by JUAN RODRIGUEZ

When Kent Nagano convinced Björk to tackle the speaking part of Arnold Schoenberg’s 1912 atonal masterpiece Pierrot Lunaire, he was bridging cultural divides with customary cool. The most exciting conductor of his generation and the most idiosyncratic vocalist of hers, exploring the thorniest composer of the 20th century? The Icelandic electro-songbird was anxious over the classical music world’s perceived arrogance, but Nagano told her that Schoenberg wrote the piece because “he’d had it with the snobs in Germany,” she recalled recently. “They’d become so self-obsessed and the gap between educated music people and the common people had become massive.”

So the titan of 12-tone music wrote Pierrot for “more of a street person.” Björk could relate, and Nagano insisted she experiment. “I do strongly believe in chemistry, which of course is an inexplicable human phenomenon,” he said last week, adding that Schoenberg was one of Björk’s favourite composers as a classically-trained child, pre-Sugarcubes. “She’s at ease reading the music and her very imaginative and intense creative skills combined for a working environment that was deeply inspiring.”

It’s the kind of atmosphere Nagano nurtures with painstaking precision - and panache. He takes the stage with a stride that’s purposeful, elegant, even serene, befitting a Californian who seriously loves surfing, martial arts and fast cars. Lithe, high cheekbones framed by a Prince Valiant hairstyle, the tails of his tux flap in his cool breeze. He projects calm in the face of daunting challenges: adding gravitas and innovation (as principal conductor) to Placido Domingo’s high-stakes bid to transform the young Los Angeles Opera; tip-toeing through the bureaucratic, political and psychic chaos of Berlin’s teaming music scene as leader of the Deutsches Symphony Orchestra; and upping the ante with the small Berkeley Symphony Orchestra that gave him his first job 25 years ago.

A higher tux bracket

Nagano’s loyalty to Berkeley - which some call “bizarre” for one of the world’s most sought-after maestros (he was once dubbed “classical music’s hot new conductor dude” by People magazine and “the next Leonard Bernstein” by New York) - says a lot about his view of music’s role in everyday life. He’s turned down prestigious guest gigs to honour his commitment to the community orchestra, occasionally resulting in a “brutal” pace like last week’s shuttle between L.A. and the Bay for six concerts in nine days. He’s been asked when he planned to leave Berkeley ever since he arrived.

“I always have the same answer - I am where I want to be,” he says, maintaining that “the conductor’s function is not to be famous but to assume responsibility for the music.” (As for fame, last month he led Bill Clinton and Sophia Loren through a re-jig of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf for a charity CD.)

Like most orchestras, the Berkeley outfit fights for survival in a warrior world where government funding for the arts is shrinking. Star-quality helps, but Nagano’s ability in transforming it into a seriously daring orchestra reflects his belief that music “nourishes a community’s soul and has a direct correlation to the quality of life issues we so cavalierly toss around. It’s not a purely empirically measurable aspect, such as affordable housing or number of parks. But there’s a profound sense of fulfillment in communicating through music those parts of us that are at the essence of humanity.”

Music, he says, embraces “the four elements - the vast range of emotions, the deep spiritual connections we have, our tremendous intellectual capacities and the physical abilities we have to feel so many stimuli.”

Staying grounded in La-la Land

The rigorous martial art of shintaido and “common sense” help the soft-spoken Nagano keep these elements in balance. “Questions of endurance and concentration are addressed early in the day, helping me last without fading,” he says. “I do love this stimulating lifestyle but I take precautions to make sure I don’t take physical health for granted.”

He starts at 5 a.m. with three and a half three hours of study, “quietly, without the distractions of the everyday world. I dedicate long periods of gestation - a year and a half - for studying the repertoire that I’m currently performing. I try not to have things be a quick study. I love the chance to look inside and analyze and deconstruct and reconstruct, search and research these great masterpieces, to go into deeper levels of discovery.”

Discovering Nagano’s depth means looking beyond the “dazzlingly theatrical musician who can electrify an audience,” according to L.A. Times critic Mark Zwed, and finding “a bold visionary as well as a cautious, conscientious, meticulously elegant musician.”

He’s “a strange mixture of laid-back California and an unbelievably indefatigable taskmaster,” said John Adams, among the most performed living composers, who’s worked with Nagano for most of his premieres, from the controversial The Death of Klinghoffer to El Niño, his acclaimed nativity oratorio for the millennium.

He’s revered in Europe for turning moribund, underachieving organizations into world-beaters - including the Opéra National de Lyon, which built him a futuristic black opera house and won Grammy and Gramophone magazine awards, and Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra, Britain’s oldest.

Domingo asked him to build an opera house “you could only find here in Los Angeles.” Adding rigour and innovation to Tinseltown’s opera is another balancing act Nagano seems to revel in. Part of Nagano’s task involves shattering stereotypes of northern California’s “pseudo-intellectuals sitting in their hot tubs in Marin County chasing down alternative lifestyles and religions” and southern Cal’s “frolicking on the beach, amid palms, fast-food and the superficiality of glamour and marketing. Both Los Angeles and San Francisco have experienced very rapid periods of change in which entire demographics have radically shifted, so the old stereotypes - which weren’t true anyway - are completely irrelevant.”

The new Disney Concert Hall, opening this fall, will crown creative (and economic) forces arising from “powerful waves of immigration from India, Korea, East Asia, China” that’s made the Pacific Rim into “much more than a catchword. It’s a huge gateway that’s brought intense vitality to the area. With vitality comes creativity, and one feels it in a very real way.” Los Angeles, halfway between Europe and Asia, “has become a crucible of artistic expression,” he says. The L.A. Opera has plans to collaborate with Industrial Light & Magic, from Nagano’s neck of the woods, in staging Wagner’s daunting four-night Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle.

The brat syndrome

Nagano, 51, grew up on his first-generation Japanese-American grandparents’ artichoke farm near Morro Bay, between San Francisco and Los Angeles. After the family was interned by the U.S. during World War II, his father and mother interrupted their studies (architecture and microbiology, respectively) at Berkeley and returned to the farm when the elder fell ill. “Isolated in the country, we had a deep-rooted intimacy with the forces of nature, the violent terrifying sides, the wonderful peaceful sides,” he says.

At age four he started studying piano with his classically trained mother. Music was “completely voluntary and joyful,” he says. “We (two sisters and a brother) just wanted to play like Mom.” By high school he was proficient at the koto, viola, clarinet and electric guitar. He went to Oxford to study law but quickly realized he should follow music’s muse.

In 1978 Nagano took over the rag-tag Berkeley Symphony. Admitting to the “brat syndrome,” he learned things they don’t teach in books. He couldn’t fire incompetents because they weren’t being paid in the first place, playing simply for love of music. The shed where they rehearsed was so cold that instruments cracked. He had to set up chairs, sweep floors. He could have hired outside musicians to play the principal chairs but elected not to, says French-horn player Richard Reynolds (whose day job is communications director for Mother Jones magazine). “He looked at the people that he had and challenged them to play better. Pretty quickly he had us change over to wearing tuxes.”

Nagano had them specialize in the modern repertoire, notably French composer Olivier Messiaen, whose equal-parts devotion to nature, spirituality and sexuality sticks out in 20th-century music (and, incidentally, greatly inspired Radiohead during the Kid A sessions).

Word of Nagano got to Frank Zappa, who in 1983 enlisted him to conduct his fiendishly tricky classical works with the London Symphony Orchestra. “The real Frank Zappa,” Nagano says, referring to the rock maestro’s “outrageous” image, “was very serious, uncompromising, meticulous, with clear thought, just a genius. He had a sense of creativity that simply did not stop.” History, he says, “will be kind” to Zappa.

Nagano created a sensation in 1984 as a last-minute substitution for Seiji Ozawa, leading the Boston Symphony through Mahler’s epic Ninth - with no rehearsal and having never conducted it before. A star was born, drawing comparisons to Leonard Bernstein’s electrifying, career-making 1943 stand-in for Bruno Walter in New York. Nagano chose to study with the ebullient Bernstein and icy Pierre Boulez because they were polar opposites. Both had “one huge effect on me: never be afraid of working too hard. Never take a shortcut.” Soon he was jetting around the world, conducting as many as 20 orchestras annually (and modelling jeans for Gap ads). “Every once in a while, I woke up and had no idea what time zone I was in, where I was staying, and it took me a good full minute to figure it out.”

Maestro moderne

Nagano’s reputation for the modern repertoire - it’s been said he’s conducted more successful premieres of new works over the last 15 years than anyone - probably cost him consideration for the New York Philharmonic’s vacancy in 2000. Yet he also insists on looking anew at masterworks, climaxing the upcoming Montreal Symphony Orchestra concert with Schubert’s “Symphony No. 9” (the “Great”) after beginning with “The Passacaglia, Op. 1,” an early work by modernist Anton Webern.

“We human beings have an exasperating need to classify and cubbyhole, which means there’s pressure on you not to experiment,” he says. “An orchestra is a human phenomena. You have to make an effort to avoid the routine. If you do one thing over and over again then the senses become dulled.”

Nagano’s unflappable drive for perfection turns off some musicians, Adams has said, “because they think he doesn’t know when to stop.” Berkeley’s Reynolds adds: “Kent will spend a long time going over a passage note by note to improve the intonation. Some musicians might feel they’re above that kind of thing. He can be nit-picky, but I’ve never found anything in rehearsal to be anything other than useful.” This is a man who once said “There really aren’t any excuses for mistakes. Ever.”

The Berkeley outfit’s “intensity,” playing “as if their life depended on it,” creates “an electric moment in which that piece counts more than anything else. It’s a wonderful feeling to be part of. If the orchestra had not made that total commitment, I would’ve given it up long ago.”

This week, Nagano leads the MSO through a program from the music capital of Vienna, performing Mozart, Schubert and Webern. He first conducted the Montreal Symphony in 1999 with a rendering of Mahler’s Ninth, regarded as the finest ever heard in this city. Since then the MSO became rudderless after the embarrassing affaire Dutoit. “Of course the orchestra members themselves are extraordinary. I recall being so impressed with not just their talents but their character and personalities,” he says, pausing for effect. “The overwhelming reason we dedicate our lives to music is because we firmly share a belief in the mysterious, powerful, benevolent force of live performance of great repertoire.”

Don’t fear the classics

In 1992, Nagano married pianist Mari Kodama, shortly after recording Prokofiev’s piano concertos with her. They live in an old San Francisco home and have residences in Berlin, London and Paris. Mari’s career has “exploded,” Nagano says with evident pride. One of the few classical musicians to be rewarded with a new recording contract in an age when big names are being dropped unceremoniously, she’s currently recording Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas. Their four-year-old daughter Karin “sees mama and papa at the keyboards from morning to night, and wants to be like Mom. But unlike my isolated childhood, she’s already gone around the world 15 times. She knows the words to her favourite video,” he laughs, “The Marriage of Figaro.”

Great repertoire will impart different meanings at various stages of the listener’s life. But fear of the unfamiliar, or of instrumental music in general, keeps some from taking the plunge. There’s also the snob factor that initially intimidated Björk. Says Nagano: “I totally sympathize with that nearly overwhelming, fragile feeling of thinking you’re not quite understanding things that everybody else appears to be getting.”

By comparison, Nagano confesses it was only relatively recently that he began to appreciate the subtleties of wine, strange for a cultured Californian. “Everyone who attends a concert goes to discover something unknown, and that shared sense of discovery is what makes live music so extraordinary. If you go with an open mind, the opportunity for discovery and tremendous emotional reaction can be more invigorating than you could possibly imagine. It’s the opposite of cynicism.” :

Kent Nagano conducts the MSO’s Vienna,
Capital of Music, at Place des Arts’s
Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier on Tuesday and
Wednesday, Jan. 28–29, 8pm, $17–$80

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