What other projects are you working on?
I am looking forward to going to Italy, to the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro. I will be part of the jury of their International Bassoon Competition and I will conduct concerts and give masterclasses.
All my projects are up in the air because of the pandemic. One of them that was to take place in an opera house in Berlin has been cancelled. I hope the others will go ahead. I try to remain relaxed about this matter, but I keep in touch with many young musicians (who are the ones who are in their moment of experimentation), and I do feel bad for them. I mean, I’m not as sad about my own situation as I am about theirs.
In this “quiet year,” writing a new book has been a blessing for me — it’s my sixth book.
What is some advice you would share for young and aspiring conductors and musicians?
Dear friend, there is no general advice for anyone. Every person is different and learns in a different way.
To young musicians, I would like to tell them not to give up. This pandemic will eventually go away; we’ll end up treating it like smallpox or the flu. But in this regard I have no other advice; I can only sympathize with them.
One universal piece of advice is to learn from others. I don’t like the American style of strictly individual classes; in Europe, we have more group classes and learn from each other — in the U.S. they call these masterclasses, and they are not very frequent. The way schools are run in the U.S. is very different from Europe. Music lessons are expensive in the U.S., whereas in Europe they are not so expensive. You can learn from other people, whether they are better or worse than you, by listening to them. Masterclasses can be very beneficial if done with reasonable frequency.
Getting back to the subject of recordings, I’ll tell you a story about something I learned the hard way. I was conducting a CD of romantic oboe concertos with the famous Swiss oboist Thomas Indermühle and the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra in Estonia. The director of the record company was also the supervisor of the recording, and he became very ill when we got there, so we were left without a supervisor. I was standing on the podium, while we were rehearsing without recording. Later, they got someone to supervise the recording; a fairly competent man, but he didn’t take notes. (If you’re familiar with recording procedures, you’ll know that the most important thing is to take notes, because you have to know where to cut, and if you don’t take notes you end up throwing away hours of work.) In my case, I ended up listening to seven hours of recording, piecing together takes. But that’s how I learned to splice a CD!
Website: milanturkovic.com
| Full Interview: “Every Person Is Different and Learns in a Different Way” |
