Roger Norrington Photo by Jacques Lévesque

Mention the name Roger Norrington, at Juilliard and in the world beyond, and be prepared for a wide array of responses. Some will nod in approval, others might be less receptive, but few will be indifferent. Such is the effect of Sir Roger Norrington, the British conductor who returns to Juilliard to lead his first concert with the Juilliard Orchestra on December 6 at Carnegie Hall. Sir Roger—music director of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony and the Camerata Academica Salzburg—is one of the world's greatest experts on, and passionate proponents of, non-vibrato orchestral playing. But don't call this humorous, self-effacing maestro an academic! I had the pleasure of meeting Sir Roger at Juilliard when he lead a reading of Haydn's Symphony No. 103 last February, and recently caught up with him to talk about his upcoming visit.

DAW: Maestro, my first question is about the choice of program, as well as what you see as your biggest challenge here at Juilliard.

RN: In regards to the program, I was trying to make sure that we played a Classical work, one "crossover" (namely the Beethoven), and one Romantic. The Mozart is going to be like the Haydn we read last winter; the Beethoven may be surprising to some people, maybe not to others; and the Brahms will be perhaps very surprising… One would suppose that, by the time of Brahms, the style of playing had changed a lot. What I will be introducing is that it hadn't changed nearly as much as we think. For instance, vibrato was not expected by Brahms any more than it was by Mozart or Bach. It's not that they thought it was purer; they just hadn't thought of vibrating. It's much more fundamental than a matter of taste; it's simply how they played, and therefore, how composers expected their music to sound. This is just as true for Tchaikovsky as it is for Beethoven, and particularity true for Mahler. He did not expect vibrato. His brother-in-law was the leader of the Vienna Philharmonic, and we have recordings from 1928 (some 15 years after Mahler's death) in which he still played without vibrato. He talked about it, as did others. To put it in context, and to start with the outer limit: the first recording of the Vienna Philharmonic (which I've heard) where there was vibrato is 1940. In fact, there are some as late as 1952 without vibrato. So, it's not like it happened in 1840 and therefore Brahms was this big, rich, Hollywood sound. It is 100 years later than we think. The challenge will be to make the Juilliard players believe that they can make music like that, because their whole training has been (as mine was) that you need to wear "makeup" at all times.

DAW: Instead of using vibrato solely for expressive purposes and such.

RN: Yes, exactly. Of course, vibrato was known about from way back, and used for expressive purposes, but never for this "blanket"—which began around the very beginning of the 20th century, with Kreisler. He had this idea, "Why shouldn't we do it all the time?" and he was a great influence. People started to do it, but only soloists. Orchestras started to pick this up quickly, starting in France in the 1920s, in the strings, woodwinds, and horns. It spread to England, and gradually to the United States, but slowly. I have recordings of the B.S.O. in 1933 with no vibrato. The German orchestras held out because they considered themselves the protectors of musical civilization: "No, we will not play with vibrato; this is cheapening." It was considered dumbing down. The young players, seduced by Hollywood and the New World, influenced by smoky cocktails and tuxedoes, eventually won out. But the Old World, particularly Berlin and Vienna, held out. They saw it as a vulgarity.

DAW: But here we are at Juilliard...

The important thing is that it isn't music minus something, it's music plus something.

RN: Well, at Juilliard, it may be a bit of shock; we may get some of the players and professors really upset. They may say, "Don't do it." But I must convince them. That's the challenge, because I totally believe in this. Not as a matter of purity or a kind of political correctness, but a matter of beauty. When you hear this, you will see what an extraordinarily beautiful sound this can be, and the addition of "makeup," as I call it, is not essential. It can be fine; I am not saying that orchestras in the world don't make a great noise, and there are some who make such a big sound with their vibrato that I leave them alone. But the orchestras that I really care for like my own, in Stuttgart and in Salzburg—and quite a few others like the Concertgebouw, Leipzig, and Oslo—I encourage them to play in other ways. The important thing is that it isn't music minus something; it's music plus something. And the plus is phrasing, transparency, the rich chording that you get without vibrato, and the purity of the discords that you get from notes side by side. So it is more expressive and richer, not more "English" or something, if you see what I mean. It is a question of finding out the truly expressive sound that a big orchestra can make by doing everything else except blanket vibrato.

DAW: Which brings up the issue of what happens when the makeup is taken off and things are barer. I remember you bringing up such technical issues as bow pressure and speed.

RN: One of the biggest challenges is trying to do it in a week. Because, the fact is, you do have to learn some new techniques. With respect to the strings, it is very often a question of a lighter bow pressure, sometimes the bow moving faster, and most importantly, changing speed a lot, so that when you start a note, you might start with the bow slowly and then move it faster, not necessarily getting louder, and vice versa. The point is that you do the expression with the right hand, which is what a singer does. You have more breath or less breath, etc. This is a technique we've lost almost entirely. We're all left-handed string players, and we need to become right-handed string players. Look, if you remember, at the end of the three-hour Haydn reading, I said to the orchestra, "That's all you need to know about playing Haydn. All you have to do is remember it." Of course, there is quite a bit to talk about—but mostly we will try to demystify the music, not make it something that only someone who has studied musicology can possibly understand. That's not the point! Basically, it is about making the music sound natural, sing and speak. It's not about making it mysterious or scholarly. The scholarship is simply there to sort out the problems, to untie the knots and to tell us the things that we didn't know because the language has changed in 150 years. If you read the American Constitution, there are words that you don't understand today.

DAW: What about the woodwinds?

Juilliard Orchestra Carnegie Hall, Friday, Dec. 6, 8 p.m. For ticket information, please see the calendar.

RN: For the Brahms, I would like as many strings as possible, but the winds must be doubled. It is historically accurate. You know, when Brahms had only 8 or 10 violins, that was one issue—but when he had more, he doubled the winds, so that the balance remained. There is also the issue of proper string seating.

DAW: People have a misconception that it must be a small orchestra, that you must have only five fiddles…

RN: And don't forget a lute!

DAW: If you are generous! Speaking of a lute, how did you come to all of this?

RN: I came to it from the historical order; I was very interested in music of the 16th and 17th centuries. Of course, I was doing things with modern orchestras at the same time—but in this other area of early instruments, which we began doing in the early 1960s, we gradually moved forward from Monteverdi to Handel to Haydn to Beethoven, etc. When we got to the 19th century, people (including me) supposed that we would stop. After all, surely by the time of Berlioz, it was a modern sound, he was a modern composer. Not at all! Each time we went a stage further, read more, and found out what was there to learn, we realized that it works. We moved through the centuries with old instruments, and it was a natural progress. Last year, we played Mahler's First Symphony with original instruments and it sounded incredibly exciting. But I thought, why only do this on old instruments? I regard this vibrato thing as the single possible lightning-stroke change that could happen to classical music in the next 20 years. If it takes off, it will completely change the sound of classical music, just as it has with Bach, Mozart, and Haydn. I mean, people expect it to be played that way today, don't they? We don't expect to hear Bach with stacks of vibrato. That's the challenge. And let me tell you, it's the same for Wagner, though some people might think that you are off your head…

DAW: The misconception is that it creates an ugly sound—which, of course, it doesn't.

RN: Well, it doesn't if you do it right. The big problem is when you tell a modern orchestra to play without vibrato, they think you mean without expression, because it is often used as a blank expression. And of course, that is not the point. You know, my orchestra in Stuttgart has convinced me that this is a sound that I cannot live without. I don't do this for reasons of correctness. It's more extraordinary to hear, it's more beautiful. I am hoping that people will see it as a viable alternative. Some people may not like it, while others will say, "It has to be like that." And that's what a lot of people who've heard this new/old sound have said. I hope that you will hear this; I also hope that you and your colleagues will make it extremely difficult for me and come up with questions and ask why, why, why! In any case, this will not be difficult. Some of it might be surprising, but it's not going to be difficult. It's going to be about music, not about scholarship. We are just going to try and make the music speak for today—but in the way that Brahms would have understood, so that, if he were to walk into the concert hall, he would say, "Ah! They are playing my piece. That's nice; that's what I meant!" I hope that it will be fun for everybody.

Daniel Alfred Wachs, a Bruno Walter Conducting Fellow, is a student of Otto-Werner Mueller.