When Jonathan Stockhammer meets me at a rather noisy café in the centre
of Frankfurt, the grey winter’s day becomes noticeably lighter. He had
an early start, flying in from Berlin this morning. He does a lot of
travelling. But he does not give the impression of being over-busy or
rushed. He has taken plenty of time for our meeting. Two and a half
hours go by in a flash and at the end it is not he who has to leave for
another meeting, but me. Jonathan is able to convey something of an
inner peace, a profound serenity with great animation and tireless
eloquence. Someone whose only aim is to pursue the next methodical step
of his career strategy would certainly not look like this.
The slim, wiry man in his mid-forties enjoys talking but he can also
listen. His artistic enthusiasm has something inviting, convincing and
thoroughly surprising about it. And yet he gives the person opposite
time to speak, waits for their reaction, which gives the other person’s
own enthusiasm further impetus and substance. One gets the sense that,
in relation to conductors, the term “charisma” will have to be newly
defined. For Jonathan, “charisma” does not arise so much from the aloof
authority of an iron will but from the flexibility and alertness of a
lifestyle based on dialogue, which gains its own security and legitimacy
from communication with others. That may be typical of a new generation
of conductors that relies on collegiality rather than old-fashioned
authoritarian structures. Jonathan’s artistic-humanist ethos seems to go
further, however. It combines with terms such as trust, alertness,
humility and vulnerability, and views working on an interpretation as a
process similar to giving birth; it is “allowed to happen” and actively
created in equal measures, a Taoist intention to an extent.
The Far East is also certainly nearer to the American way of thinking
than to Europeans who are more focused on themselves. Jonathan
Stockhammer was born in Hollywood. Of course, films become a special
part of life there. Jonathan’s father was a violinist at the Los Angeles
Philharmonic Orchestra. He was therefore exposed to great conductors
from an early age, including the likes of Zubin Mehta, Carlo Maria
Giulini, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Georg Solti (who was often invited as a
guest conductor with his Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Esa-Pekka Salonen
and Peter Eötvös in particular left lasting impressions on Jonathan; he
was assistant to both conductors who are also well-known as composers of
contemporary music.
Jonathan has now lived in Berlin for eleven years and does not conceal
the fact that in his opinion, the Central European music scene seems to
be better developed than others. His relationship to German music was
always very intense. Jonathan, who grew up in a Jewish liberal
household, started dealing with specifically Christian subject matter
relatively late. Regarding Wolfgang Rihm’s Deus passus, which he will conduct in Strasbourg, this opened up a new spiritual world, which he responds to with increasing respect.
Being part of the circles around Peter Eötvös, it seemed natural that
Jonathan Stockhammer had a lot to do with New Music and would be
associated with it. He is a regular guest with unusual initiatives at
advanced collectives such as Ensemble Modern and the Stuttgart Radio
Symphony Orchestra. Jonathan does not strive for great positions in
opera houses and concert halls at all costs. He is also interested in
the organisational side of things and so for him it is more important to
be able to realise programme ideas effectively, preferably in ongoing
collaboration with leading institutions. The disruptive nature of
constantly travelling would not be able to satisfy him in the long run.
He is also not especially fixated on a particular aspect of the music
industry. For all his tendencies towards modern and experimental music,
he does not want to neglect the universality of the “whole” music (to
which for him as an American, the pop music tradition also belongs, even
if he does not place value on its commercial attraction). The breadth
of his artistic orientation includes Michael Gielen’s strict renditions
of Mahler and Beethoven, as well as a recollection of listening to a
recording of “Swan Lake” as a child, conducted by Herbert von Karajan,
which he listened to once again much later in order to verify it. Its
magical purple cover: a radiantly unforgettable early memory. This is
how diversely rooted an intellectually electrifying, synaesthetically
permeated artist’s life can be.
February 2014, Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich | Translation: Celia Wynne Willson
Published with kind permission of the author
