- [Announcer] In partnership with the Curtis Institute of music, WHYY presents the following program.

- We were going to do a life production of one of Mozart's last operas, "La Clemenza di Tito," because of the pandemic had to be canceled, find a way to still perform this piece.

But instead of making a digital version of a life opera, create a film that uses the music, but really present it as, you know, a 90-minutes film instead.

I'm Robert Kahn, I grew up in the Netherlands, and I'm one of the two conducting fellows here at Curtis.

(gentle orchestral music) A lot of conductors have these stories of this one concert they saw that made them decide.

But for me it was more gradual.

I like to compare it to like a coach of a sports team, like a basketball coach, because a coach doesn't play the sport, the conductor doesn't make a sound, but it's really their job to get the team or the orchestra ready for the performance or the game, and make sure everybody's on the same page, same strategy, everybody kind of knows their role and kind of unify everybody.

A great coach inspires the team to play better than maybe they even thought was ever possible.

And I think that's what great conductors do, too, in addition to putting everything in the right place is to really inspire an orchestra to play better than maybe they thought was possible.

("Symphony No.

36" by Mozart) I'm the first one in my immediate family to go into music professionally.

But there was always music around the house when I grew up.

My parents both loved classical music.

(dramatic orchestral music) When I grew up, they had two subscription tickets to the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, which we were like a 20 minute drive away.

And I think they're still one of the best orchestras in the world.

(dramatic orchestral music) Initially she took my older sisters, and both of them on the drive home would say something like, "When do we have to go again?"

Like, this is...

It felt, I think, more like homework than anything else.

But apparently when she first took me, I think I was eight or nine, I just loved it, I kept asking when the next one was.

And from that moment on, we went very regularly.

My mother kind of picked the instrument for me, which was the clarinet.

But a little bit after that, I asked also for piano lessons 'cause we had a piano at home and I always enjoyed that too.

But clarinet is the main instrument for me.

I think one of the earliest experiences, even though I think it was subconscious, but when I was, I think, 15, my mother and I were in the bookstore, there's like one main music bookstore in Holland where everybody goes, and we're there to buy clarinet music, I think.

But I grabbed a little mini score off Mahler "One" off the shelf and asked if I could have it.

And I remember being so excited.

I had gone home.

I put the CD in of Mahler "One" that we had at home and read along with the score.

And from that moment on, I kept buying more scores and just reading along.

I don't know if I was thinking about conducting per se at that point, but I just love being able to see everything that you hear and just kind of start studying the score.

It started just out of pure interest.

And I think later on I started comparing different recordings.

If we had like two CDs of the Beethoven third symphony, I started kind of comparing the differences.

And I think gradually I came to understand, you know, different conductors having different interpretations.

And I think that's partly what got me excited about it, too.

(gentle orchestral music) And I think maybe not so much clarinet, but conductors, especially they have to analyze the score, and also in music find these motives that may seem very different or sound very different, but often come from the same little musical figure.

And I think that's something I always really enjoyed.

("Symphony No.

6" by Tchaikovsky) So at Curtis, we are mentored by Yannick Nezet-Seguin and I get to watch his rehearsals, and I learned this from him very much, which is this idea of, you know, sure, you can tell the orchestra what you want them to do, you can tell them, you know, they should be softer, they should be louder, but if you really want to achieve an inspired performance, it's more effective to kind of convince them of your views and give them a dramatic reason or maybe a story.

I remember one rehearsal with Yannick, he was conducting one of Mozart's later symphonies, "The Minuet," and it was a great run-through, I thought, but then he said, you know, "It sounds a little bit elegant.

It should maybe be a little bit more angry," which I thought is it interesting 'cause you don't associate that much with Mozart.

But right away it was completely different.

You know, people played, you know, a little bit louder, a little bit more accented, a little bit more heavy.

But instead of saying those words, just giving them the kind of the emotion can be very effective.

The first step, if I work on a piece like Beethoven five, like a famous piece, the first thing I try to do is forget everything I already know and everything I've heard, all the recordings I've heard.

I try to essentially pretend as if it's a new piece that was just written yesterday.

And then I try to analyze it in as many ways as possible, so analyze, you know, the structure, the form, harmonic analysis, try to read about the background of the piece, really as many angles as I can find.

And then slowly out of that comes an interpretation and sort of the last but very important step also is to try and find out what the composer is trying to say, because I think not just in vocal music, but in instrumental music, I think, almost always the composer has a specific story in mind.

(tense orchestral music) You really try to embody the music physically with everything, it's not just with your hands, but with your whole body, with your face.

What you're really hoping to achieve is with your whole presence to inspire them, especially professional orchestras that have played a piece many, many times.

You want to give them a reason to kind of rediscover it and bring out really the passion that lies under the notes.

("Leonore Overture No.

3" by Beethoven) - [Man] Hey, Anastasia.

Can you make sure you can still see Robert's hands?

Okay?

- There's been a good amount of projects that combine opera with film.

I think it's a very interesting concept.

(cheerful piano music) The film itself, it uses all of the music with one exception: we skipped all of the spoken dialogue between the numbers.

So all of that is to say the movies, like 90 minutes, is all of the music that Mozart wrote.

And in a sense, it tells the story of, like, "La Clemenza di Tito," which is a story about like the title of the film says about "Mercy."

The story is about three main characters.

There's the emperor and there's his friend, Sesto, and then the woman who was kind of at the center of all the action, Vitellia.

And Vitellia wants to have power, so she tries to marry the emperor.

But when she's rejected, she convinced Sesto to kill the emperor, which he only does because he's in love with Vitellia.

He doesn't actually want to do it.

Now, that attempt fails.

But the whole kind of drama of it is in the second act when the emperor finds out that, first of all, his best friend tried to kill him.

And second of all, what she didn't realize is that he actually did plan to marry Vitellia.

So he's also finding out that the woman who we was planning to marry is behind the whole plot.

So it's really one of the worst scenarios you can imagine.

And he is just kind of grappling with how to deal with this and the other characters.

And it's really a story about forgiveness and about mercy, which, I think, even though it's, you know, 250 years ago, it's still very relevant today.

(gentle piano music) Originally, the idea was just to have piano and singers, because orchestra, it's kind of tricky with distancing, to bring in a full orchestra, but then it was decided, oh, well, clarinet is a really important instrument for the opera.

There's two big arias that have clarinet, so we should use clarinet.

And then, well what about some horns?

And then eventually we ended up with a sizeable group, a string quintet, so that's two violins, viola, cello, bass, clarinets, two horns and percussion in addition to the piano.

But the COVID restrictions was the most difficult thing.

In a way, these restrictions are almost like a catalyst for creativity because in order to deal with these restrictions, you have to think of new things.

And there's so many examples of that, but one of them is the fact that we had to use a small orchestra, which we would never probably have thought of.

It really became something totally different, because now we could have like one violin with an aria with a soprano, where the violin is almost like a character.

And then in the next one we could have clarinet and horn, which also became like a character.

So everything became much more specific.

And the instruments really became part of the story rather than, you know, accompanying the singers.

(bright piano music) What's interesting, the main concept of the film is that it really plays in two kind of worlds.

There's the, what they call, the shadow world and the kind of real world.

And so the shadow world is all in black and white and it shows the characters who sing the opera.

But they're not singing, it's like a silent film, and they're acting out the story.

And at the same time, you hear the music in the background and that alternates with sort of the real world, which is in color and shows the singers more as themselves performing in the recording studio, you know, with the headphones and the mics.

And I thought it was an interesting concept, but when I saw it on the screen, it was just mind blowing.

It's hard to put into words, but it's extremely effective, this idea of these two worlds kind of alternating and the drama of this black and white world where they are acting out the story, but without saying a word.

("Symphony No.

4" by Brahms) When I got into a program for conducting, my masters, which I did in New York, at Mannes, that was sort of the first point, like maybe I can do this.

And then coming to Curtis was the real encouragement, because that was really a feeling of, you know, you can really make this my life's work.

("Symphony No.

4" by Brahms)