Interview with Christoph Koncz

CK This decision is based on my very diverse interests. Of course it is a dream to play with the Vienna Philharmonic. I was twenty when I was accepted and have always really enjoyed making music in this orchestra and put my heart and soul into it. That is still the case today. I still identify strongly with the Vienna Philharmonic and consider my 15-year membership to be a real treasure trove of experience: the unique sound of my colleagues, which I was able to feel and absorb from the inside. But also the encounters with the most important conductors of our time in a range that hardly exists anywhere else, and from such close proximity - I sat in the center, right at the front with the second violins. What effect does something that the conductor gives have? How do I react to it, how do my colleagues? Why are you fascinated at one moment and irritated at another? In concert as well as at the Vienna State Opera with its legendarily broad repertoire, which is also a great memory school for every musician, I was able to gain experience that I now regard as the basis for all my artistic activities. In addition to playing the violin, I have always been very interested in conducting. I come from a family of musicians. My father is a conductor and even as a small child I loved attending his orchestra rehearsals. Today I know that he taught us music from a typical conductor's perspective: Why is this phrase played this way? Why did the composer write this and not this or that? What does this passage express? We were still children, but he shared very profound interpretative questions with us right from the start.

CK After graduating from high school, I studied conducting at the Vienna University of Music alongside my violin studies and kept looking for opportunities to gain practical experience during my time with the Philharmoniker. In recent years, the requests for conducting have increased to such an extent that - even though my colleagues in the orchestra have always been very supportive - it was no longer possible to do both at the same time. So I had to make a decision and now dedicate myself exclusively to conducting in order to establish myself as a conductor and to be perceived as such.

CK ... exactly, and I also conduct in both areas!

CK Some time ago, I directed a production by Christian Spuck at the Zurich Opera House, which brought ballet to the stage together with singers to music by Claudio Monteverdi. I was deeply impressed by the way Spuck and the dancers worked and when Martin Schläpfer became director of the Vienna State Ballet, I approached him. I am very interested in the balance between what the dancers need on stage and the purely musical interpretation of a composition.

CK ... which is a rarity these days!

CK You can immediately hear that Joby Talbot is at home in the London scene. His music vibrates, pulsates, is modern, but not from an experimental studio. You could describe his style as popular, his music as very accessible - both for the performer and the listener. Certainly in The Winter's Tale we also hear his experience as a film music composer and influences from the musicals of London's West End. When I met with him recently, we were sitting in a café opposite one of the theaters there and what was advertised? MJ - the musical about Michael Jackson, directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon! Talbot knows exactly how to illustrate a scene and create emotion without pushing himself to the fore - a quality that is rarely found. For me, the most perfect examples are the great Tchaikovsky ballets, Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps and Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet - brilliant scores in which you can hear the entire plot without your attention being drawn away from the action on stage. When such a synthesis succeeds, we have a perfect ballet score and thus a great art form.

CK Talbot uses this instrumentation with great virtuosity to create a very exotic colouring for our ears and thus characterizes the two royal worlds, the Sicilian court and the cheerful Bohemian pastoral scene of Act 2. This could be compared to the clearly separated sound worlds of the Empress, Barak and the Dyer in Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten. The incidental music bears the hallmarks of fictional folk music, but its instruments also remind me of a musical such as The Lion King. In addition to such references, however, Talbot's timbres reveal a voice all of his own, which - like a robe you put on - is immediately recognizable.

CK I'm really looking forward to it! Of course, there is a personal familiarity that I can build on and rely on. On the other hand, when I conducted the State Ballet premiere of Tabula rasa in April 2023, I also realized that it had been over 30 years since a musician from our own ranks had conducted the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. So it is an extraordinary, joyful and exciting task!

The interview was conducted by chief dramaturge Anne do Paço.