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Joshard Daus Interview

What is your most lasting recollection of your childhood?

The parental home. The family is the root of what we experience in society. I consider it to be one of the main sources of our strength.

What is your impression of the present time?

There is a field of tension between occupational work, one's perception of one's own family and the political present. These areas are closely linked with one another.

The situation at the moment does not show any rooting of education, religion and culture, but is strongly marketing oriented and superficial.

It would be fine if my concept of educational would could lead to a process taking place in school again allowing more people to experience music. From this would result, on the other hand, standards for the development of one's own children, for commitment in society and for the further development of society.

What was your greatest success?

One of the most important encounters was my co-operation with Sergiu Celibidache. The work with the Bach Ensemble and Celibidache, my choir's co-operation with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in preparing Bach's Mass in b-minor were fundamental experiences and personal as well as professional successes.

What was your greatest failure?

Well, I have not yet had a real failure. I have, of course, had falls which have, however, immediately always led to a further development.

In my years as a beginner, I had my first post in Rotenburg an der Wümme. The then senior district executive spoilt me incredibly. I was able to do what I wanted, one can hardly imagine that any more today. I was able to equip rooms, I got a house for the district school of music, I was able to add on our own concert hall, buy a grand piano, thus inconceivable possibilities. Filling posts, even music teachers, was no problem,

Then I became director of the school of music in Hamm in Wesphalia, and at the same time municipal director of music. The apparatus established there, with a unique new building in Germany , was at that time a very high ranking and highly placed school in Germany.

I was a really vital, young, romantic idealist, who was also shaped by the '68 period, although myself more conservative. When I then arrived in the provinces, I seemed like a revolutionary. At that time, I was not yet able to cope with this field of tension, and then I took the logical step and gave up the job of running the school. I retained the artistic activity of municipal director of music and developed it further.

Then I went to Bremen to head the school of music in the conservatory here. The difficulty once again of working with an established apparatus while preferring to work artistically then led to my finishing this field, and concentrating wholly on the artistic work.

The most important step towards realising my ideas was quite certainly the professorship in Mainz which offers me absolute freedom as the basis for further artistic development.

What do your friends appreciate in you?

Absolute reliability and, I believe, competence in the musical field and perhaps the originality in the ideas.

What do your enemies say about you?

My power of self-assertion is sometimes seen critically, but my projects require discipline and hard work.

What is your greatest passion?

I consider myself to be a sensuous person who is seeking experience in all fields, both in music and in the culinary field, or travelling.

What is your worst habit?

I am very impatient and can harbour great trifles for a long time.

What do you greatly appreciate?

I need an absolutely ordered environment. I love quality above everything, even in the smallest things, and I can be irritated already by unpleasant anti-forces.

What is embarrassing for you?

I don't know that feeling.

How would you describe yourself to a blind person?

That's a really interesting and dangerous question – I will gladly try to answer it for you.

Well, I could answer the question thus: We have arranged to meet in the Airport and have never seen one another before, then I say: Don't worry, you will recognise me immediately.

In autumn 2002, you were appointed Director of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. An institution which is 212 years old and which has been headed in the course of history by such great names as Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch, Carl Friedrich Zelter and Georg Schumann. How do you feel as the new Director of so venerable an establishment?

In my life, I have referred to the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in hundreds of introductions to concerts and speeches setting out general principles, because I identify myself with this idea of a citizens' action group that was founded to organise culture and which then set standards for the world in the field of tension with the Humboldt University.

I feel it to be really fateful to lead this great institution into a new dimension. You must not forget that at the moment the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin is not in that first-class shape that history describes. It really must be revived. Of special importance are the archive, that has returned with 6000 scores from Kiev, where it was taken by the occupying forces at the end of the war, and the building's potential.

The Berliner Morgenpost writes in its review of the performance of “ Stabat Mater ” in Berlin Cathedral that at heart you are a singers' conductor!

Yes, my father was an opera singer. I grew up with vocal work. I believe that the development of my next years will lie there and that I shall demand even more vocal quality from the orchestra. For me, the voice, the vocal element, is the greatest sensual stimulus.

The same paper also writes of “ramshackle Berlin scenes” behind which you had to pull the strings. How are you experiencing that?

First of all, you have to differentiate levels here. Berlin has Federal institutions. They include the “Foundation Prussian Cultural Property”, its state and Federal institutions, and it is the seat of the Federal Minister of Culture who is under the Federal Chancellor. I experience both these institutions as absolutely first class and of integrity.

The other side is the Land (province) Berlin, that is still experiencing the problems of growing together even after years. The Land is heavily indebted, 50 billion Euros. Nevertheless, Berlin is expected to be a metropolis, like Paris and London. However, these metropolises really are the centres of their countries, and can concentrate all the funds for themselves.

We have, thank God, a federalism, i.e., culture and education can not be simply centralised in our country, but our federal states have their own structures which they will not give up. In this field of tension, Berlin has incredible problems in pushing its own development forwards. Pretension, demands and possibilities, as well as the existing structures must fit together.

If one follows your programmes of the last years, then it is noticeable that you deal very intensively with religious oratorios which you do not, however, perform as a rule in sacred rooms.

I do not play music in a liturgical context because I do not see myself as a church musician, but as a concert conductor in the choir and orchestra field, thus choral symphonic music. The greatest literature in this field is religiously formed, and for me the religious background, also of the texts, is especially ambitious.

What stimulates me most is the French development in German-speaking countries, that you should not play religious music only in a ecclesiastical, sacred room, but bring it into the concert hall. And that was always my approach.

What status does music have for you personally?

It has always been the centre of my life. Recently I read of the architect Liebeskind who said: “Even if I am sitting out-of-the-way and can at last go for a walk, I am thinking about architecture. For I cannot turn off what I most like doing, even in my leisure, and forbid myself from doing it.” I feel just the same in my life.

What status would you like to give music?

If I may quote an example from my own life. In Mainz I hold the post of a university professor. That is a function in which I reach about 1% of the 30,000 students in my ensembles, choir and orchestra. I would be happy if were to succeed in being able to confront all people with music, especially in their childhood, so that they can test for themselves whether music is a medium for them, that appeals to them, with which they have experiences. I am sure that we can then perhaps double or triple the number. At the moment, this chance does not exist. It is first of all the parental home that imparts these experiences. I would like to make a contribution there.

Which conductor's dream would you like to fulfil for yourself?

Do you mean which piece?

Which piece, which orchestra, which choir, which venue...

Well, my life is a constant further development and, despite other prejudices, I have always remained consistently in the lines thought out by me, and I have never hidden myself, never let myself be pressed into institutions which would have restricted me in a certain manner. A career through the theatre as répétiteur and doing preliminary work for others would never have attracted me. I have built my institution myself and developed it ever further. Now I am at home in one of the finest concert halls in the world, the Philharmonie in Berlin, I also enjoy Die Glocke in Bremen, and in the Rhine-Main area, the Kurhaus Wiesbaden is a lovely hall. We are in the whole world with our ensemble. We work for the festival in Aix-en-Provence.

So my wish is to find the same partner in the orchestra …or a partner of always the same quality for my choir work. Perhaps a venue, a cathedral, as an additional venue, because I sometimes miss the church in its mysticism in the clear atmosphere of the concert hall. And it is my wish to constantly improve the quality in my choir work. I would like to lead the existing pillars, the Gutenberg University Mainz – Hochschule Bremen – Zelter-Ensemble Berlin, to the absolute top musically and improve the status of choir music in society with these ensembles.

Thank you ver much for the interview, Professor Joshard Daus!