Conductor open to adventure and declaring all influences

Paul Mann

Paul Mann, in town to conduct the Auckland Philharmonia tomorrow night, is an immensely affable man. Last year he took the orchestra through an astonishing Elgar First Symphony and this time Faure, Mahler and Schumann are on the bill with pianist Cyprien Katsaris as soloist in Ravel's G major Concerto.

The English conductor is as willing to chat about Deep Purple as he is about the challenges of Thursday's concert.

Mann is an admirer of Deep Purple's Concerto for Rock Group and Orchestra, and has conducted it 40 times throughout the world.

He is even a fan of the group itself. "They are still forging ahead and not sitting back on their history," he says. "They have a special spirit of creative adventure. I think classical musicians could learn a great deal from rock musicians on that level. After all, if you're going to do Smoke on the Water so many million times and still play it with such passion it says a lot about the energy of the musicians."

Deep Purple is not on the bill tomorrow night, but Schumann's Fourth Symphony is and Mann says the German composer is another favourite. "I only have to hear a few bars of anything by Schumann to find myself in a very special world."

Forget the dastardly rumours that Schumann couldn't orchestrate, says Mann, who recounts horror stories of meddlesome conductors.

"You have Toscanini completely rewriting the second symphony, and George Szell's recordings of the symphonies are almost as if the conductor is telling the composer what he ought to have written rather than making what Schumann wrote work."

The secret, as in life, is balance.

"I have my own parts for all the Schumann symphonies and I take them everywhere I go," Mann confides. "They don't contain any alterations or re-orchestrations, just very detailed dynamics and bowing. It's to do with making musicians aware of their place in the overall sound."

Schumann was a key figure in Mann's earlier career, when he was a busy pianist and accompanist, before the podium lured him from the piano stool.

"What I didn't like about playing the piano was the daily fight with that big black beast, sitting alone in a room for hours and hours a day.

"I wanted to make music with other people and the very best situation is when conducting enables you almost to make chamber music on a large scale."

Among his inspirations were Leonard Bernstein and Carlos Kleiber.

"I don't think any conductor can fail to be influenced by Kleiber. You watch him and he is the music - not a physical manifestation of the music, but of music itself. When Kleiber conducts a Beethoven symphony, he puts you in touch with that moment of creation and it looks as if it's coming out of that moment in an extremely spontaneous and risky way."

Mann is not afraid to divulge his influences. "I feel that one of the great things with the access we have to the whole history of performance is that you can take a little bit from everyone.

"Once I saw Michael Caine doing a masterclass for actors and he was talking on who influenced whom. I remember him saying to the young actors that you should never be afraid of admitting your influences.

"That's how we learn. We all start out by imitating. It was interesting hearing such a distinctive actor saying that."

Mann is just rounding off his first year as principal conductor of Denmark's Odensk Symphony, and there has been no shortage of distinctive musical discoveries.

He has conducted Gade ("a kind of Danish Schumann"), Paul August von Klenau ("a late Romantic who found himself on the wrong side in World War II") and the "fearless, quirky and inventive" Paul Ruders, and now feels brave enough to tackle the Nielsen symphonies on his audience's home turf.

"These works are very much their music, and there is always an element of danger in playing them. But so far there haven't been any signs of rebellion of displeasure." 

*  Paul Mann conducts the Auckland Philharmonia, Auckland Town Hall, tomorrow, 8pm