Tom Strini
This Week at the MSO

Andreas Delfs returns

By - May 12th, 2011 04:00 am

Andreas Delfs with the MSO. MSO photo.

The interview with Andreas Delfs was to start at 4 p.m. Wednesday, right after rehearsal. But we had a little delay. MSO musicians and old friends were at the door of the conductor’s room at Uihlein Hall. Lots of people wanted to say hello to Delfs, the Milwaukee Symphony’s guest conductor this week’s guest conductor and former MSO music director. Spouse Amy Delfs and daughter Mimi made the trip, too, and participated in the lively round of greetings. It was a happy scene.

Delfs now holds the title of conductor laureate. He led the MSO from 1997 to 2009 and left on good terms. The orchestra improved continually through his tenure; Delfs left successor Edo de Waart a very good orchestra, indeed.

He’s happy to be back — and happy to be relieved of the administrative burdens. He had only the vaguest notion of the MSO’s current financial position. I filled him on the $2 million deficit for the season. He smiled a resigned sort of smile.

“I have nothing to do with that anymore,” he said.

The maestro, 51, has had quite the international adventure over the past two seasons. When he left Milwaukee, his idea was to settle into his beautiful new seaside home near Flensburg, Germany, his home town. He would concentrate on Europe and stick close to the family.

He’s had a good deal of work in Europe, but as much or more in Asia.

“My dream home is just that, I dream of it more than I’m there,” Delfs said. “My home right now is a suitcase and a hotel room. Amy comes whenever she can, but we have four children 12 to 18. We can’t leave them on their own.”

The family stayed in Germany 2009-10. This season, they’ve spent more time in their home in upstate New York; Delfs was satisfied that his children had become fluent in German and got a healthy dose of European life.

He does see an upside to all the travel, even if he interacts with his children mainly via Skype. For starters, Delfs is pleased at the demand for his services. Delfs has been able to work as much as he wants, and the pace has been frenetic. After Milwaukee, he’ll have a few days off, then it’s off to a month-long circuit of orchestras in Australia. He’s worked a great deal in Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. He came here directly from an extended tour of Taiwan. This season, he’s also conducted in Vienna and spent five weeks on a production of Carmen with Opera North, in England.

“It was a shocking, with nudity and violence and water-boarding,” Delfs said. “It got a rating, like a movie — no one under 16 allowed. I’ve never seen that before in an opera.”

He has found travel broadening in more ways than one.

“I’ve found that I like encountering different cultures,” Delfs said. “There were years, when I was director of both the MSO and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, that I only conducted American orchestras. European musicians, Asians and musicians in the UK,  they’re all different. In the UK, they all have three jobs and work very hard and play with passion and never complain. I don’t see how they do it. In Asia, they’ve grown up with different cultures, and maybe I have to spoon-feed Beethoven and Brahms in ways that I wouldn’t in Vienna.”

He is not anxious to take on another directorship. Delfs holds grave concern for the future of orchestras in the Western world, and at this point he’d rather make some music and move on, rather than worry about how to pay the bills. He feels bad for the musicians of the Honolulu Symphony, which disbanded before Delfs could take over that orchestra, but is just as happy that he’s not racking his brain trying to keep a shaky institution alive.

“Asia is exploding with Western classical music,” he said. “New orchestras are being formed and orchestras are expanding. The markets dictate where you find work. There are jobs in Asia, and they pay well. In the U.S., music is in stasis. In the U.S. and Europe, the classical music world is in a recession.

“I like going to Asia, but I don’t want to live there. In the West, I don’t see an environment in which problems can be solved. Everyone is looking for a way to reinvent the classical music world from the ground up, but world-changing ideas are lacking in our industry. I don’t want to be the music director of an orchestra in crisis — and they all are.”

The Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, led by Lee Erickson, will be featured on this program in Morten Lauridsen’s mystic Lux Aeterna. Delfs will also conduct Sibelius’ Finlandia and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 . Concert time is 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 13-15. Tickets are $23-$77 Sunday and $23-$93 Friday and Saturday. Call the MSO ticket line, 414 291-7605, visit the MSO website or call the Marcus Center box office, 414 273-7206.

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