‘I Want to Share What I Feel . . .’ : After a Lifetime of Upheaval and Glory, Kurt Sanderling Is Preparing L.A. Philharmonic for a Trip to His Berlin Roots

The magic that transpires between a revered conductor and his 100 charges is easier to describe than explain. Take, for instance, Kurt Sanderling rehearsing the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

To signal a sudden decrease in volume, this maestro just stops moving, leans backward and lowers his arms. The players breathlessly respond, finding in his subtle body language everything needed to trigger a heavenly diminuendo, so important to Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony.

This is no blazing hero who freezes for the poetic drama of the moment and throws his head back in ecstasy, nor a flamboyant activist with mane flying and baton wildly spearing imaginary demons.

In an earlier rehearsal, the Prussian-born conductor--who has achieved nearly cult status here--had quietly laid the groundwork, doing what most of the younger, zippier baton-wielders of today rarely can do: talk about the music.

“That’s the finger of God pointing at you,” he tells the players, giving a caption to the Brucknerian battalion of brass that bursts the quiet aura of the second movement. “It’s God commanding you to look at the majesty of his creation.”

And later, in the “Hunting” Scherzo, he speaks of forest animals: a fawn looking for its mother, illustrated by the high strings’ tender tracing of a melody.

“These are Bruckner’s thoughts as I’ve discovered them,” says the 78-year-old Sanderling. “I want to share what I feel, something that touches the heart and stimulates the mind.” Otherwise, he says, music is in jeopardy of becoming just a blueprint for sonics.

“Knowing why you play a passage loud is more important than just doing it. Expression is the key. To have it you must get under the skin of the music.”

It was 1984 when this champion of Old World values guest-conducted the Philharmonic for the first time. Not long afterward a love affair flowered between Sanderling and the L.A. Philharmonic. By way of non-explanation, Sanderling turns to metaphor:

“How do you explain why a man is attracted to that woman over there? You can’t,” he says, invoking the mystery of it all. By the same token, he acknowledges that not every orchestra accords him “most-beloved” status--some merely offer respect.

Seated now in a nook off the lobby of a small, elegant European hotel tucked away downtown, the non-publicity minded maestro coughs now and then from the flu. He looks like a kindly Henry Kissinger. But when he speaks in his halting English, it is with a more comfortably placed voice than his gravel-throated counterpart--although with a more guttural accent. The two share more than a physical resemblance, though. Both are vintage German Jews who fled Hitler’s Third Reich.

Moreover, Sanderling went from one police state to another when Soviet relatives offered him a haven.

“I stayed in Berlin as long as I did because the insanity of a Hitler did not seem like something that could last more than a few months. I finally left in 1935 with the 10 marks the government permitted us to take out of the country.”

But where an artist goes--to the East and its formerly repressive system or to the West and democracy--does not determine what happens to him, says Sanderling. Asked if his career, from then to 1960 with the Leningrad Philharmonic and thereafter with the Berlin Symphony, had been stymied by taking the only choice open to a man with 10 marks in his pocket, he responds negatively:

“There are no absolutes. Neither in life nor in art. I went where I could get work. Those were desperate times for everyone. People had no choices. They took any offer that came. And despite the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union, I felt that the Russians saved me. But my story is no more important than another’s. Every person of my circumstances has a story to tell.”

As it turns out Sanderling speaks only praise for the Leningrad Philharmonic, where he “learned everything.” And he believes that the trade-offs between a closed and open government “make one no better than another” with regard to the arts.

In the West, for instance, he cites a laissez-faire approach that depends on private fund-raising, whereas socialist countries show reverence through subsidy.

“But one cannot measure everything from an arts point of view,” he says, while allowing that “music allows us to transcend earthly concerns. Nor should we be creatures of pride.

“We have no right to be proud. Being a Jew, for instance, is just a fact of birth, a fact no different from my being so many centimeters tall or a man’s skin being black. There are fine Jews and bad Jews, fine blacks and bad blacks. These things don’t speak of qualities.

“And it’s just another fact that these people are treated unjustly. But learning to go beyond one’s circumstances is what’s important. For me it is being a musician, showing how Bruckner’s music glorifies life and nature.”

He thus sees himself serving a higher creative power--and saving himself from vanity. But he also does not deny his heritage.

“Every person remembers in his heart where he came from. But the faster you assimilate the better, because life as a stranger is a terrible life--especially for an artist, who must exist and work for the pleasure of others.”

In May, Sanderling will take the L.A. Philharmonic on tour--to Berlin (he repatriated there in 1960) and Dresden. He will conduct the Bruckner and Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony, “the most desolate of all music,” exhibiting the extremes of human experience.

These days he takes pleasure in not having to differentiate Berlin as East or West. Will there be some particular symbolism for a former German refugee to lead an American orchestra there?

“Not really,” he says with painful honesty. “But I did experience a moving moment for the Oct. 3 (reunification ceremony) when I was asked to conduct the Berlin Symphony on that occasion.

“At the first rehearsal I told the musicians how important this event and its symbolism was for me. In the light of my Jewishness they could understand the meaning. One must choose the right moment to speak of such things.”

Sanderling’s Dates With Philharmonic

Kurt Sanderling will lead the L.A. Philharmonic Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Murray Perahia and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”).

On Nov. 30 and Dec. 2, Sanderling will conduct Haydn’s Symphony No. 39 and Mahler’s Symphony No. 9. On Dec. 1, he will conduct the L.A. Philharmonic and pianist Richard Goode in a Beethoven program at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.