Jaap van Zweden on his musical journey, meeting his wife, and their son’s autism
The Dutch conductor, soon to be maestro of three orchestras, including the Hong Kong Philharmonic, talks about why he wears black, socialising on stage, his eye-watering salary and understanding autism
On a recent Friday afternoon, in the concert hall of the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, a rehearsal is about to begin. It’s for Siegfried, the third part of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, which will be performed as opera-in-concert with the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by its music director, Jaap van Zweden. The flow of musicians through the stage door has lured in a couple of tourists, who are politely moved on; the general public won’t be admitted until Thursday and the following Sunday. Prior to that, only a lucky few will hear the work in progress.
Sitting in the auditorium is one other person, a young man called Volker Krafft, from Hamburg, in Germany. He is the production’s vocal coach. No singers are present – they’re due to arrive in Hong Kong the following week – but Krafft is checking balance and acoustics. On a music stand, he’s placed a bound score of Siegfried, thicker than a Bible and already bristling with multicoloured Post-it notes for Act I.
Now, as the orchestra rehearses Act II Scenes 1 and 2, he scribbles further tiny musical annotations or comments (“melt into each other”) in English; that’s the language he’ll use with Maestro Van Zweden, who’s Dutch, in their meeting immediately afterwards. The maestro is exacting, and so Krafft works non-stop.
“One pencil per production,” he says, wryly.
On the podium, Van Zweden – short, clad in black, slightly hunched – looks almost otherworldly. Even from 10 rows away, it’s clear he’s a force to be reckoned with; to the musicians on the stage, he surely feels all-consuming. In January 2016, the announcement that he would become the New York Philharmonic’s music director in 2018 (he is music director designate for the 2017/18 season) drew global attention to the alchemy he has worked upon the Hong Kong Phil, with which he will remain until 2022.
Siegfried will be recorded under the Naxos label during the coming performances. The orchestra has already made acclaimed live recordings of the first two parts of the Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre; when the latter came out late last year, the praise was noticeably wide-ranging.
(The Times: “evidence of Van Zweden’s success in dramatically raising standards at Hong Kong”; The Washington Post: “gorgeous work from the Hong Kong wind section”; Gramophone magazine: “Jaap van Zweden has turned the orchestra into a Wagner band to be reckoned with”.)