Conductor Joana Maulwitz apologized last week for a late arrival in an interview at the Metropolitan Opera House, but had to hold his breath after rehearsals. “Conducting is a sweaty business,” she said. She settled into a straight position on the sofa in the press lounge, with her impressive hands elegantly crossing her wrists with long fingers.
On Monday, the 39-year-old Maulwitz – the music director of Konzer South Berlin and one of the fastest rising classic stars in her hometown of Germany – will make her debut in Mozart's “The Marriage of Figaro.” She has been closely associated with that opera since her first job at the 19-year-old theater Heidelberg, and her duties include “all things to do as a Capelmeister,” she said: rehearsing the singer, playing consecutive roles in the harpsichords, jumping with a brief notice to perform when necessary.
“You've developed a relationship with that kind of work,” she said of “Figaro.” “You'll get to know each other.”
At the end of that afternoon's rehearsal, she works with the orchestra to subtly contrast the details of the overture and emphasize shock values - “Like rock music,” she tells the musician about the big explosion that interrupts her garnas, bubbly fast notes. After that, she said the key was to “give a certain amount of energy to the sound that doesn't get intense even when the performance gets louder.”
Working with Met musicians was a joy, she said. “They can pick it up mentally because they are masters,” she said. “It's incredible what this orchestra can offer in terms of tempo, transparency and diversity in effect. Based on that, we also want to create a combination of lightness and drama.”
Lightness and drama, familiarity, uncompromising seriousness in approach to scores – these are at the heart of Marvitz's prominent rise in a profession where men have long been dominated. In 2014, at the age of 28, she became the music director of Theatre Elfurt, the youngest conductor to hold such a position in Europe. In 2018, she took over the mentoring of the Nuremberg State Theatre. The Nuremberg State Theatre was a facility that also served as a springboard for conductor Christian Thiermann when he was 23 years old. In her second season, she was named Best Conductor by the German critic ju-san. Mozart's famous run by Cosí van Tutte, held in Salzburg in 2020, attracted her international attention.
At Konzerthaus Orchestra, she produced a recording of the storm that she rarely heard of Kurt Weill's early works by Deutsche Grammophon last season. Her Met debut made her debut with the Philharmonic Orchestra in Berlin and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in just a few weeks, where she combined techno-style works by Serbian composer Marco Nikodievich with works by Tchaikovsky and Schubert.
Mallwitz's low ranking is even more noteworthy as she doesn't come from her musical family. Her talent at the piano at Hildesheim's home was soon revealed, but for three hours in the afternoon she was barred from touching it and sent instead to play in the garden. Still, she quickly rose to the network of national youth music competitions on both piano and violin, and entered the Hanover Conservatory at the age of 13 at the newly created laboratory, for the early advancement of people who are extremely talented musically. Her four cohort included pianist Igor Levitt.
“Up until then, I actually lived behind the moon,” she said. She knew the part of the room she studied, but she rarely attended any concerts. At the Institute, she said, “They had just placed their scores in front of us by “Tristan” of Schubert, Schumann, Stravinsky and Wagner, and “When you read these notes, what do you hear in your head?” “Why didn't you know there was such a great music?”
She was seized by her desire to devote her life to this music, and the works that overwhelmed her were primarily orchestras, which meant becoming a conductor.
Conductor Martin Blouse, who directs the Hanover Institute, remembers witnessing these epiphanies in the classroom. “When dealing with professional talent, it can be pretty much scary to see what nature can produce,” he said in a phone interview. “Joana was one of these cases. She peers through the notes, purely through vision, and the inner hearing unfolds.”
She was hired very young at the first theatre in Heidelberg, so Maulwitz mainly developed her command skills. “She sees what the music does to her and moves it,” Blouse said. “She literally embodies that.”
Jens Daniel Herzog, the intentional player of the Nuremberg State Theatre, said the audience responded to both the strength of her command and the carefree trust she developed in her public space. “She has a way to infect people with her enthusiasm, who is totally out of school,” he said. “She took everyone by storm. It was breathtaking.”
In Berlin, Maulwitz was almost immediately forced to add political advocacy to many of her roles. The dramatic and sudden cuts in the city's cultural budget announced last year have led to painful cancellations. “Sometimes it tears you apart,” she said of the lobbying activities she had to interact with in her command and administrative duties. Raising a young child with her husband, tenor Simon Bord, she often sits at night studying her score.
But she said fighting for public arts funding is essential to maintaining ticket prices at a level that almost everyone can afford to buy them, rather than supporting the elitist tradition. “The word 'grant' is completely misplaced in this context,” she said. “We are not a mismanaged company in crisis. If Germany takes pride in its culture, keeping concerts affordable should be a fundamental citizenship.”
Budget cuts are extremely important to her and threaten her outreach program, an integral part of her success. In Berlin, her pre-concert lectures now regularly bring out more than 1,000 listeners. To attract a new kind of audience, she offers new formats such as night sessions. It brings celebrities from other art forms and explores themes such as rhythm in conversations with techno artists and timing with stage actors. “In these sessions, I want to learn something,” she said. “I'm interested in myself.”
After the night session was dedicated to rhythm, she said, “The best thing is, then a group of young people who were looking up something on their phones on Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Google Download
