Lunch with the FT: Valery Gergiev
He is already an hour late. Audiences from London to Tokyo have grown accustomed to delays at the start of Valery Gergiev’s performances, so it should be no surprise if the world’s most charismatic conductor is late for me. This is the one day of the month when he is not travelling, rehearsing, fundraising or managing the companies he leads. But I am beginning to twitch.
We’re in Edinburgh. Gergiev, the biggest draw of the 2008 festival, is free on the day of his last performance and has agreed to spend it with the FT. The plan is to escape the heaving crowds, see a bit of Scotland and sample the national cuisine.
As a Scot I am happy to be his guide. As a music critic I’m slightly apprehensive. In recent months I have slagged off his Mahler performances in London, and our rendezvous is scheduled for the day when my review of Król Roger, his festival opera production, will be published.
Gergiev, 55, made his name by galvanising St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, Russia’s oldest opera and ballet ensemble, in the period after the Soviet Union’s collapse, when state-funded arts companies faced an uncertain future. He revived its repertory, organised gruelling but commercially advantageous tours, nurtured friends with political and financial clout and mesmerised audiences with the intensity of his interpretations. In an increasingly homogenised musical landscape, the Mariinsky (formerly known as the Kirov) cut an imposing profile as the embodiment of a lustrous, immaculately preserved national tradition.
As if controlling the destiny and daily workload of 1,000 artistic temperaments was not enough, Gergiev became one of the most sought-after conductors in the west. He is principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra and principal guest of the Metropolitan Opera, New York. He also tours regularly with the Vienna Philharmonic. Instead of exploiting these positions to advance his career, he has used them to consolidate the international reputation of the Mariinsky through joint promotions and artist exchanges.
When Gergiev emerges from the hotel elevator, looking relaxed in designer-stubble and an all-black outfit of biker jacket, corduroy jeans and trainers, he switches off his mobile phone and starts talking about the FT. What has caught his eye is not my glowing opera review but an article by Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president, explaining Moscow’s decision to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two Russian-controlled break-away regions of Georgia. Gergiev asks my opinion: will the article help the west understand Russia’s position? Unlikely, I reply.
Gergiev is an Ossetian from Vladikavkaz on the Russian side of the border. Two days before arriving in Edinburgh he and the Mariinsky orchestra made a whistle-stop visit to the bombed South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, for an open-air concert in memory of victims of the conflict. The programme included Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, written during the Nazi siege of Leningrad and widely interpreted as a Russian victory hymn.
His intervention shocked friends in Georgia and the west. The Washington Post accused him of “wading brazenly into politics”. As our driver negotiates a way out of Edinburgh’s traffic-clogged city centre, Gergiev mutters that he usually sleeps “without worry. But now, as soon as I wake, I switch on the television, hoping for some sense of movement [on South Ossetia]. Right now it’s escalation, escalation.”
He has left our itinerary to me, and soon we are speeding north to a late lunch in the Fife fishing town of St Monans. But I barely have time to point out the landmarks approaching the Forth Road Bridge before Gergiev launches into an account of the devastation he witnessed in Tskhinvali. “If there was any hope of co-existence [between Georgians and Ossetians], it’s killed. Too many died that first night under the [Georgian] tanks.”
Gergiev, who has three young children by his Ossetian wife, makes no mention of the torching of Georgian communities in South Ossetia or the devastation caused by Russian forces in Georgia.
He refuses to accept that Shostakovich’s symphony was a provocative choice. “This music is not only about Hitler; it’s about evil that is brought into your life, anybody’s life. My performance was designed to commemorate the dead, not to be commented on by the Washington Post. For Tskhinvali, 1,000 dead is a devastating loss. It’s the Ossetian equivalent of the Twin Towers. If the Russian army had not intervened, thousands more Ossetians would have been killed.”
The sight of the 120-year old Forth Railway Bridge, with its three giant double-cantilevers, brings him momentarily back to Scotland. He asks if there is still talk of Scottish independence. Yes, I reply. “In Europe you can achieve independence by peaceful means. No leader would send an army to kill the Scots. If he did, the army would not obey. In the Caucasus, emotions are wilder.”
Does he mean tribal? “Almost,” says Gergiev calmly, “it’s complicated, worse than Trovatore,” an allusion to the tangled blood-relationships in Verdi’s opera, in which almost everyone ends up killing each other. “Historically, Georgians are friends of Ossetians. There were many marriages, safety was never discussed. But after the break-up of the Soviet Union, nearly all Ossetians lost relatives when [former president Zviad] Gamsakhurdia [of Georgia] sent the army to carry out the policy of ‘Georgia for the Georgians’. If you are the son of someone killed in 1991, you cannot forget that bloodshed.”
The hour-long drive to St Monans, one of Scotland’s prettiest seaside towns, passes quickly and Gergiev admits to feeling hungry, having had only yoghurt for breakfast. No one in the comfortable little fish restaurant overlooking the harbour recognises him, an advantage over Edinburgh, where autograph-hungry festival-goers are rife. The menu interrupts Gergiev’s stream of consciousness, but it takes us barely a moment to choose warm haddock-and-leek tart for starters, then grilled monkfish for him and cod for me. As the waiter pours mineral water, I suggest a toast, a ritual of Russian and Georgian social occasions. My assumption, based on our previous encounters, is that Gergiev will drink the health of the Mariinsky Theatre, which is his musical family, and of Georgian pianist Alexander Toradze, one of his closest friends.
Gergiev needs no time to collect his thoughts. “Since it is on my mind, I hope we will see a display of leadership on both sides, to show the power of the mind and the power of the truth, rather than the power of informational wars or military force. How can you kill hundreds of civilians and it goes unnoticed? It’s a big emotional thing for me. I don’t want Condoleezza Rice deciding the future of my children. The greatest European leader will be the one who demands the truth and asks what happened on the first night [of the crisis, when Georgian forces moved into South Ossetia].”
Talk of leadership gives me a cue, as we tuck into our haddock tart, to ask about Gergiev’s links with the Russian government, which has actively supported his ambitions with the Mariinsky. He got to know Dmitry Medvedev when they served together on the board of St Petersburg University. Have they met since the St Petersburg-trained lawyer became head of state? “I saw him in Moscow on June 12 [Russia’s National Day]. I spoke to him about the Mariinsky and our work with young people.”
As for Vladimir Putin, Gergiev denies widely published reports that the Russian prime minister is godfather to his children, but does not deny having access to the Kremlin. “In St Petersburg my goal is to have a new opera house for the 2010-2011 season,” he says. “To visit the ministry of culture from time to time will not necessarily bring this project to maturity. The bureaucracy is so great, you need half a year just to sort the paperwork. One visit a year to the head of government is more effective. Putin makes quick decisions. Thank God he realises the Mariinsky is important. We already have our own concert hall [recently built with a large subsidy]: one of the achievements of my life. I don’t think western opera houses are so lucky.”
Gergiev pauses for breath at the arrival of his monkfish, musing enigmatically on the danger of fish contamination, “even at the North Pole”, before returning to his theme with variations. Putin, he says, has given Russia back its self-respect. “When the Soviet Union broke up, Russians suffered a loss of pride. Culture became a stronger ambassador than the economy or the political leadership. People could argue about Gorbachev or Yeltsin, but no one argued about Pushkin. We had a generation of performing artists – Mravinsky, Oistrakh, Rostropovich, Plisetskaya – who symbolised a nation, only a little less than [Yuri] Gagarin [the first man in space].”
Putin’s first achievement, says Gergiev, was to save the Russian Federation from breaking up. The second was to restore “the national wealth: symbols of culture, churches, palaces. If [the Ossetian crisis] had happened during his presidency, the country would have been unanimous in asking him to stay. It feels safe to have someone in the top office who is confident in the job.”
Our desserts have come and gone; so have the other diners. We have been sitting at the same window-table for two and a half hours. Now, over coffee, the only person within earshot is a waitress preparing tables for the evening. “It’s amazing such a quiet place has such good food,” Gergiev remarks, emerging into the fresh air.
I ask him what he has done to bring the Mariinsky’s tradition up-to-date. “Last month we played Mozart 20 nights in a row to young audiences. I want to cover all the schools and universities [in St Petersburg] from the age of seven to 27. You can’t expect them to sit through Mussorgsky but The Marriage of Figaro in Tchaikovsky’s translation is a good start. Maybe in five or 10 years they will come back of their own accord. Next year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of [Russian writer Nikolai] Gogol, so I have commissioned five short operas on Gogol themes. In the 1990s, when survival was at stake, it was important for us to tour. Now we must stimulate creativity at home.”
Back at the car, the chauffeur is looking anxious: he has tickets for the evening performance, apparently unaware it can’t start without the conductor. We join the rush-hour traffic, finally reaching Gergiev’s Edinburgh hotel at 6.30pm, a full six hours after we had set out. But the tsar of the Mariinsky doesn’t budge. Still seated in the stationary car, he starts expounding his interpretative approach to Rachmaninov, whose symphonies he will conduct later this month in London. When we finally get out he continues for another 10 minutes on the tarmac, ignoring another distinguished Russian conductor, Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, who has just walked past.
A new chauffeur approaches. “Mr Gergiev, are you ready to go?” Our excursion is over. Gergiev bids me farewell, switches his phone on and heads for the hotel entrance. He has 20 minutes to change, drive to the theatre and focus on the music. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The performance will begin – just a few minutes late.
Valery Gergiev opens the London Symphony Orchestra’s 2008-2009 season at the Barbican, London, on September 20-21; www.lso.co.uk
Andrew Clark is the FT’s chief music critic
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