Milan Turkovic was born in Zagreb and grew up in Vienna. He studied in Vienna and in the Federal Republic of Germany. His solo career, which he had begun at the age of 24, has meanwhile taken him to numerous music centres in Europe, the USA and Australia. Turkovic has so far recorded ten bassoon concertos and several chamber music works. In addition to a guest professorship in the USA (1971) he has given several courses in Austria, Sweden and in the Netherlands.
Charles Lipp hold degrees from the University of Illinois in performance (bassoon), B.Mus., 1971, and composition, M.Mus., 1974 and D.M.A., 1982. His doctoral project, New Compositional Techniques for Bassoon, is available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. It will be published in book form next year.
During the 1978-79 school year he studied in Krakow, Poland, with Boguslaw Schaffer on a Fulbright Fellowship. For the 1979-80 year, he returned to Poland to compose a work on commission for the Warsaw Experimental Music Studio, to give concerts of his own works and other new compositions from Polish composers, and to present lecture-demonstrations of his work in Paris (IRCAM), Utrecht, Liege, Vienna (where this interview was made), Salzburg, and Helsinki.
CL: Could you give some information on your professional background?
MT: I became a bassoon student when I was fourteen, but first I played the piano like everyone does in Central Europe. Practically every person, in a family where music or the arts plays a role, studies piano or the violin.
Then I went to the Vienna Academy, now called the Hochschule. My bassoon teacher there was Karl Ohlberger of the Vienna Philharmonic; I studied with him while I finished Gymnasium (similar to the first two years of college in America). The rest of my college years were extremely difficult; I would spend six hours in class there, do my homework in the afternoon and then study music. I think it is really worthwhile to have a demanding schedule, and this was especially important later on for my professional life.
CL: When did you make the change to being a professional bassoonist?
MT: I think I made it very late; I was something of a "late bloomer." While I was studying, all of my colleagues were playing in orchestras and doing a lot of professional work; I was rather an amateur. But it gave me the advantage of not approaching professional life with as much arrogance as I sometimes see in students who have just finished their studies. If you are experienced, and I think I am an experienced musician now, when you get together with young people, you sometimes get the feeling that they give you a lesson. I was absolutely the opposite and looked up to experienced musicians like they were gods. My late development perhaps also had to do with the fact that I went to school and that I finished my studies in the Gymnasium which is not customary with all musicians, especially string players. They just can't afford to do general studies because they need so much time for practicing.
Then my career developed very quickly: I got my first orchestra job, practically on the day I finished my studies. I had been working professionally already with the Philharmonia Hungarica during the last two years of my studies. This was the Hungarian refugee orchestra founded in Vienna, or rather near-by Baden, after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. I also had the chance to play often in the Opera during the last two years of study. But my first job was with the Philharmonia Hungarica.
I had moved by that time to Western Germany and stayed there only one year. I then became assistant principal bassoonist with Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, one of the leading German concert orchestras. I spent five very beautiful years there. I was founding member of the Bamberg Wind Quintet, which did a lot of touring and also a lot of contemporary music including first performances of many new quintets.
I had the great luck to be with the Bamberg group for three of the most exciting tours I have ever done. One was to the Near East--Greece, Turkey and the Arab countries--and another tour went to fifteen African countries, Cameroon, Togo, and then, in the east, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia. Most of these countries were very peaceful at that time. I'll never forget one single day of that trip.
Then in 1967, I got communication from my home city of Vienna to participate in an audition for the principal bassoonist for the Vienna Symphony. The music director was Wolfgang Sawallisch, who is very, very well known and a highly respected conductor in Europe, although, I don't think he conducts much in America.
CL: We mostly know his work from recordings, especially orchestral accompaniments for concerto performances.
MT: He is a conductor who is very serious, who avoided the glamourous life of traveling around, and who therefore preferred to stick to the place where he was. He was very successful in his performances during his last years at the Munich Opera. They were extremely well received and very excellent.
I got the audition and I got the job and immediately got to perform the Weber Bassoon Concerto. It was my first performance of the Weber with Sawallisch, at the Bregenz Festival--the summer festival of our orchestra. A little later I went to Athens to play the Weber concerto and when I arrived I heard that it was the first performance of the piece in Greece. I found it quite amazing to be performing, for the first time there, a piece by a composer who is very popular in Greece. This was in 1969 and I was 30 years old.
The same year I moved to Vienna, I was asked to join the Concentus Musicus; Otto Fleschmann, who had been playing bassoon with the group, wanted to retire and slow down a bit.
CL: This group would require you to play a Baroque instrument, not a modern one.
MT: Right. It is a group that uses original instruments, but use of original instruments doesn't mean we want to be a playing museum or a performing museum. The decision for using these instruments is only a very artistic reason; we think that we can reach our goals of style and tone color only with these instruments. I think it's our best way to achieve what we try to express.
CL: What kind of instrument do you have for that ensemble?
MT: The ensemble has several instruments. The one I've mostly played on is a bassoon made by Kasper Tauber in the second half of the 18th century. It's a Viennese instrument. Right now I am using an incredibly beautiful 3-key bassoon by Deper (Vienna) made around 1720.
I could say that the work with the Concentus Musicus became, artistically speaking, my most important work, aside from solo playing, which is of course an incredibly exciting thing. The advantages of working with the Concentus Musicus were not only the wonderful atmosphere in this group, the wonderful musical and human atmosphere, and the chance to constantly work with Nicholas Harnoncourt (who is, in my opinion, one of the greatest musicians of our century) but also the fact that we walk through a repertoire which is actually a universe; we can't see an end. Just to give you one example, we have been working now for several years on the recordings of all the Bach cantatas. About one third have been done by the group of Gustav Leonhart in Amsterdam. But the rest we do, and it's fantastic travel through a dreamland.
CL: It's a project that probably takes years.
MT: It is a fifteen year project.
CL: What challenges are there in changing from a modern instrument with twenty-three or more keys to a five- or six-key bassoon from Mozart's day?
MT: In Mozart's day, there was a switch to an instrument with octave keys which meant that the five-key bassoon became a seven or eight-key bassoon. The big challenge of our group is that through playing these instruments, we learn about how most composers felt preparing these pieces to play.
CL: You really get a feeling for the way they reacted to their equipment.
MT: Yes, it's an enormous challenge. Very often I am faced with the contrary statement that "Well, if the composers at that time had known our instruments, they most certainly would have written in a different way." But I think this is of no concern at all. The composers of the time made very good use of very fine instruments. The instruments were capable of quite a lot of things.
No one can tell me that those people couldn't play in tune or couldn't play fast scales, as many people think today. This, in my opinion, is absolute nonsense. How could a man like Vivaldi, a man of such incredible skills, a man who obviously had a very good brain, have written 39 bassoon concertos with so many difficulties in them if he didn't have someone who could really play them and enjoy them? I admit that the school in Venice where he supposedly wrote these pieces may have had some people with incredible talent not seen elsewhere in Europe, but this would be an extreme.
Speaking more about challenge of the instruments, through the way the instrument plays and be some things they produce without your intending them, you learn how the players articulated. When you learn about the instrument in this way, you get more and more interested in schools which were written in those times.
We have all heard of Quantz. When someone in school told us there was a man, Quantz, a flute teacher who wrote for a king, and who wrote about how play the flute, the next thing mentioned is to forget it, because "that was a different flute and not much work to play. You might have fun reading about him, but don't take it seriously." As soon as you pick up an old instrument, you obviously want to know what was written in that school and you discover that there is fantastic information about articulation, about phrasing, about things that have nothing to do with the level of playing. These are two different things.
So you realize that we all complain because we don't have the telephone number of Vivaldi or Mozart, we can't call them and ask them, how do you mean for us to play this or that. But if you get interested in the schools of playing and you read about them carefully, you find between the lines and also in the lines, much more information than you have ever been able to discover through today's arrogant standpoint toward musicians and people in those times. I just can't imagine that in the 18th century, there were only great composers and no great performers. It would be hard to believe because the one must inspire the other.
This is the big challenge of an old instrument. I think it says everything and for me, this means also that, for a while, I didn't like to play Baroque music on a modern instrument. I felt it much more exciting to do on an old instrument, although I would have to admit there are some difficulties which might be easier to solve on a modern instrument. As time went by and I got more used to switching between instruments, I realized that I could transfer some of the experience of playing an old instrument to my new modern instrument. I learned how to play my old instrument better through the music of that time. That goes on into Mozart. I have changed my concept of playing Mozart, also, not drastically, but slightly, through the experience of playing on the old instrument. This should certainly come through in comparing my recent Mozart recording on Telefunken with the old DG disc.
CL: Are you now playing in both the Baroque ensemble and in the Symphony?
MT: Yes. Most of us who play in Concentus Musicus are members of the Vienna Symphony. Right now I have three positions-- my solo playing includes between 25 and 35 performances each year.
CL: This means not only appearing with orchestras doing concertos, but also with chamber ensembles and recital playing?
MT: That's right. I decided not to do any solo recitals, and for the past ten years, I have been playing joint recitals with Wolfgang Schulz, principal flutist with the Vienna Philharmonic. We have developed a system of selecting quite interesting recitals. For instance, we open the program with a trio and end with a trio, with piano, and in between we play Villa-Lobos duo or some new duo written for us and each of us also plays an unaccompanied solo or a solo with piano. Recently some concert managements have encouraged me to give solo recitals, as the bassoon is now more or less established as a solo instrument here. So, I will give some concerts in Europe in 1984/85 and my American management also wants to take up the challenge bringing me to America "solo" with piano.
Then there are also concerto appearances with orchestras, and I often get the chance to play in good concert halls for receptive audiences. I have played a lot in Germany, also, mostly with amazingly good second class orchestras. I am always amazed at how many of them there are. And with second class, I only mean to say that they are not the top orchestras but smaller orchestras, less well known. But I have also appeared with some of the very well known orchestras such as "Suisse Romande" and Vienna Symphony of course or with our leading chamber orchestras.
CL: With all of these different kinds of performance involvements, do you still teach bassoon?
MT: For several years I had only a few private students. Between 1978 and last summer I taught in Salzburg, commuting between Vienna and Salzburg was too hard. Now I am working on some new arrangements for the future. But now I am taking a break from teaching for one year.
CL: So you were working more on things like musical interpretation, rather than the mechanics of playing?
MT: Yes, and I must also confess that I think my strong point is interpretation. That is what I am most concerned with and what I love the most. I am not a very technical person; measuring reeds of bassoons is my weak side. I am not very sophisticated about such things and I don't get too involved with them.
CL: Do you find a lot of wind players emphasize the technical aspects of performance and disregard the musical aspects?
MT: They do, and it's good. If those specialists didn't exist, then I suppose I would have to do it, but I learn a lot from these people and I think it very necessary that they exist. In The Art of Wind Playing, Arthur Weisberg states that the main problem of wind players is that we have to deal with instruments which are far less developed in technical ways than the strings or keyboard. That's why we have to deal with many more technical problems. String players and keyboard players have much more time and space in their brain to think about musical problems. So naturally, bassoonist's technical problems cause a lack of energy and time to be spent on musical problems. As long as I can get along with my reeds in a decent way, I prefer to think about musical things.
CL: What differences do you find in the way wind playing is taught in the U.S., compared with ways of training in Europe?
MT: I don't think that I am able to make comparisons about the whole educational system in America. My experiences here were intensive, but rather limited, working at one particular school, but a big school, Indiana University. I also had some experience with American students coming over to Europe, partly to work with me on a private basis and partly because of the summer chamber music workshops. I think that perhaps throughout America, there is more of the general line of music education. I can't imagine there is much difference between education in Los Angeles and Indiana or New York. There is, in Europe, an enormous difference between the education of most of the German speaking universities and the schools in France, which are based on the solfege education. They are almost worlds apart.
Speaking of differences in playing among students, I only will mention one small example, the use of staccato. It seems that there are differences like those of pronunciation between languages, and it seems to me that staccato in American is played softer, and longer with less emphasis on the beginning of the note. It is more a feeling of "cow, cow, cow" with a "d" whereas another extreme is German schools which teach a rather hard staccato. It sounds hard to American ears at least, because you are used to the other. I find that very amazing. And it even occurs to me that, as Sol Schoenbach once wrote, the difference has to do with language. Language has a strong influence on articulating the music. I find this a fascinating view.
CL: What kinds of things do you think are really pronounced trademarks of Viennese wind playing?
MT: Well, this is a difficult matter, because in Vienna I am considered to be something of an outsider. Many Viennese wind players don't use vibrato; almost none of the bassoonists do. I was actually the first one to use vibrato intentionally to express. So the opinion of many Viennese players, about me, is that I'm not so much a Viennese player as I should be. I still consider myself to be Viennese--only I am not very conservative. The Viennese school of wind players is conservative; it has enormous advantages and it has some disadvantages. You either deal with lots of tradition or have nothing to do with tradition.
I think that I am a Viennese musician because I make use of those advantages in Viennese tradition, which for me is very important. These are not visible. For instance, concerning fingerings, we make some things more difficult for ourselves using sometimes complicated fingerings, but the advantage is that we sometimes can get more variety of sounds. For example, bassoonists use the thumb on the wing joint with the octave keys which is essential--it avoids a lot of cracks which I hear quite often among German and North American bassoonists. You can notice a big difference in playing even between Germans and Austrians. I think no one here can really understand that because they lump us together as one. Many things we have in common, but we are absolutely not the same.
You mentioned the use of a "whisper key," and I explained to you the Viennese way of using it. You must think it's crazy and very complicated, but it's like many things you have grown up with, you don't notice the disadvantage but you do notice the advantages. So, I play with a locked whisper key in general, I always have it locked and my left thumb has two keys to open or to lock it.
I also have on the bassoons the automatic whisper keys, which are unusual in Vienna. I can make use of it or lock it out; I have the choice. The big disadvantage with the whisper key in Viennese playing is that I'm very busy with my left hand. I use the left thumb key for flicking and lock the whisper key while playing. It sounds crazy, but if you get used to it, you can do it very quickly. There is no doubt that the resonance in the middle register with the locked whisper key is far better than with the key open. Getting used to it is the whole secret. It means with a good reed or decent reed I can even quickly jump octaves with D, to middle d above it, without opening the whisper key. It is absolutely no problem which seems impossible for someone who is used to always working with the whisper key.
CL: One last question. Can you compare the opportunities for a student to become a professional in Europe with opportunities in the U.S.?
MT: The opportunities in Europe are greater, because there are many more orchestras and fewer musicians. The balance is very uneven compared to the U.S. where there are thousands of musicians and only a few dozen fully professional orchestras. One could say that it's simple to solve the problem. All the unemployed musicians in America could move to Europe and take the jobs that aren't filled with the best violin players or bassoon players. This might work theoretically, but practically it doesn't for the reason that Europe has a culture which literally grew over hundreds of years. Musically, we go back a few hundred years to be modest. In America, it's absolutely normal for an orchestra to have 50% of its players with backgrounds somewhere like Russia or Israel; America is the country made for these people. Europe is not made for an orchestra which consists of 20% Koreans, 30% Americans, some Dutch, etc. The structure of our orchestra is different; the orchestras are, in a way, proud, with good reason, about the fact that they are really local orchestras.
CL: They are national or regional orchestras.
MT: Yes, the Viennese Orchestra is really Viennese. Seventy percent of the people are from Vienna, the rest are from the country around Vienna and there are a smaller number, say 10%, who are foreigners. Most of those are from European backgrounds. It is natural that we try to keep that. But there are also other orchestras in Europe (the so called second class groups mentioned earlier) which are simply forced to have foreigners, whether Americans, Australians, Italians, Russians, whatever, because they are the best available musicians.
But I think that we cannot overlook the fact that there are big stylistic differences. I believe that any excellent musician in the world can adjust to any other musical culture. That's the general rule, but the problem is that people come to audition and when they do you have no idea how flexible they are. Sometimes you hear incredibly good virtuosos; in Vienna we have had this experience with many players from many countries, who played smashing auditions, but then stayed like they were before, like a graduate from Juilliard or wherever. They were excellent but they didn't adjust. The problem is that once you are at the place where 90% of the people are from that region, you must adjust your playing style. So there is a little hesitance in Europe in general about foreign musicians; this fact of stylistic differences just causes frustration to all the people involved.
I can tell you I once got in touch, in my early years, through my manager, with a major American orchestra, wondering if an exchange bringing their bassoonist to Europe and sending me to the States would be possible. They wrote back that they were already doing this; they had this kind of program with string players. But they decided not to do it with wind players and rejected my proposal, regardless of what kind of artistic abilities I had. l fully understood this was a very clear statement about stylistic differences, not a judgment of my ability.