The moment that Han-Na Chang was confirmed as music director of the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra – the first woman MD in the region and, at 29, also the youngest – we sent her a list of questions for a Q&A interview. Here’s the official picture of her promulgation.
And here’s what she had to say to Slipped Disc:
NL: Dear Han-Na Chang
Many congratulations on the Qatar appointment. Why does a cellist with an international career decide to be a conductor?
HNC: Reasons were simple for me, there was a musical need and then also a wish to share music with a wider audience.
I have been performing small repertoire for the cello since the age of 11. There is a danger for people who start so young and who perform the same sets of pieces that their outlook becomes microscopic. I wanted to acquire a telescopic vision of Classical Music and the symphonic works are the foundation of Classical Music – soloists are like cherries on top of a cake!! – because of the endless possibilities in the sound that the orchestra makes.
With conducting, there is a possibility to have a musical family (if one is appointed to a position with the orchestra) and to make a deeper contribution to the musicians you work with, to the Orchestra you serve, to the community the orchestra serves, and to the wide-world itself nowadays! It is no longer just about yourself – conducting allows for results that are greater than any one person, and this is very important for me.
Other reason was my wish to share this great joy of classical music with wider audiences – especially children, teens and young adults. I went to normal schools and none of my friends enjoyed classical music and this I found to be very odd. Classical music has unique power to move people’s hearts in a relatively short time ( 40 minutes of Beethoven as opposed to travelling to another continent for an escape and even then your mind never truly can escape your existence…) – music is a special way for the mind and the soul to experience something really different, something outside the box that we call “daily life”. And for this, I wanted more than just 4 strings – the excitement of hearing the orchestra play a masterpiece is hard to forget for anyone.
NL: Who were your podium influences?
HNC: I have been extremely fortunate to have worked with many great conductors. Giuseppe Sinopoli was a spiritual father figure since I was 12 years old – in fact he instilled in me the motto: “Music is the most important thing in a musician’s life, but it should never be the only thing”. Thinking back, I think it was my way of paying hommage to him that I chose to study Philosophy at university, and also the desire to start conducting was born.
On a more practical level, I find myself learning so much from watching the truly great conductors – Karajan, Bernstein, Carlos Kleiber…as well as of course the older generations (Toscanini, Bohm, Furtwangler, Klemperer……) because the more I conduct myself, the more I can see what they are doing that is just so special and great.
One can not “learn” conducting technique because everyone’s body is different and the way you move is different. How you move your body in order to express is your own problem to which only you can unlock answers. What is so interesting is that the more experience you have conducting yourself, the more you will learn from watching other conductors. There are many Karajan footage that I used to watch many years ago and think “he looks really great” – nowadays I look at the same thing and marvel at the efficiency and restraint of his expression – and how they work!
NL: How much time a year will you spend in Qatar?
HNC: I will be spending at least 15 weeks in Qatar each season.
NL: The Qatar Phil is a mixed bag of foreign expats, living in the Gulf on short contracts. How do you create a sense of unity and identity?
HNC: Well… the members were chosen as a result of rigorous auditioning process in major European cities. So even though they come from 30 different nationalities, they are of the same calibre musically and also from a similar generation. In QPO, we don’t have the broad age gap that one would find in other orchestras. The average age today of the orchestra musicians is 35 years old. So, we share the same generational aspirations and visions. The sense of unity and identity, I think, should be created musically – because music is why we are all there, and music is why such diverse people are able to exist as one entity – the QPO. So I think it will be up to me to suggest a musical vision that all members can aspire to and then to challenge them to rise up to it – and I believe I will be successful because these musicians are so talented!
NL: Will you be working with local youngsters to form an indigenous orchestra?
HNC: I certainly hope to, and there are many ways of doing this – we could be teaching instruments to the local kids, but even before this, they must enjoy and love music in order to want to perform themselves! So, the QPO and I will continue to find ways of spreading the roots of classical music deeper into the community with our own growth and also with the growth of the local audience.
The Orchestra is already performing School Concerts and trying to reach out and bring the music into the schools where the children are inspired to create their own works (for example, paintings after listening to the Pictures of Exhibition)… There is a Music Academy where the orchestra musicians teach children music and instruments – and as it takes time for anyone to learn instruments, I hope we will have such an orchestra in the next 20 years!
NL: Will you still be playing cello?
HNC: Of course, just not in public for the time being!! Joking aside, cello is what gave me music and it will always be a part of my identity. I still need to record the Bach Suites, but just not in the next five years, I want to plan these things far in advance. Right now, I am focusing on conducting and devoting the majority of my time to conducting – and whether as a Music Director or a guest conductor, my priority is to do my best to be my best!
Good luck to Maestra Chang for her new position with the Qatar Philharmonic!
Yes, good luck to Han-Na Chang and the Qatar Phil! Just one thing bothers me in her comments above. She writes: “One can not “learn” conducting technique because everyone’s body is different and the way you move is different. How you move your body in order to express is your own problem to which only you can unlock answers.”
It is a pity so many self-learned conductors think this way, and that is why many of them stay at a modest technical level. Conducting technique exists and it can be learned, and there are great teachers around who can help you if you just humble yourself a bit. Of course, it does not necessarily feel good for an accomplished musician to be a beginner again and get criticized about how you move your body and arms.
To see how odd her claim is, you can just substitute “conducting” with “cello” and you’ll get the following: “One can not “learn” cello technique because everyone’s body is different and the way you move is different. How you move your body in order to express is your own problem to which only you can unlock answers.” You see? In a similar vein you could conclude that it is useless to have a cello teacher because the technique of playing cannot be taught. I am sure, nevertheless, that Han-Na met many good teachers in her life and learned a great deal about cello technique from other people.
perfect reply.
unfortunately we see too many instrumentalists doing the same mistake – forgetting that conducting IS a profession…
Sasha – couldn’t agree more. What she said there unfortunately sounds like total BS. I don’t know much about her conducting except for a few minutes of a performance of Prokofieff 5 with that Qatar orchestra which I saw on Youtube. And she isn’t “conducting” there at all, just miming along with the orchestra. In a pretty weird way, too, like someone acting a conductor against playback in a bad movie.
Unfortunate reply… As I have a degree in conducting from Mannes , I will agree that although there are techniques, there is so much above and beyond that you learn through experience with the musicians. Conducting technique and cello technique are not comparable and therefore I completely agree with Maestra.
There are many many many more talented and skilled conductors out there who don’t get this chance. She is there just because she is a famous and talented cellist. Saying things like ‘One can not “learn” conducting technique because everyone’s body is different and the way you move is different’ doesn’t sound promising…
Not just for that. The Qatar Philharmonic is quite German, to be precise Bavarian-run. Issam El Mallah is a musicologist who studied and worked in Munchen for a long while and who was commissioned in setting up a music culture in Qatar. Under his wings Kurt Blum came to Doha. And I guess it is because of that connection that Mrs Chang came in. So it also had to do with the chemistry. Meanwhile many foreign conductors come in. I saw Minkowski there, and Maazel did the opening (according to Norman that was not good) and Barenboim has been there once (a festival around him earlier this year was canceled). It is a pity that the hall has such dry acoustics and although it is called opera house it is not very suitable for staging.
Thanks for the interview, Norman. One point, although I understand why you write it: in the case of an interview with let us say a new Generaldirektor of the Vienna Philharmoniker, would you write Europe’s music director (who given the fact that it is Vienna probably will not be a woman, by the way).
Meanwhile Mrs Chang is not the first female orchestra director in the Arab world, on the contrary. There is Inea Abdel Dayem in Cairo, there is Maria Arnaout in Damascus (if she is still on the post), who both even are/were general opera house directors, and the Oman Muscat Opera House and orchestra has a female CEO too. Mrs Chang will be one of the few principal female conductors in the world, that is a fact.
True, Neil. But Ms Chang is the first woman music director of an international-class orchestra anywhere in the Middle East, Africa and most of Asia.
Hers is a very nice statement, and one wishes her and her orchestra well, but the political land mines are rife in Qatar. Currently, there are at least two publicized cases of suppression of artistic freedom in Qatar- one of a Qatari poet sentenced to life imprisonment for a poem he read before a private audience in Egypt and subsequently posted by one of the audience members, where the poem was said to have questioned the regime of and accused of “insulting” the Emir and his son, and a second of a poet tried in secret and now facing the death penalty for a poem he wrote critical of the regime. So, while the West has poured billions into making Qatar a modern garrison state proxy, and Qatar is investing its billions in the Middle East to take over the regimes and the energy assets of countries such as Libya, Syria and Egypt, as well as billions in Europe, and huge amounts to import Western culture, its political system is still feudal. fundamentalist, non-democratic and repressive of human rights. Not exactly compatible with the vision of a Beethoven or his music, or with equal rights for Qatari women.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0xJiWHNp1g
This is only video I could find of Ms Chang on the podium. The orchestra sounds respectable and the concertmaster seems especially involved. Enjoy!
She wouldnt be the first instrumentalist turning conductor. And there have been good results. Did Barenboim follow the full conductor course? Or he is a transformed pianist too? Jaap van Zweden is doing well, progressing from Concertgebouw Orchestra violinist to conductor. Ashkenazy is according to some a better conductor than a (to my opinion quite respectable) pianist. Previn had the full course as conductor? Not to speak of musicologists converting. Gardiner became a good conductor. Yesterday evening listing to McCreesh’ Berlioz Requiem from Cracow on period instruments and concluded that maybe that is the best approach, approaching such a work with earilier music as starting point instead of projecting back from Wagner, Debussy or even later Berlioz. Not to speak f composers who become conductor. Would Boulez have done the full course? Britten?
Dear Neil, none of the people you mention are famous for calligraphic beauty of their conducting technique, and I don’t know who are the mean people who gave Ashkenazy that backhanded compliment. It is not a question of doing a “full course” at some conservatory, but just acknowledging the fact that there is a means of manual technique which can make the work of the orchestra more efficient, easy and even inspiring – just trough the sheer expressiveness of the gesture. The great conductors of the past knew this regardless of their educational background – think Mravinsky, Karajan, Kleiber. Also think why there are so many Russian conductors who are doing well. I think it is, because in Russia there are still distinct schools of conducting, just like there is with violin or piano. People tend to forget that conducting is a real craft which takes years and years to master like any other musical discipline.
Thanks. Surely I do not disagree on this.
There are some conductors who get there the other way.
Conducting by intellectualism, or conducting by allying with the instrumentalists.
Of course most of the great conductors we know are ehhh hand-made so to speak.
Not sure what you mean by ‘hand-made’ here Neil. Do you mean self-taught? If so, I would have to disagree. Jansons, Gergiev, Salonen, Bychkov, Oramo, Vanska, Ozawa and many others have formal qualifications from a conservatorium. Many others do not have such qualifications, but had lessons or attended masterclasses. Rattle and Barenboim are on that list. Of the older generation, those who sadly are no longer with us, of course, the percentage who studied formally would be much lower, as conductor training only really became formalised in the second half of the century. Before WWII the norm was to learn everything on the job. That was possible in that era, but is less so in the modern. Of course, if you have an orchestra like the Qatar Phil to practise on, then maybe you’re in luck!
Sorry no it was perhaps a failed attempt to a word play. I meant delicately crafted. The painstaking handicraft.
Thanks for the lists. Did not know about Rattle. What was his first specialisation?
I think Toscanini went diectly from The Cello section to The Podium.
Correct
“and the concertmaster seems especially involved…”
well one reason I’ve seen that degree of “involvement” by the concertmaster is when they realise the band cannot workout what the conductor is doing.
But not intended as a criticism of HNC. A bold move by a very musical performer, and best of luck to her !