Interview with chief conductor Ondrej Lenárd

Mr. Lenárd, could you first introduce us to Krompachy, where you were born on 9 September 1942? What kind of a town was it?

It’s a so-called revolutionary town, because it was the site of the legendary Krompachy Uprising. It used to be home to ironworks and mills, which at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries employed nearly half the inhabitants. However, in February 1921 the workers, and in particular their wives, resolved to protest, and those protests grew into clashes with the police in which a total of six people died… Krompachy lies in eastern Slovakia. It’s a picturesque town between the mountains, which because of its poverty was known as the “hungry valley.” I didn’t expect that after all these years I’d see a situation in which poverty reigns there again. The mines, factories and work opportunities have gone and the whole area is really suffering hardship. It makes me sad, because the roots of home never disappear from your soul, and its pain is your pain, too.

Was music played in your household? And what kind of background do you come from?

I was born in modest circumstances, for which I’m grateful. From a young age, our parents encouraged us to be modest and economical. We respected them immensely. I think that thanks to the way they raised us it created in us a sense of responsibility and decent behaviour at a young age. Mother looked after us six children, and dad was a joiner. He loved wood, which was clear from the products he made. Occasionally musicians who needed to have their instruments repaired stopped at our place, and though dad didn’t understand instrument making he never turned anybody away. And then he started learning the violin himself and played… in a folksy style. He paid more attention to his disobedient son! He once bought an upright piano in a terrible state, believe it or not, repaired it and of course forced me to play it, despite that fact that I didn’t know any notes. “You’ve to go find the melody by ear,” he repeated, and when for a long time I couldn’t find the right tones, he helped me get there with boxes. Many he should have boxed me even more. (By the way, I’ve got that instrument to this day!)

Music found you, even if perhaps it hurt sometimes. At 18 you became a student at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava. I’d be very interested to hear about the people, in this case professionals, who had a significant impact on your journey to music.

I got to the entrance exams despite having no experience. I simply liked it. I loved films with Roberto Benzi, so I set off for Bratislava. Along with me around 25 other promising youngsters with huge scores and batons applied to study conducting, while I nervously twisted my pocket score. When they finally announced the names of the five applicants they’d accepted, miraculously the last one was mine. I was shaking all over. So once again fortune favoured the brave.

My other good fortune was that I found my way to professionals like, for instance, Professor Juraj Haluzický, who taught me choir conducting. I was unhappy, though – I wanted to conduct an orchestra! I asked, beseeched and begged, and the professor was offended… In the end, after two years, he understand that my ambitions genuinely were focused elsewhere and he allowed me to transfer to his colleague, the renowned artist and teacher Ľudovít Rajter, who was known above all as a magnificent interpreter of the works of Brahms. He had a kind of miracle remedy for us: He sat at the piano and began playing excerpts from symphonies. “What’s that? How come you don’t know it boys? Downstairs with you to the library and learn it!” Then I got stuck into the work with all the energy and verve I had. At night I studied scores and practised the piano. I knew that Professor Rajter meant it well, and to this day I remember those “nice slaps” with gratitude.

In your second year they offered you the job of choirmaster at the opera at the Slovak National Theatre…

I was 19 and I felt like the world lay at my feet! But naturally I sobered up from that intoxication double fast. In any case, that encounter with a professional theatre gave me a lot more impetus to study and work. I went to all possible exams, I watched conductors, and I worked out where I had shortcomings. It was a good starting line.

Later, in the 1980s, you served as chief conductor of the opera of the Slovak National Theatre, before becoming the head of the opera in the 1990s. Given your experience, do you have a clear answer to the question of what is the hardest thing about life in the musical theatre?

I would compare an institution like the opera to an extremely complicated and sensitive astronomical clock. It comprises soloists, the orchestra and the choir, while a very important, no less essential element, is technology. It really isn’t easy to weld together those three artistic elements. As a choirmaster, I always asked conductor colleagues to let me run the rehearsals that the choir had with the director. To this day I’m grateful to those colleagues for that opportunity. It certainly didn’t earn them any more free time, no. But they could see that I wished to deepen my knowledge of work in the theatre.

I really like the fact that you work thoroughly with singers, that you don’t hesitate to be their teacher and vocal advisor, which you can take the liberty of doing thanks to your experience. Even when you’re putting your own neck on the line, you don’t hesitate, do you?

No. I think if the advice is erudite, the singer will accept. Everybody can say that something is “creaking”. But to uncover why something isn’t working, where the problem lies and how to remove it, that’s a complicated thing. Again I’ve had the fortune to have rehearsed in the class of the famous Slovak teacher Anna Hrušovská, among whose students was for instance Lucia Popp. I took in what she said about breathing, about creating phrases. On top of that, I’ve worked with professionals, so I quite quickly absorbed how a singer ought to be shaped, to make sure they do well. In the end, I realised that everything in that field is, above all, absolutely natural.

Let’s move on to the symphonic field. In the period 1977–90 you were chief conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of Czechoslovak Radio in Bratislava. How was working in radio, to which you quite recently returned when you accepted the same position with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra?

We all return with gratitude throughout our lives to those who begot us, to our parents. In second place, immediately after them, I’ve got to mention the happy circumstance that God led me to work in a radio studio, where I learned great precision. Of course, particularly in the beginning, situations arose in which I really didn’t know what I was about. I was young, I had practically zero symphonic experience. But Aladár Móži, a concert maestro, was a great help to me. He always kept an eye on me, with interest and empathy, and when he saw that I was lost, he coughed lightly and asked: “Ondra, may I?” He then said one sentence and that was it! Few would selflessly gift you such experience…

And few would willingly and modestly accept it…

Do you know something? I was glad to eat humble pie! I was never one for playing smart. And if by accident I snapped at or insulted somebody, I always felt terrible afterwards. I couldn’t even sleep because of it. But you know, a hot young head can sometimes lead to ill-considered deed and words.

Hard work, honesty, talent and those human experiences led you in the decade 1991–2001 to work with the Slovak Philharmonic, where you were at first chief conductor and later artistic director. What was that phase like?

Rather strange. When I was chief director at the Radio, for t he strangest of reasons, which I don’t even want to go into, I couldn’t work with the Philharmonic. Then after the revolution the artistic board of the Philharmonic came to me with an offer… Their invitation came as a real shock to me, and I accepted it with joy and honour. We created beautiful projects and to this day I recall many of the titles that we played. I was happy that I could “bathe” in my beloved Mahler. But because of my high demands I wasn’t the most popular. The bitter pill wasn’t long in coming. It came in the form of three votes on my staying on. I couldn’t take the third one, which is why I preferred to hand in my notice a year before going into retirement.

Those are bitter moments. Let’s turn instead to repertoire. You’ve already mentioned Mahler. What position does Richard Strauss have here?

When as a student I read various biographies and specialist books I frequently came across musicologists’ criticisms and reservations regarding Strauss’ program music. But why condemn it? Whatever Richard Strauss wrote was magnificent. Golden notes! And what he created in the Alpine Symphony was one long, wonderful and colourful film. For instance, who else could express a storm so fantastically?

In conclusion, could you reveal what the profession of conductor gives you and it deprives you of?

I’ll turn that around a bit and say: May people envy the feelings that I experience during concerts. They can’t be repeated and nobody will take them away from me. You know, they say that when a person dies, he departs by a kind of tunnel. Why do I mention this? Thanks to the emotional experience of every composition, I sometimes have the sense that I’m departing to a higher sphere. Therefore I think that people could envy me that beautiful feeling – not situations in which I hold imaginary strings and deal with musicians from a position of strength and power. Not at all! By the way, I’ve got a professional motto: “Try to have musicians take you as one of them, and create together!” I know no more beautiful situation and feeling in this world than when artistic work arises from a common conviction.