Hermann Michael: Itinerant Conductor Plays Hollywood Bowl

Globetrotting conductor Hermann Michael’s career is broadening and the timing is finally right for him. A devoted family man, he had four children growing up and a musical life on the road that, until now, hadn’t been enjoyable.

“Our family holds always first place in our lives,” says Michael, who always travels with his wife. “Before music comes family.”

With his four children now grown, he is actually enjoying a period of guest-conducting travel. “I like it,” he says.

The jet-setting guest conductor is on a grueling schedule. Because he will be picking up the Hollywood Bowl assignments this week that Andre Previn left vacant, Michael will have had just nine days at his home outside Munich after returning from an eight-week stint with the Seattle Opera.

“Los Angeles came as a surprise--we’re doing that instead of our holidays,” Michael says. Next comes his Toronto debut, with appearances with the Atlanta Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra following in the spring.

Michael, 52, inherited not only the podium, tonight and Thursday, from Previn, but the programs as well. The German musician is happy with the repertory, however.

“It fits very well with me,” he says, “showing both sides, the Classical spirit and the Romantic spirit.”

The program tonight lists Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Rossini’s Overture to “La Scala di Seta” (in lieu of the Copland “Red Pony” Suite Previn had programmed) and the Schumann Piano Concerto with soloist Lydia Artymiw. Both Michael and Artymiw will be making their Philharmonic debuts.

Michael is pragmatic about his chances of making an impact in so familiar a work as the Beethoven Fifth, particularly with only one rehearsal.

“It’s difficult,” he acknowledges. “I don’t know what will come from the orchestra, but I will try to give it my personal style.”

Thursday Michael gets music particularly dear to him in Richard Strauss’ “Don Quixote,” with cellist Lynn Harrell and violist Heiichiro Ohyama the protagonists, and Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.

“I am very Straussian and Wagnerian,” says Michael. “That is the center of my soul.”

In an opera career that began in 1962 as the late Herbert von Karajan’s assistant at the Vienna Staatsoper, Michael has conducted all of Wagner’s operas. His flair in that repertory brought him to the Seattle Opera for his U.S. debut in 1984, conducting “Tannhauser.” He conducted the 1987 “Ring” cycle in Seattle, “Meistersinger” this summer, and will lead the “Ring” for Seattle again in 1991.

“You know, Seattle is like a second artistic home,” Michael says. He likes the country there, and the fact that he is there to work for a substantial time with the orchestra and singers.

Time with an orchestra is what Michael most appreciates. After a few more years of traveling--Michael says he has already conducted 70 orchestras around the world--he would like to become music director of a major orchestra, where he could spend most of his artistic time.

“I’m more of a ‘rooted’ person,” Michael explains. “I’m a builder of orchestras--that is my conception of music-making.”

He is passing his concepts on to young conductors, teaching master classes at the Munich Conservatory. Ironically, Michael himself did not have formal conducting training.

“What I am teaching,” Michael says with a laugh, “I never learned.”

His father was not excited about music as a career for his son, and Michael’s musical studies were sporadic at first. He did come to the attention of Karajan, and then in 1961 won the first Cantelli Conducting Competition. Named for Guido Cantelli, the Toscanini protege who died in an airplane crash in 1956, the competition has produced several subsequently acclaimed talents, such as Riccardo Muti, who won in 1967.

Michael has been music director of the Haydn Orchestra in Bolzano, Italy, since 1977. Following his period with Karajan, Michael served in Frankfurt as Kapellmeister , and was then general music director of the opera and orchestra in Bremen.

It is with orchestras and not opera, that Michael sees his future, though he will continue to lead operas on a guest basis, making his Met debut this Christmas with “Die Fledermaus.”

“It’s good to do once in your life,” he says of directing an opera house, “but that’s enough.”