After 13 years, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Ode to Joy returns to the program of the final concert of the Prague Spring Festival, performed by the Czech Philharmonic conducted by the renowned Christoph Eschenbach. The 83-year-old German conductor, who looks extremely serious and pays attention to the smallest details, has been returning to the festival continuously since 1968, when he made his debut here as a talented pianist.
“I am extremely excited. Prague is an amazingly musical city, in which I met a lot of great people,” says Eschenbach before the concerts, which take place on Thursday 1 and Friday 2 June.
He also praises the choice of Beethoven’s Ninth. “I have performed it countless times around the world, as have all of Beethoven’s symphonies. But with the Ninth, it never happens that you take it as just another concerto in a series. It is always a new performance in a new light, as if you are playing a new piece.” he claims.
Many of today’s conductors started their careers at a young age. Christoph Eschenbach, born in 1940, was glad to have survived his childhood. His mother, a singer and piano teacher, died giving birth to him in present-day Wrocław, Poland. The father, a musicologist and professor at the local university, as a vocal opponent of Nazism, had to be punished on the Eastern Front, where he was murdered.
The boy was raised by his grandmother, who succumbed to typhus in the winter of 1945 in a refugee camp in Mecklenburg. In the end, the boy was miraculously found and adopted by his mother’s cousin, pianist and singer Wallydore Eschenbach. She also started teaching him the piano.
The less Eschenbach spoke in his childhood, the stronger he played, and thanks to his obvious talent, he later studied piano and conducting in Hamburg. He started his career by winning several competitions, including the Swiss one named after the pianist Clara Haskilova.
Christoph Eschenbach has been the music director of the Berlin Konzerthaus since 2019. | Photo: Manu Theobald
It was 1965, and Eschenbach still looked like he was on the way to a career as a concert pianist. He had a contract, a calendar full of engagements. But in reality, completely different ambitions. “I always wanted to be a conductor,” he says today. “Actually, the piano got in the way a bit. Because I won a few competitions, I got offers from all over, so I played. But since I was a child, I only dreamed of conducting,” he explains.
His skills impressed the two great conductors of the time, George Szell and Herbert von Karajan, who began to shape him. The diligence and hard work they instilled in him are still evident in Eschenbach’s style today, as well as strong emotional experiences from his childhood.
“I think that artistically my childhood experiences influenced me immensely,” he reflects. “These are things that go so deep into the personality that you can never remove them. It’s hard to describe exactly how it influenced my music, but it did.”
Christoph Eschenbach has had a brilliant career as a conductor. He was the music director of the top orchestras Tonhalle Zürich and Orchester de Paris. And many others, for example in Houston, USA, his eleven-year collaboration with the local symphonists is commemorated by a bronze star in front of the concert hall.
He has performed all over the world, since 2019 he is the music director of the Berlin Konzerthaus and continues to fly everywhere as a guest conductor. In May, he already visited South Korea and Japan. All this at the age of 83, when others are starting to slow down after all. “I’ve never had the slightest problem with traveling, I’m just used to it,” he shrugs.
Already Prague spring he has already arrived five times. He made his debut there in 1968 as a pianist, then he was accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra of the Capital City of Prague FOK. Five years later he performed with the Czech Philharmonic.
While he doesn’t remember the programs after decades, he remembers the conductors immediately. “The first time was Carlos Kleiber, a wonderful personality, I hold him in unprecedented respect,” he mentions the Austrian by origin, who lived from 1930 to 2004. “The second concert with the Czech Philharmonic was conducted by Václav Neumann, also a fantastic person. For a young performer, it was an honor to be with him to work together,” adds Eschenbach.
In both cases he still played the piano. It wasn’t until 1990 that he returned as an established conductor. In the Cathedral of St. Víta then conducted Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, one of the most famous masses in Western music, for two consecutive evenings. “Performing it in such a place is of course every conductor’s dream. It was really extraordinary,” he recalls.
In 2011, he then embarked on one of the most extensive choral works of the classical concert repertoire, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, nicknamed the Symphony of a Thousand. On the occasion of the centenary of the composer’s death, he performed it with two orchestras, six mixed and children’s choirs plus eight soloists in the O2 arena in Liben. About 500 performers took part in the event, it was heard by more than four thousand people and cost 9.5 million crowns, making it the most expensive item in the history of the Prague Spring up to that time.
“Mahler’s Eighth is always a challenge. When you try to do it in a chamber space, it’s just not enough. When the space is too big, it’s difficult to coordinate the performance and tune the acoustics. But then we discussed it thoroughly in advance and I think we chose a functional the journey,” evaluates Eschenbach years later.
Christoph Eschenbach conducted Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Prague’s O2 Arena in 2011. Photo: Ivan Malý | Video: Prague Spring
His subsequent, so far last visit in 2014 was already much calmer. With the Vienna Philharmonic and pianist Lang Lang, he presented four pieces by Richard Strauss. “That was a lot of fun. The Viennese are excellent at this repertoire and Lang Lang is an incredible talent,” notes the conductor.
This year, on June 1 and 2, he will perform at the final concerts of the festival in the Municipal House, where he will be led by the Czech Philharmonic. The Prague Philharmonic Choir led by Lukáš Vasilek and four soloists also perform: soprano Simona Šaturová, mezzo-soprano Lucie Hilscherová, tenor Steve Davislim and bassist Jan Martiník.
Christoph Eschenbach previously led the Tonhalle Zürich or the Orchester de Paris. | Photo: Manu Theobald
The evening begins with a stirring atmospheric composition by the Hungarian György Ligeti, who would have turned 100 this year, and continues with Johannes Brahms’ Song of Fate, before culminating in Beethoven’s Ninth. “I don’t think it needs an explanation,” Eschenbach avoids when asked what he would say about one of classical music’s most famous works.
Regarding the interpretation, it is already more shared. Eschenbach recalls how the Ninth conceived Leonard Bernstein in 1989 in Berlin, celebrating the fall of the Wall and the Iron Curtain. “Bernstein then changed the text so that instead of Ode to Joy it was Ode to Freedom, which made a huge impression on me,” he recalls. Performances took place at Christmas 1989: the first concert in West Berlin on December 23, the second two days later in East Berlin.
The sung and most famous part of the composition, which has become the anthem of the European Union, is not the one that Eschenbach would most like to return to. “It always gets me how after a very serious first movement and a relatively dramatic second comes the wonderful, meditative adagio in the third movement. The conclusion is fantastic, of course, but I’m always most moved by the third movement,” says the conductor.
Years ago he said in an interview that every concert should be an adventure. He expects the same from his performance at Prague Spring, which he cannot praise. “For as long as I can remember, it has always been a very liberal festival with an imaginative dramaturgy. It never looked back only to the past. And this program reflects that in some way. The mention of Ligeti, his connection with Brahms and finally with the Ninth – together it results in a very free-spirited end to the festival ,” believes Christoph Eschenbach.
