Eduardo Mata Dallas Symphony Orchestra Stravinsky Feu Dartifice Pro Arte
Conductor Eduardo Mata
A Conversation with Bruce Duffie
As I prepare this interview for website presentation, we are about to run across the
" doomsday " date of December 21, 2012. So if you are actually reading this, our worries were either unfounded, or another kind of salvation has taken identify on our planet! We cannot know what tomorrow brings, yet we always must prepare for it and assume that there will exist another day for our existence here on Globe.Unfortunately, tragedies do happen, and each of the states will meet his or her terminate at some bespeak and in some manner. To put information technology musically, the double bar will be placed on our individual scores.
On the morn of January iv, 1995, Eduardo Mata and a passenger were en route from Cuernavaca, Morelos, to Dallas, Texas. Mata was piloting his ain Piper Aerostar. Ane engine failed shortly after takeoff, and the plane crashed near Cuernavaca Airport during an emergency landing try. Both died. Mata was 52, and thus in the prime number of his life and career. We can exist thankful for what he achieved and for what he left us in terms of recordings, and yet we mourn what could have been and what would have been had he been granted the biblical
" three score years and x " — or more than, every bit conductors seem to oft proceed into their eighties and even nineties! A school in Dallas has been renamed subsequently him, and the state of Oaxaca (Mexico) established an " Eduardo Mata Autumn Festival " in his honor. More about his life is in the obituary from The New York Times which is reprinted at the bottom of this webpage.Fortunately for anybody, Maestro Mata did have a pregnant and distinguished career, and he made the most of his fourth dimension. He was in Chicago at the turn of 1990-91 for a production of Carmen at Lyric Opera, and it was just a few days later on the New year that nosotros met at his hotel. I had seen an earlier performance, and nosotros both remarked that the audience that night had seemed just a chip tired
— perhaps from all that was going during the busy season . . . . . . . . . .Bruce Duffie: Allow's just start right in that location. When an audience is a piffling fleck tired or a little flake sleepy, is there annihilation that you as the maestro can do to pep up either the performers or the audience?
Eduardo Mata: Yep, put a little bit of additional endeavor to try to liven things up. Ordinarily it pays dorsum because somehow there is an interplay between the artists and the audience, and somewhen they will come up around. I idea they did very much, in the sense that by the end of the second act they were much warmer than before. They were very, very soft and very slow reacting in the kickoff act, but they got much better and I idea that at the final adulation for the artists they were quite enthusiastic, and virtually of the people I talked to were quite taken past the functioning.
EM: ...in spite of the fact that we had two substitutions, and the adrenaline was flowing! [Both laugh]
BD: Is information technology easier or harder when you have a last-minute substitution in the cast?
EM: Information technology'due south definitely more than difficult, of course. No question nearly that. You never know what'southward going to happen. I had the take chances to rehearse both of them on the solar day
— that is, six hours before the performance. I rehearsed Micaëla, and besides the guy that substituted for our Morales. Only nevertheless, at that place is that additional tension. You never know whether they are going to be up to the previous level. Of class they were, but you never know.BD: Micaëla is a large part, simply if information technology had been the title character, then would you have been nether a lot more than stress?
EM: Yes, very definitely. It would have been very difficult, although the understudy has to be there and has to watch the performances and has to acquire the dialogue. In these operas, yous realize, it's quite complicated. I think probably one 3rd of the length of the opera is taken upward by dialogue, and then it's a lot to learn. And y'all have to be concerned about the accent, the pronunciation of the French in the spoken sections, and that would accept been a very serious claiming if Carmen got ill.
BD: With the Ponnelle production, y'all have all of the special stage business and a lot of catchy things; information technology's not only your typical Carmen.
EM: Of grade. For instance, in the 3rd act she has to climb those rocks. It is very complicated.
BD: She has to know exactly where she'due south going.
EM: Correct, and fourth dimension herself. Not only to know where to go, only fourth dimension herself and so she can make it in the very limited amount of fourth dimension that she has to climb those rocks. It has stairs built upon information technology, just information technology'due south hard.
BD: The stairs are built so camouflaged?
EM: They are camouflaged with the rocks, that'southward right.
BD: I knew she had to be in that location at a certain time, but I didn't realize the timing was then critical.
EM: Yes, yes.
BD: Of course the timing is then disquisitional in all of opera. Information technology'south non like a play. You can't merely say your line when you experience like it. You lot, the maestro, take to command it.
EM: You have the parameter of the music as a stock-still affair, then then we all have to run across in that parameter, which is the music.
BD: When yous're conducting a singer on the stage, are you specially careful and especially enlightened of what they're doing, to requite them a little more freedom if they think they need it?
EM: It all depends on the circumstances. When it's purely a musical reason, probably I will, or will exist much more sympathetic to that kind of need. Sometimes, when something unexpected happens on the phase
— like some of the props didn't piece of work or for whatever reason ane of the singers doesn't arrive to a place — I take to wait... if that doesn't spoil the musical line! [Both laugh] Hopefully information technology volition not, merely yous never know. Opera is a very complicated business organisation. It's theater, subsequently all.BD: Then the Capriccio question
— due west here is the rest between the music and the drama in opera?EM: Usually in good opera, every bit is the example with Bizet, information technology's in-built. Every good opera that I know of has the timing perfectly synchronized and perfectly congenital in between the theatrical aspects and the musical aspects. I retrieve that'south what separates great opera from only good, acceptable opera — the fact that in the libretto you tin can find this proportion and this correspondence of timing between what happens on phase, theatrically speaking, and the music. It'south also the responsibility of the stage director, of class. You may take the best libretto in the world, where every instruction is given, and then the stage managing director may spoil it. [Both laugh] Or the music director, for that matter! Information technology is usually more oftentimes the case that the stage director has a funny idea about something in the production that is unorthodox, and so we musicians have to cope with that and work around it. It was non the case hither, of course.
BD: You're the music director. Do you work in collaboration with the stage managing director every bit the rehearsals progress?
EM: Yes, absolutely. In this item case information technology was a different kind of collaboration because the original stage manager, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, died nearly two years ago. So this staging of Carmen was prepared and realized by Vera Callabria. She was his banana at some point, and she was designated to reproduce the original creation which was done here some fourth dimension ago. And so my work was entirely done with her, and in the course of the rehearsals we developed a good friendship and an excellent rapport. Nosotros were able to piece of work everything together.
BD: This is very important, then, to work in collaboration with the stage director, rather than against the stage director?
EM: It is crucial, absolutely crucial.
BD: Is there anything yous tin do if you discover yourself in a position where yous've accepted a contract, and either you don't like the stage director or y'all don't like the ideas, or perhaps a unlike stage director that you didn't know was substituted?
EM: It all depends. If the differences are then huge that y'all cannot persuade the stage director
— or he or she cannot persuade you — then one of them may have to driblet out. If the differences are workable, you lot find a happy medium in which everybody tin can work and operate. I have been confronted with that kind of state of affairs before, and most of the times — I would say xc-5 per cent of the times — we notice a workable medium in the middle. But in this particular instance with Carmen it was a very, very smooth ride, very smooth sailing throughout the operation. Outset of all, I admire Jean-Pierre Ponnelle very much. Second, I think this is one of the best stagings of Carmen I've ever seen, and I have seen a lot of them. And thirdly, Vera Callabria is a very talented stage director and a very nice person, a very easy person to work with.BD: How much was Ponnelle and how much was Callabria? Did she innovate a lot of her own ideas, or simply a few?
EM: Most of the creative work can exist respectfully traced to Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. He was a man of genius, really.
BD: You lot were talking most great operas and good operas and bottom operas. Do you just accept contracts to do the great operas?
EM: I am primarily a symphonic conductor. I take been conducting mostly symphonic concerts for the bulk of my career. I came relatively tardily to the opera field and, although I have a little fleck of feel in opera in the last ten years or then, my primary training was as an orchestra conductor. I have decided to get into the opera world, simply I am very fractional to the not bad composers of opera. I am very partial to Verdi, Puccini, Bizet, Mozart, over all, plus Strauss and Wagner, of course. I don't experience a particular sympathy for the strictly bel canto opera. What I consider the bel canto opera is that kind of opera where the primary concern, the most important matter, is only the singing vocalisation and the artifice that the voice can produce every bit a split instrument. I prefer the operas where the vox is but one element in an integral whole. So I take decided to concentrate on that kind of repertoire because that's where my idiosyncrasies are situated. That'south the thing I know ameliorate, and ultimately I call up that I can say something in that field.
* * * * *
BD: You spend much of your time in symphonic work and a little bit in opera. How does information technology divide?
EM: In the last 10 years, I would say that 70-v per cent of my time is spent with symphonic concerts and the remaining time is opera. As y'all know, I am the Music Director of the Dallas Symphony and I'm also the Primary Guest Conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, and so that really takes a lot of my available time.
BD: I want to come up back to the symphonic work and the recordings only a trivial chip later, simply let usa stay with opera momentarily. From all of these not bad operas, how do y'all select which ones you will accept and which ones you will decline?
BD: So it really is quite an intricate mesh.
EM: It is, and information technology involves a lot of negotiation, mostly between managers. Of grade, I am the last word about it. [Both express mirth] I am 1 of those fortunate artists that keeps control of his time.
BD: Do you make sure you have enough time to remainder and to study scores?
EM: Aye. I practice that, yep.
BD: When you get into an opera, perhaps one that you've conducted a prelude or an excerpt from in concert, are you lot e'er surprised how it fits into the opera when you put the whole thing together?
EM: Very seldom is the case because most of the time when I play an excerpt, I know the opera, and then very seldom it'south a surprise.
BD: Is it always a surprise the other way, that you find it strange to excerpt the piece and then put it into a concert?
EM: It happens more often that way, yes.
BD: Exercise you do opera-in-concert sometimes?
EM: Yes, I have done a number of operas in concert version.
BD: Does it work without the staging?
EM: It all depends on the quality of the music. I take had both experiences — operas that work and operas that don't work. I can mention to you operas that work that I take done several times, like Fidelio. It works very well in concert version. The year earlier last I did a concert version of The Gambler by Prokofiev which doesn't work at all.
BD: Did yous practice it in Russian or in English?
EM: I did it in English, following eight performances that I did in Florence the twelvemonth before of the fully staged version. I miscalculated and idea that it would work, and it didn't. So in that location are examples of both instances.
BD: But I assume that the people who came to the concert operation of The Gambler were not dissatisfied?
EM: Well, some were not. Some were.
BD: What do you expect of the audition that comes either to opera or to concert?
EM: Involvement. We accept the competition of the electronic media because there are several
— records, television, radio — and the departure is still very, very important in favor of live music. The thing that I await the audience to practice is get involved; participate. That makes all the departure in the world, and the artist on stage feels it. You started this conversation by mentioning that the audience was slow reacting in the last performance of Carmen that we did here. In that sense, it is up to us to warm them up! Any stand up-upward comedian can do it if he notices that the audience is not really laughing as much as they should.BD: [With a sly nudge] And so, are you merely entertainers, or are you also artists?
EM: [Grin] Well, I think nosotros're both. We're basically artists, simply what we do is besides a form of entertainment... of a different category, if you desire, of a very spiritual quality, sometimes, but I think we're both. More than entertain, I recollect we have the obligation to communicate. That's a great aspiration of all artists.
BD: Y'all take the unlike audiences each dark, and y'all accept this expectation. Is at that place any fashion that we should go out and grab more audiences, either from football games or telly or rock concerts?
EM: It's condign increasingly difficult to catch audiences from spectator sports and other forms of entertainment. Pedagogy
— or the lack of education — has a lot to exercise with that, but in that location are, of course, very singled-out exceptions. 1 of them, I should say, is Lyric Opera, which has basically a sold-out flavor. I shouldn't be saying this, only I say it anyhow because it is a rarity in gimmicky United states of america now, but the Dallas Symphony has a sold-out flavour. It'southward very hard to find a ticket for an individual performance, every bit it is to detect a subscription ticket. I know that in the Lyric Opera in Chicago was very much the aforementioned thing, which speaks very highly of the quality of the things that are presented in that location, and as well speaks very highly of the promotional efforts. But it is hard.BD: If all your performances at Lyric and in Dallas are sold out, should you be adding boosted performances occasionally?
EM: In Dallas we were forced to create a "new dark" in the transition to our new hall. We were living in a hall for three yard five hundred people up to 1988, and in 1989 we moved to a facility that is 1 of the preeminent concert halls of the United States
— and the world, for that matter. But information technology is much smaller. Two k and two hundred seats is the chapters of the Meyerson Middle in Dallas. And so we had to add 1 performance merely to compensate for the loss of seats. But then, because of the expectation created by the concert hall and by the "new sound" that the orchestra was producing in this fabled hall, we had to create a fourth performance. In addition to that we created Sunday serial, which are free, as a fashion to let some people from the urban center — particularly for people that cannot afford the very expensive toll of tickets in Dallas — to come and hear the symphony. And then yes, to reply your question, we have to exercise our imagination and try to create new serial and new means to attract people and serve them.BD: Free concerts! Only show upwards and you attend the functioning?
EM: That's right, just you lot have to put a request. You have to go upwards and pick upward a ticket. You take to make the effort to collect the ticket. It costs nothing, but that shows that people have interest and really want to get, so it takes a little of an endeavour.
BD: I was just worried that maybe all of a sudden you have this twenty-2 hundred seats and five thousand people descending upon yous.
EM: It has happened! It has happened in the first instances. And so we had the opposite reaction. People thought that it was and so difficult to make it that they started to withdraw from the concerts, only now the pendulum has swung the other way. We have a balanced situation. We have the concerts basically full. They are not complete programs of two hours of music. They are commonly without intermission, an hour and v to an hour and ten minutes of music, merely we have had total houses recently.
BD: Do you find that that encourages people to try and become tickets for the full concerts?
EM: Very much and so. We have had a lot of requests for new subscriptions, which unfortunately nosotros cannot fulfill. So the only answer for that is to give more specials and increase our serial.
BD: How many concerts do y'all play a yr in Dallas?
EM: Nosotros play twenty-one different programs throughout the year in the principal season, and now we have a festival that takes place in the summertime of virtually vii weeks. We also have a lot of school concerts, and the Metropolis of Dallas give the Dallas Symphony a grant to play free concerts in parks. So that's some other way to expand our visibility in the community at large.
BD: Practice you decide the programs for all of these concerts?
EM: Yes, except the pop concerts. The orchestra has a very, very all-encompassing and ambitious project of subscription pops concerts, and I accept nothing to practice with that part of the programming.
BD: For the rest of the flavour, how practise you lot decide which works are going where, and make sure that there is a residuum?
EM: That's the sixty-1000 dollar question. [Both laugh] You take to always take into account the repertoire that we are offering, which is usually very limited on whatever given year. The repertoire that each private soloist can offering in a given year is small, so you take to play with that, and you lot take to play also with the balance between instruments
— how many pianists, how many violinists? Are yous going to nowadays a cellist, guitar player, singers, etcetera? Yous have to balance that with choral works, unusual or new works, premieres and commissions. You have to use your imagination and your intelligence to mix the very well-known repertory with the less known repertoire and new music. I think we all accept a duty to new music, and we exercise our duty in a pocket-sized but meaningful way. Nosotros play quite a number of contemporary pieces in Dallas, both of very well-known composers and young, unknown as well. 
EM: It depends who y'all talk to. [Both express mirth] In every city at that place is a small segment, a pocket-size minority of music-lovers that buy a lot of records, that keep up to date with the magazines, and with the new, the premieres around the world, etcetera. It's a small nucleus of persons, but I would say that it is as of import to feed the tastes of those people as it is to give the bulk of our audiences the chance to her their favorite repertoire. So if you clarify the programs of the Dallas Symphony, you will notice indeed a cantankerous department of what the audience may be like just by looking at the programs.
BD: You yourself are also a composer. Do y'all ever program one of your own pieces?EM: No. I don't consider myself a composer anymore. I quit composing most seventeen years agone, and I call up that there's lots that I could claim for myself are well deserved by many other composers who are full-time composers. I don't have that pretension anymore.
BD: Is that something you might return to eventually?EM: Yes, probably in the near future I will return to composing, and I look to take advantage of then many years of experience conducting an orchestra and put it to piece of work. But for the time being, I don't intend to play my music.
BD: Does the fact that you did write quite a bit of music during the early role of your career make yous a more sensitive conductor to both the new and the old repertoire?
EM: I don't know about that. Ultimately the audience has to estimate whether my performances are more or less sensitive. What I tin say is that my training as a composer helped me tremendously in the mode I arroyo scores. I clarify them, and I like to project them to the audience. That I know for sure. I don't know how they project or how they are received, merely that's not for me to guess.
BD: Yous're Music Director in Dallas, and Principal Invitee Conductor in Pittsburgh. How are the audiences different in those two cities, if at all?
EM: Yes, there are some differences. I would say that segment or that minority we were talking about just a infinitesimal agone is slightly larger in Pittsburgh than information technology is in Dallas, but because Pittsburgh has an older tradition. Pittsburgh has been a great symphony orchestra for many, many years, so they are a little scrap alee of us in terms of the audition potential for receiving new things. Also, they take had the tradition of the groovy masters in the hands of conductors such as Reiner and Steinberg, which has, of course, educated at least ane important segment of that audience, the older segment. But in whatsoever other sense, they could be compared; the Pittsburgh and the Dallas audiences are not too far apart. I would say that the only cities where yous will observe a very, very big deviation are New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles with that cosmopolitan population, and Chicago. The level of exposure that an audience has here in Chicago cannot be compared to the level of exposure that a member of the audience has in Dallas or in Pittsburgh.
BD: Has the advent and the ease of purchase of recordings inverse this balance at all?
BD: Practice you conduct differently in the recording studio than yous do in the concert hall?
EM: Definitely.
BD: How so?
EM: Beginning of all, when you're conducting in the recording studio, you have to be recording by small segments, simply like they brand movies. You record a segment, not always in order, and of those little segments the conductor, the producer and the technician put together the final version. And then information technology's a completely different technique. It'southward a completely dissimilar approach. Information technology's very difficult in a recording to let mistakes go by, considering those mistakes will be in that location forever. That's the reason why nosotros should non really allow serious mistakes to happen in a recording. But mistakes are incidental in live operation because the about important affair in live performance is the line. Information technology's like soapbox, or like reading poesy. It is of import what you say, and if sometimes you don't say information technology as cleanly and equally perfectly as you would similar to, it really doesn't matter that much if the bulletin is getting across to the audition. So in that sense there are meaningful differences between one medium and the other.
BD: I thought we were finally getting to the days of the long takes.
EM: More and more nosotros're approaching that way of doing recordings. Some other welcome development in that is that the concluding say-so is coming back to the music director or to the conductor, every bit opposed to some years ago where the concluding 1 responsible was the producer. Information technology used to be the A&R producer of the recording who had the last say and the command of the knobs and the audio console. You're absolutely right, and in that sense the recording technique has evolved for the better, but I even so think that 1 has to be careful in separating the two mediums. We have to be very careful nigh establishing those differences because information technology's non the same. Regardless of whether we're making long takes or short takes, they're different mediums and one should approach them as such. Information technology'southward the aforementioned equally with concerts in television. Something needs to be done in terms of how we circulate television receiver concerts. People are getting tired of these stationary cameras just taking instruments. I take seen a number of examples of artistic ways to approach this trouble. We have, for instance, Allan Miller, with that masterful piece of cinematography, The Bolero, in which the score comes alive in such a wonderful way. [Note: The film won an Academy Award in 1974 for All-time Short Subject.] The photographic camera is inside of the orchestra, and gives u.s.a. not but the players are they are performing their respective solos, just gives us atmosphere, gives united states of america a number of visual parameters and visual takes that brand the score so much more interesting. I think we take to evolve in that management as well for the broadcasting of concerts by boob tube. Again, it's trying to make the best out of a dissimilar medium. When people are captive in a concert hall, they are in that location to concentrate exclusively on the music. Merely television is a different medium, so yous accept to recall that the audition could easily go tired and switch the aqueduct. And so in that location has to exist also a visual emphasis, a visual interest.
BD: Y'all've got to grab them.
EM: You have to take hold of them; that's right.
BD: Do you always feel that you're competing with recordings when you play a piece in the concert hall?
EM: No, because I don't think you tin compare apples with oranges, and the live performance is always a live operation.
BD: You lot don't experience that the audience is bringing both apples and oranges into the hall?
EM: Sometimes they do, and that'due south why I speak so much about this thing because I would like to erase that possibility. I tin't, only I try as much as I can to allow people know that live music is a completely different business organisation. I wish they wouldn't, merely of course they practise. Sometimes they mix. They hear a live operation and they compare it to what they heard at abode the nighttime before. Some people even think that it is a proficient discipline to heed to a lot of recordings earlier they go to heed to live performance. That's maybe adept up to a point, just to be familiar with a score, simply when you lot create and build prejudices in terms of an estimation, then it tin simply act negatively on your behalf and on behalf of the artist.
BD: So if they know the score enough that they tin notice new things in the concert, that'due south fine?
EM: That's wonderful.
BD: Only if they become to criticize and say, "That wasn't equally good as..."
EM: That wasn't as good as, or that wasn't the fashion I heard it final night in my audio equipment.
BD: Do you find that your performances alter over the years, so that perhaps a record that you fabricated ten or fifteen years agone is not at all representative of what you're doing today?
BD: Then people come up to you and say, "That's not the way you used to do it."
EM: That'southward right, very often, and I'grand so glad when I hear that!
BD: Practise they e'er come up and say, "You lot're wrong" or, "Yous've missed it" or, "Y'all've lost information technology?"
EM: Non with those words, simply I have had people that told me, "I like improve what you did two years ago with that piece than what you did now."
BD: Probably considering they heard it 20 times, and this they heard one time.
EM: Correct, probably. Only I besides hear the other, "I heard you doing such-and-such three years ago and I didn't like it every bit much, and then this night, you really..." It happens always.
BD: Let me ask the groovy big philosophical question. What is the purpose of music?
EM: [Ponders a moment] Communicate a poetic message. I cannot even say dazzler, considering beauty can be construed in many ways. It's just a poetic message, and that poetic message can be sometimes ugly. Sometimes tin can be dramatic, sometimes can be tender or contemplative or aggressive. But in the same manner that we experience emotions through the visual arts and experience emotions to the spoken discussion or to the written word, we experiment with very, very concrete, specific emotions through sounds. Sometimes you cannot even ascertain music as melody or harmony because sometimes those parameters are non even important in music. What is of import is what you communicate on the poetic level, and I think that's the essence of information technology. You lot desire to communicate with interpreters or the intermediaries between the composer and the audience. Tacitly what we practice is we presume the voice of the composer because the music does not exist equally an abstruse entity. The music doesn't be in soapbox. The music is created in the moment information technology is sounding, so the interpreter has a great responsibility. But we all try to get in the same direction, which is to communicate with the audition and make them feel something which we consider to be of great importance in poetic terms. As I said before it can exist either beautiful, ugly, aggressive, tender or wistful. There are many forms of dazzler, and the wonderful thing about music is that it has its own language. Information technology's one of the about abstruse arts par excellence, because a lot of what the music tries to say cannot be described in words, and that's absolutely wonderful.
BD: Is the music that you lot deport for everyone?
EM: Yeah, I think so. Definitely. Absolutely! Yes. But by the aforementioned token, if only i or two people become the bulletin, that'south plenty in a given performance. If a lot of them practise, wonderful, of form, but information technology'south enough if only one or ii people in the audience really become the bulletin. I have that feeling.
BD: Then the next fourth dimension they come, perhaps another two will get it?
EM: That's how we judge the success of a slice of music or a performance, by how many people get moved by it. In that sense, recordings are very frustrating because it is very difficult to confront whether the audition has been moved or not. They cannot communicate with yous. In a live situation, they clap. Or don't. [Both laugh] Merely in the case of recordings, you lot just have to accept for granted if the critics like the recording that perhaps some of the general public will besides. But that'southward not taken for granted, because after all, what a critic writes about a functioning is just one man's or woman's stance.
BD: I assume, though, that yous make certain the record pleases you outset?
EM: Admittedly. Information technology has to please me kickoff. Otherwise, how could I believe in it?
BD: How much estimation do you discover and use in the scores, and how much do you slavishly just stay exactly with what's on the printed page?
EM: Everything is interpretation! There are a lot of schools of thought about that. I used belong to the schoolhouse of literalists, but that actually doesn't mean anything. I has to go after the spirit of the music, and mostly the spirit of the music is well beyond the notes, well beyond the music newspaper.
BD: Is this what separates the improve conductors from the bottom conductors
— how much they can detect in the scores? 
BD: I'g not going to ask you to do this, but could y'all assemble the opening part of a motion with this conductor and the development with another usher and the recapitulation dorsum with the get-go conductor, and withal some other conductor for the minuet...
EM: It could be done that way, or it could be that one single piece of a composer is masterly done by just one conductor or one violinist or i vocaliser. It frequently happens that y'all hear a functioning that for the time being yous consider definitive
— until the next one. [Both laugh]BD: There's been a charge leveled occasionally that because of the recordings and because of the immediacy of broadcasts, all of the music is becoming too much the same. There's not enough individuality of operation anymore. Exercise you agree with this?
EM: No. What's happening at present, it's as you say, the awareness of what's going on all over the earth and the blurring of national distinctions and idiosyncrasies. That's a fact, merely the awareness is due to the facility of communications
— recordings and television — but I think there are fashions well-nigh interpretations besides. It was very fashionable at the start of this century for cord players to practise a lot of glissandi, slides. Then they became non fashionable at all, and now information technology'due south coming back. This is probably a poor example, but my bespeak is that there are fashions also nigh interpretation, and I don't particularly intendance almost way. What I care about is the depth of the interpretation itself, and what an artist is showing me that is new or distinct about a piece — and not necessarily new because that'due south non even a proficient word. What an interpreter is showing me that I demand to know most the piece that will communicate to me that poetic message that I was talking most before.BD: Existence from United mexican states, practice you bring a bit of Mexican music with you lot wherever you can?
EM: Yes. I don't forcefulness the Mexican music on audiences or promoters, but I have a very potent belief, peculiarly in two composers
— Carlos Chavez and Silvestre Revueltas.BD: They are the masters of Mexican music?
EM: I remember they are, and whenever there is sympathy, a priori sympathy for this music, I effort to play information technology.
BD: Is at that place a special sympathy in Dallas?
EM: Probably. The orchestra has developed a great sympathy and a skilful feel for this kind of music. They play Chavez equally the Mexicans. They really play Chavez very well and Revueltas, and have done repeatedly so for the concluding ten or fifteen years.
BD: Is at that place a connection between the music of Mexican composers and the music of composers from Spain?
EM: Very fiddling. That has to practice with the historical development of Mexico. Mexico is an independent land since the procedure of the Mexican independence war started in 1810 and concluded in 1827. At that point there is no record of whatever originality in concert music in United mexican states, so really all the originality of concert music in Mexico starts with the twentieth century. Espana, as you lot probably know, did not have too much to offer in terms of music in the nineteenth century other than Tonadilla and Zarzuela. Both forms of musical theater were relevant, just did not offer too much in terms of a distinct linguistic communication that composers of great category would utilise. Albeniz is Albeniz, of form, and what I mean past that is that Albeniz is just a man of genius, a man of great talent, somehow limited in his orchestral writing, just a wonderful writer for the piano. Granados is a wonderful pioneer of what was going to exist recognized as the Spanish style in concert music. But really, the great composer of Spain in modernistic times is Manuel de Falla. The development of Manuel de Falla happens almost parallel to the development of concert music in United mexican states in the kickoff of this century. So therefore there was very piffling communication in concert music. If you take folk music, that's some other story. In folk music, almost everything — I would say ninety per cent of the sources of Mexican contemporary folk music are from Spain.
BD: So it's more than just a linguistic communication connection?
EM: Oh, it's more than that. Information technology'south just an affinity for the language of music, for the item expression of music, particularly music with words. Sones, jarabes, huapangos, all these forms closely associated with Mexican folk music tin be traced one fashion or another to Spanish models. Merely I make that distinction because, curiously enough, in concert music it is non the case. You may feel in the music of Revueltas sure traces simply because Revueltas has a very popular extraction as a human being being, and and so the music reflects a lot of things that are characteristic of Mexicans. Merely if you try to establish a direct connectedness between Revueltas and Falla, you won't find it. It's via the folk music.
BD: Exercise we know why there is the connection in the folk music and not in the concert music?
EM: Because upward to now, we Mexicans are still very resentful of the conquistadors and the fact that nosotros were a colony
— not exactly a colony but very close to a colony from Spain. Now that's starting to disappear, fortunately, but up to the revolutionary years of Mexico — the big revolution that took place at the get-go of the century between 1910 and 1930 more than or less — this sentiment of the great majority of Mexican, educated Mexicans, against their Spanish background was very stiff. Of grade, that permeated the arts as well. You can see in the mural painting of Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco at that place is that innate, intuitive hatred of the Spanish civilization. It's a paradox, because nosotros have information technology in our blood and we tin can't help it. It'southward there! All our surnames are Spanish, but it is like the reaction of an adolescent, rebelling against the parents until it comes to a point where you accept what y'all are. Then you respect and love your parents. That'south still to come up, but information technology will come very before long, hopefully.BD: Do you conduct at all in Spain?
EM: Yes.
BD: Do you bring Mexican music to Spain?
EM: Yes.
BD: How do the Spaniards react to it?
EM: Very well! There is, equally I say, an innate connectedness there, so as far every bit that is concerned the likes and dislikes in this particular case, the likes of the audiences and sympathy of the audiences, there is no trouble. Nosotros have that connection.
BD: How does Mexican music travel elsewhere in America or to other countries in Europe?
EM: Depends where you play information technology. Not recently, just in the last 15 years or so I used to conduct very frequently radio orchestras in Deutschland and in another European countries. Very often they will enquire me to practise Revueltas and Chavez, and it was more often than not very well received. I take seen this music programmed repeatedly in radio stations sponsored by the land in most of Europe. In the United States, it's very often a matter of fashion. At some indicate Revueltas was very fashionable. At some point Chavez was as important in this country as Copland or Roger Sessions or Henry Cowell; then it became less and then. I feel that there might exist a renaissance of interest for this kind of music, not but about Chavez and Revueltas, but also the composers from Latin America in general
— Ginastera, Villa-Lobos, Cordero, Orbon, etcetera.BD: Do you have any communication for young conductors coming along?
BD: Practice y'all have whatever advice for someone who wants to be an orchestral player?
EM: Orchestral music has a lot to offer. It has been judged to be in crisis recently by a lot of people, and there are many pronouncements near the imminent disappearance of symphony orchestras. Fortunately, none of those predictions has go true. I still remember that there is a great vitality in our business organisation and a lot of terrain to be covered. I recall the musicians themselves — I'yard non maxim the musicians as opposed to conductors, but all musicians — have to fight for our place in society, and persuade people that we are non merely important, but crucial for the culture of our fourth dimension. So to answer your question, to exist a actor, a playing musician can be a privilege and should exist regarded equally that. If we all think akin, everything else will get superfluous if we keep thinking along those lines.
BD: Is conducting fun?
EM: Information technology can exist fun and almost of the fourth dimension information technology is. I prefer to call back that it is far more than that
— north ot only fun, but information technology's a fulfilling experience. It's a lifetime experience. It'southward a privilege and a responsibility. BD: You lot're budgeted your fiftieth altogether. Are you where yous want to be in your career at present?EM: No, because my expectations and my ambitions and my goals are always higher and more distant than wherever I am, and they seem to go even further away as I get older. That's not to say that I am an unhappy person. I am basically a very happy person, but as I approach my fiftieth birthday, I realize how many things I have non done and how many goals look further away than always. I was proverb to my married woman today, I have more questions than answers as I grow older. [Both laugh]
BD: That seems to be the man status, I'thousand agape. The more nosotros learn, the more nosotros notice we demand to learn.
EM: Right.
BD: Are you coming back to Chicago?EM: I don't know however. I don't actually know even so whether dates and opportunities will coincide. I promise so.
BD: What are the next recordings that are coming along?
EM: I can requite you a preview of some of the recordings that are coming out early on in the yr, like a Spanish record, the complete Three-Cornered Chapeau with the Dallas Symphony, and on the other side we'll put the 5 pieces that Arbos orchestrated from the suite Iberia by Albeniz. And so another tape with Stravinsky's music volition exist coming out containing Petruschka and Le Baiser de la Fee, the Fairy Kiss Divertimento. Those are the ii imminent records. Subsequently in the season I volition be recording The Rite of Spring and the Scythian Suite by Prokofiev, which will exist released probably by the middle of the yr.
BD: Information technology'southward interesting that you say, "...And on the other side..." [Laughs]
EM: That's right, because I have that prejudice of the LP records! Really at present they are side by side. It complicates things, merely that's right. You're absolutely correct. Quondam habits die hard.
BD: How are we going to tell our children virtually
" the flip side " ?EM: That's right!
BD: How are we going to tell our children nosotros used to
" dial " a phone? And what is clockwise? Although you are wearing a sentinel with easily on it...EM: Clockwise, that's right. It will be hard to explain. You're admittedly correct. [Note: While setting up my auto to record this chat, we both commented about the virtues and defects of open-reel equipment vs. cassettes, and Mata noted,
"I remember anthropologists in Mexico going on field trips to record folk music, e'er using the Nagras. "BD: Cheers for coming to Chicago.
EM: Give thanks you lot for giving me the gamble to talk to the Chicago audiences through your station.
The New York Times, Published: January 05, 1995
Eduardo Mata, a Mexican usher who was the music director of the Dallas Symphony from 1977 to 1993, was killed yesterday when the plane he was flight crashed most the Cuernavaca aerodrome in Mexico. He was 52 and lived in Xochitepec, United mexican states. As well killed in the crash was Maria Anaya, a friend.
In his years on the Dallas podium, Mr. Mata improved the orchestra'due south performance standard and brought the ensemble into the national and international spotlight. He campaigned vigorously for the edifice of the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, which opened in 1989.
He too made dozens of recordings with his Dallas players for the Dorian, RCA, Pro Arte, Telarc and Voice labels. He also recorded with Canadian and European orchestras. In recent years he was recording a serial for Dorian devoted to Latin American works with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra of Caracas, of which he was primary guest conductor and artistic adviser.
Mr. Mata was born in Mexico City, and studied with the composers Carlos Chavez and Julian Orbon at the Mexican National Conservatory. As the recipient of a Koussevitzky Fellowship in 1964, he continued his studies at the Berkshire Music Centre at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass., where he studied conducting with Max Rudolf and Erich Leinsdorf and composition with Gunther Schuller.
When he returned to Mexico that year, he was appointed to his beginning conducting post, as music director of the Guadalajara Symphony Orchestra. He was appointed director of the University of Mexico Philharmonic in 1966. In the 1970's, earlier taking over Dallas, he held directorships of the Phoenix Symphony, the National Symphony of United mexican states, the San Salvador Festival and the Casals Festival.
In Dallas he was likewise a principal guest conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony and the director of the National Opera of Mexico. He also had an active guest conducting schedule, appearing regularly in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, San Francisco, London, Berlin, Frankfurt and Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Known for his make clean, direct interpretations, Mr. Mata was at his virtually eloquent in music by Silvestre Revueltas, Alberto Ginastera, Heitor Villa-Lobos and other Latin American composers. But he also conducted and recorded a broad repertory that ranged from Mozart and Schumann to 20th-century American, Russian and French composers.
When he gave upwardly the Dallas podium later 16 seasons, he became usher emeritus. He was also the principal invitee conductor of the New Zealand Symphony and the artistic director of the Solistas de Mexico in recent years.
He is survived by a son, Roberto, and a daughter, Pilar, both of United mexican states City.
This interview was recorded in Chicago on Jan 4, 1991. Portions were used (with recordings) on WNIB in 1992 and 1997. The transcription was made and posted on this website in 2012.
To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click hither.
Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its concluding moment equally a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews take likewise appeared in diverse magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his circulate series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.
You lot are invited to visit his website for more information virtually his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a total list of his guests. He would also similar to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more a century ago. You may also send him E-mail with comments, questions and suggestions.Source: http://www.bruceduffie.com/mata.html
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