John Axelrod: ‘Don’t give up – stay true to the music’

This article was originally published in our Spring 2022 issue. Click here to subscribe to our quarterly print magazine and be the first to read our June issue features.

Finding yourself in a country that chose to close its borders due to the pandemic must have been an unsettling experience – how did you make the most of your extended stay in Japan?

It was hard to accept the force majeure of government regulations, but I understood that the Japanese government would rather close the borders than risk exposing their country to the Omicron variant.

I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, but perhaps even more fortunate to be the right person with the right repertoire. I was happy to work with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, with whom I have a decade-long relationship, but also to make debuts with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. These were exceptional opportunities and if I were to leave, there was no guarantee I could come back.

As the principal guest conductor for the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, I also had a very important engagement doing concerts for young people in Shizuoka Prefecture. We made a DVD of young peoples’ performances for the many schools that were unable to attend the concert halls because of Covid restrictions.

That work might seem small in comparison to higher-profile events, but it’s so important to educate young people. We need to do more than just educate new musicians. We need to make sure that we can educate the audiences to support those musicians in the future.

How did you feel when you realised that you weren’t going to be able to leave Japan?

In truth, it was a kind of acceptance – I would have to miss Christmas and New Year with my family but at the same time I felt concern for the people of Japan. It was rewarding to know that the work with the orchestra actually did make a difference in the lives of the audience during this very challenging and difficult time. Ultimately, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do as artists – to share what resonates deep in our own souls with others? We don’t exist without the public.

Government responses to the pandemic in Europe and the US have had mixed reviews – how was your experience of the pandemic in Japan?

Japan is an isolated island with its own culture, perspective and mentality. You also don’t have the same political divide in Japan like you do in other countries; everyone is very serious about following the rules and regulations. People go and get their vaccines and their boosters, and they wear their masks.

In the concert halls, where they don’t want to risk yelling ‘bravo’ they hold up signs instead! I thought I was at the BBC Proms or something because there were so many people holding up signs and flags.

How else do Japanese audiences differ from those elsewhere in the world?

Classical music is revered here: before Covid there would be queues of people waiting for autographs after concerts. You don’t really have that in the West so much.

Your recent premiere, The Samurai of Seville, showcases this global approach to your work – how did the project come about?

When I was music director in Seville, I discovered the novel The Samurai of Seville, which tells the story of the Lord of Sendai, who sent 12 samurai to Spain to get permission from the Pope to build a Catholic church in Japan. During their journey there was an inquisition in Japan against Catholics and so these samurai, having been baptised by Philip III, couldn’t go back. So today in Coria del Río, just outside of Seville, there are almost 800 families that are still the direct descendants of these 12 samurai.I contacted the author, John J. Healey and commissioned my friend, guitarist José María Gallardo del Rey to write a piece inspired by this story. José made a double concerto for flamenco guitar and Japanese Koto with a narrator. The Samurai of Seville was premiered last November in Kyoto Concert Hall. It was a mixture of different cultures in the most beautiful way and for the audience it was a gift. They wept; it was an exceptional and an extraordinary outcome, which I didn’t expect.

We’re having this conversation a week after Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January). In 2007, you performed with the Sinfonietta Cracovia on the grounds of Auschwitz – the first orchestra to do so since its liberation. How did you prepare for such an emotional performance?

Before I went to Auschwitz for the BBC Holocaust Memorial documentary, I had already recorded Bernstein’s Third Symphony, the ‘Kaddish’, with Samuel Pisar’s text. Pisar was the youngest survivor from Auschwitz and was asked by Bernstein to rewrite the text of the Symphony, which he refused to do at the time, but after 9/11 he changed his mind. I was fortunate to conduct the premiere with Pisar and the Chicago Symphony. That was already probably the most significant musical experience that I’ve had of really doing something that resonates beyond the concert hall. I was deeply influenced by my own experience studying with Bernstein as a teenager, learning the ‘Kaddish’ directly from him.

Thanks to Felix Mendelssohn’s, grandfather, Moses Mendelssohn, the founder of Reform Judaism, I grew up in a reformed Jewish community in Texas but when I studied with Bernstein, it wasn’t really on a Jewish level, even though Judaism was so prominent in his music – it was more of a mentorship, and I learned a great deal. I recently performed Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony with the Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra in Hiroshima [in December 2021]. When people came to me after the concert to say they were deeply moved by the performance, I asked them ‘what moved you?’ – an elderly woman said it was the healing of personal tragedy. Music certainly is a catharsis for many people.

As a child you developed a form of synaesthesia. With this bridge between your taste and your hearing, what does Japanese cuisine sound like to you?

That’s a great question! Of course, in Japan you have umami which is a taste quite different from what we’re traditionally used to in our Western palate. It’s an important taste that’s characteristic of a particular kind of cuisine that you find in the East.

Interestingly, it sounds far more harmonious than the Western palate where we typically deal with quite extreme flavours – sour or bitter or sweet. It’s more balanced and everything is perfectly blended in terms of taste and in terms of sound.

I was invited by Dr Yasamune Date, who is a descendant of one of the Samurais of Seville, to Sendai to visit his home and we visited the Zuigan-ji temple. [Axelrod plays a video on his phone of a monk playing a rin gong or Japanese singing bowl] That’s what umami sounds like, it’s a very harmonious, almost spiritual sound. It’s the undertone that you feel when you’re eating Japanese cuisine and then the harmony of the ingredients on top of that.

How has synaesthesia impacted on your musicality?

Having synaesthesia by birth is similar to having perfect pitch. I didn’t know I had perfect pitch until somebody told me – I thought everybody heard music the way that I heard it. It’s a blessing and curse because when things go out of tune, it’s a little bit like fingernails on a chalkboard. My synaesthesia has also led to a technique I call psycho-harmonics. When I talk to people, I’m able to evaluate the average pitch of their voice, their harmony and discern the taste of people’s voices. So when I say a person gives me a bad taste in my mouth I’m being literal!

For me, it tells me a lot about their character – if I talk to somebody long enough, I’m able to evaluate whether I’m going to get along with this person depending on whether we’re in harmony.

The musicians are the ones who actually play the instruments, but the conductor plays musicians, so it is really a job of human relations. Our responsibility is, however we can, to motivate the musicians to play their best. So when they ask me questions or there is some discussion going on in rehearsals, psycho-harmonics can help me get a sense of whether this is going to be a good personal relationship or not. I want to be on a personal basis with musicians in front of me, not so much distance, not too professional and reserved or distant to the degree that we can’t find a way to trust each other.

Most recently, I’ve worked with three concertmasters across the three best orchestras in Tokyo. Each one of them was very different, but all three of them I’ve had the chance to not just work with musically, but get to know personally and I knew that we were neighbouring harmonies, in cadence with each other in different ways; in each case we built a very fruitful and supportive relationship.

You clearly made the most of a challenging situation – something many of us struggled with during the pandemic. What advice do you have for colleagues?

First of all, there are many opportunities available, even during Covid, as our industry becomes more inclusive. Colleagues of mine who are of colour, or young, or gay or from a country that is not necessarily associated with the classical music canon are, in many respects, finding extraordinary opportunity right now.

So, whereas Covid might be much more difficult for the white straight males of my generation, it’s a godsend and a goldmine for another generation. I’m glad that everybody is getting more equality and opportunity, even as they demonstrate equity, quality, and value.

So, during this time of Covid I think that, while some people are suffering – for which I have a great deal of empathy – there are others who are just really having a great year and a great story to tell.

Organisations are also facing severe budget cuts as a result of all the expenses associated with Covid and the loss of revenue because of cancellations. They need to find ways to generate new audiences and restore trust and some of that can be done by introducing new performers as well as by putting trust in the conductors who have the experience to provide the kind of concerts that their audience and their orchestra would expect.

We’re starting to see how technology can be used to generate audiences, support, subscribers and sponsors. And how artists either can be part of the traditional cycle of engagements, concerts and fees or they can create, in an entrepreneurial way, their own presence, their own visibility and their own profit through the monetisation of the music that they make for an audience, whether it be local, national or global, because of the technology that’s available to us today.

Covid has created a paradigm shift and I’m not sure we will go back to performances the way they were. I think that there will be a new understanding of how we are using online technology and entrepreneurship alongside the traditional pre-Covid format of live performance with audiences in concert halls.

I think that I’ve definitely been a beneficiary of being in the right place at the right time, and I’m grateful for it, but my advice to everybody else is: don’t give up, stay true to the music because our repertoire is our work. Even if you’re not performing you should still be studying the repertoire because you love it, keep the music close to you because we will get past this and we will be making music again.

I think there will soon be more opportunity for musicians, soloists, conductors than any other time in history and, for that, I’m rather optimistic.