In this edition of our “Featured” series, we meet the conductor of this year’s Parsifal: the Swiss Philippe Jordan, Music Director of the Opéra national de Paris and designated Chief Conductor of the Wiener Symphoniker (from 2014/15), who debuted in Bayreuth in 2012.
Musical Direction Parsifal
Philippe Jordan
It’s Monday morning in the Festspielhaus restaurant, the orchestra rehearsal hall “for a limited time”. The musicians, who have already taken their places, wait relaxed. Shortly before 10 AM, Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier enter the hall, accompanied by the new Parsifal conductor, Philippe Jordan. He carries the thick score under his arm, his baton clamped between the pages, protruding from the side. He greets the orchestra board and concertmasters with a handshake. Then the festival management briefly introduces him to the orchestra. “We are very happy that Philippe Jordan is here”, says Katharina Wagner. There’s no time for much more at the moment, as rehearsal time is precious. And so it begins: the tuning notes travel through the orchestra’s rows, and a little later, the prelude to Act 1 sounds.
Before the next rehearsal, Philippe Jordan takes time for a brief conversation. He comes directly to Bayreuth from Paris. On Sunday, he conducted a performance of Arabella at the Opéra Bastille, and on Tuesday evening, he has to return to the Seine for another Arabella the following day. In between, he not only conducts the first orchestral stage rehearsal with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra but also the first stage rehearsal in the orchestra pit on Tuesday – albeit only with piano, but with the soloists, choir, and technical team on stage.
“Actually, I wanted to resist the whole Wagner cult that is so closely linked to Bayreuth”, Philippe Jordan admits with a laugh. “Although I have always been a great Wagner lover.” Then, in 2010, he was in Bayreuth for a Ring for the first time. “The house, its acoustics, and above all, the people who dedicate themselves to Wagner’s music with such passion at the festival, especially the choir and orchestra, where every member can sing every word, play every note – that convinced me, very pragmatically, without myth.” He only knows the famous acoustics from the audience area so far – and from some “dry runs” with his assistants in the orchestra pit: “We tried to discover the acoustics, the volumes, and the reaction times for ourselves with piano, sometimes simply by speaking. I am very much looking forward to finally working with the orchestra in the pit, with the soloists and the choir.”
He finds it pleasant that he is taking over the acclaimed production by director Stefan Herheim only in its final year: “It doesn’t necessarily have to be a new production at this special house. For me, it is an honor to conduct Parsifal, which Wagner composed as the only work solely for this house and its acoustics. The fact that I can also conduct the production for cinema and the DVD recording is the icing on the cake.”
And although the production is in its fifth year, Stefan Herheim, as in previous years, is working intensively on the revival this time as well – not least with regard to musical coordination.
“I saw it twice last year and have already attended many scenic rehearsals. The staging is wonderfully musical, and the interplay between music and stage action is completely convincing. And if I do have one or two wishes from a musical perspective, we try out whether that is feasible and coordinate what fits better into the overall picture. Occasionally, however, a certain tempo that I might not have chosen is also part of the staging”, says Philippe Jordan. “I gladly accept that then. And that a tempo is occasionally dictated by a staging, that already existed in Richard Wagner’s time.” After all, at the premiere, Engelbert Humperdinck, who assisted Wagner at the time, inserted a few additional measures to fill a musical gap that arose from the tempo of the transformation in Acts 1 and 3.