rehearsals and I also expect stage directors to be present in my musical rehearsals. Then in these rehearsals I am already thinking theatrically as a conductor. You have to build up trust, so that a unity is created.

I'm very sorry that my collaboration with Tatjana Gürbaca, with whom I was rehearsing Rusalka at the English National Opera in March, had to be broken off because of the lockdown. Such a good director; she was to direct Boito's Mefistofele for the opening of the season at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam'.

The Dutch Reisopera contracted Hermus in 2010 to conduct Un ballo in maschera and re-invited him in 2013, this time for Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. He was put together with the Noord Nederlands Orkest, which played the production in the orchestra pit. The contact with the NNO was so good that Hermus was asked back for guest conductorships and in 2015 he became Principle Guest Conductor.

‘I had already been chief conductor twice. I didn't want to commit myself again. I didn't want to tie myself up again, but I did want to get involved', he says with a big smile. The bond with the orchestra - 75 musicians - turned out to be close. ‘It has developed so strongly. It has become such a beautiful orchestra', he adds with a satisfied look. ‘Every season we do a symphony by Gustav Mahler.  We were to play the eighth symphony in December. Unfortunately, that cannot go ahead. Just like a revival of the Tristan from 2013 at the Reisopera. No opera on the agenda for the time being. Well, it will come as it comes'.

DAVID BOWIE

With the NNO, Antony Hermus should have performed at the Lowlands Festival last weekend. With Beethoven's ninth symphony. It would have been his fourth participation in this pop festival. Classical on a pop stage, that characterises Hermus' thinking outside the box. ‘Everyone loves classical music', he bounces back, 'they just haven’t found out about it yet. If people leave out their prejudices, they start listening differently. It's a great feeling when a big crowd at Lowlands surrenders to it'.

He points to an initiative developed by the artistic director of NNO, Marcel Mandos, to connect pop and classical music. ‘He tapped into the musical preferences of David Bowie, who was inspired by composers such as John Adams, Philip Glass and Richard Strauss. This resulted in a fantastic programme entitled What's on the iPod of David Bowie, including arrangements of pieces by Bowie, of course. I conducted; three times we had an enthusiastic full auditorium in the concert hall De Oosterpoort.

“You have to want to think and to develop an idea', says Hermus with dedicated passion in his voice. ‘Our government cannot look away. It has a duty to support our entire cultural sector with maximum possibilities. Culture is the yeast in the dough of society. It can take away the harshness of life. Culture is our humanity’.

WARMER AND CLOSER

Already at the beginning of the lockdown, the musicians of the NNO made national headlines with a film in which parts of Dvořák's New World Symphony, recorded by individual musicians, were edited into one whole. ‘We are going into a new world, they said, let us do something with Dvořák’.

Hermus: 'We will soon be starting up the entire orchestra with Beethoven's seventh symphony. We will play with one and a half metres between the played and in a hall with a limited number of listeners. The so-called ‘new normal’. But it is not a new normal. It is abnormal. I hope the audience finds the courage to feel safe and comes to listen. As subsidised institutions, orchestras have a duty to be creative. Music can make society warmer and closer. I would like to contribute to that in any way I can'.

Hermus and the NNO will play on 9 and 11 September in Groningen, on 10 September in Drachten and on 12 September in Assen. Antony Hermus will conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam on 3 and 4 December in works by Dutch composers.