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James Judd to conduct ‘Jupiter’ at Phoenix Symphony

“You exist in three time zones as a conductor,” says British maestro James Judd. “You’re anticipating the future, you’re listening to the present and you’re remembering what just happened a minisecond ago.”

This is true in a larger sense, as it is the conductor’s job to interpret the art of the past for the audience of today and to pass the legacy on to the next generation.

It’s a big job, and the 64-year-old Judd, who leads the Phoenix Symphony in playing Mozart’s career-capping “Jupiter” Symphony next weekend, has been working to master it his entire life. He served as assistant to the great Lorin Maazel and has led orchestras around the world, including an eight-year stint leading the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. He currently serves as music director of the Little Orchestra Society in New York.

In addition to “Jupiter,” Judd will conduct Cliburn medal finalist Sean Chen in the Piano Concerto of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Also on the program are Benjamin Britten’s “Four Sea Interludes” from the opera “Peter Grimes.”

Judd spoke with us by phone from his home in Florida.

Question: Your official bio says you are a “pre-eminent interpreter of British orchestral music.” Does that mean your Britten will be better than your Grieg?

Answer: No, no. I mean, there are lots of us who are “pre-eminent.” It’s PR garbage. I don’t like labels at all, but I love conducting and advocating English music, because I think it’s so great. It’s such an international music, isn’t it?

Like all music, whether it’s a Schubert dance or Britten’s “Sea Interludes,” there are two aspects. One is that the Schubert dance is based on the Landler (folk dance), something very Viennese, something quite local in a way, a very special feeling of rhythm. The Britten, the first of the interludes is depicting this incredible still-sea scene of a bird, maybe, and the salt in the air. If you know Suffolk, it’s as specific to that landscape as the Schubert waltz is to Vienna. And yet, of course, the emotion is international. It connects with us the picture of loneliness. All great music travels across the borders.

Q: Sean Chen, a California kid, will be playing Grieg. When you work with soloists for the first time, do you study up on them to prepare?

A: When you have long meetings with soloists or you call them beforehand, they say, “I think we’re going to do this at this tempo,” “I take some time here,” whatever, and they never do. They always do something different. And there’s something lovely about the conductor, the orchestra, the pianist all meeting one another for the first time in a great piece of music. And we just listen. From the first notes, the way he will play the introduction, we will know a lot about how the rest of the piece is going to be played. It’s one of the most magical and lovely and exciting things, because it’s always dangerous every time.

Q: The “Jupiter” is a biggie. Why is it special?

A: I think what draws me to it is the last movement, this incredible structure that Mozart has prepared for us. The structure of the piece, with these two giant sections that are repeated and then a coda, for me it’s like a great building, a cathedral or a temple. Mozart drew on everything he had, and this last movement is not only, just from a technical, structural point of view, one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written, it is emotionally and spiritually something that you never forget. It’s just a force of nature.

Q: What are your earliest musical memories?

A: I grew up in Hartford in England, which was a town with only about 25,000 people at the time, about 25 miles north of London, in a very simple family. But everybody went to church. My first strong memory of music was hearing the church organ and the church choir where all my relations were singing, and being incredibly moved by that. My first ambition was to play the organ, and they said, “Well, you can’t do that until your legs grow long enough.”

All of those little towns at that time, and still a lot of them today in England, had an amateur orchestra. I was at a state school, and they had a wonderful music building and an orchestra. Had music at the beginning of the day at assembly, had a little operatic society in the school where they did Gilbert and Sullivan mostly. And the town itself had a choir doing all the big choral works. So it was an environment of fantastic amateur musicmaking.

Q: Why did you become a conductor?

A: I have no idea why I did it because I was incredibly shy, and the thought of actually standing in front of people struck me with horror. It wasn’t necessarily that I wanted to be a conductor. I just loved the music. It made such an emotional impact on me, and I just thought, “Well, why don’t I try.”

There are a lot of different types that go into conducting, and then interpretively we hear that. When you listen to great conductors conduct Beethoven, conduct Bruckner, you feel there’s no barrier between them and the music. It’s not about them, it’s about the music. You hear how different people are.

Q: It’s not about them, but you hear their personality? That sounds paradoxical.

A: But it’s honest personality. You have to delve deeply in your own intellect and your own emotions, and at performance you have to become the composer, really, the re-creator. That’s what I always feel about the great conductors. There’s no barrier. They’ve totally exposed themselves without fear.

You search for your life for the technique to be authentic.

Phoenix Symphony: Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, May 9-10. Symphony Hall, 75 N. Second St., Phoenix. $18-$79. 602-495-1999, phoenixsymphony.org.

 

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