Q: “When did you realize you wanted to become a conductor?”

CC: “When I was 17—at my first job as assistant conductor at the Usdan Center Camp for the Arts, which had four youth orchestras. I remember the sensation I felt the first time I stepped onto the podium to conduct. I knew immediately that I was home.

“My piano teachers wanted me to concentrate on learning piano repertoire, and I stubbornly fought them because I wasn’t interested in becoming another piano virtuoso. I wanted to learn ALL the repertoire: lieder, chamber music, symphonies, operas—I wanted to become really good at sight reading scores at the piano. I felt I was like a giant sponge. There was this huge universe of music, and I was eager to start taking it in.”

Q: “What is the single most important attribute a conductor must have?”

CC: “It’s being flexible. Music making is never the same. It’s always changing, and always at the last moment. It’s crucial not to get blown off center when your expectations are destroyed. That’s one thing about life: It’s always changing; it’s never stagnant. And it’s important to recognize that and be ready to adapt to whatever happens as it’s unfolding. How we react affects the outcome.”

Q: “Who are your greatest influences?”

CC: “I’d have to say Beethoven—for his great spirit of perseverance despite his evolving deafness. He could have given in to despair and become a hopeless alcoholic like his father. Speaking of fathers…my Dad. I watched him very carefully. He had an incredible ability to remain most calm during times of great stress and upheaval. He accomplished seemingly impossible tasks in what he called his ‘own quiet way, without any fanfare’. He treated everyone he encountered with equal courtesy and respect. And he had a heart of gold. People felt his heart and reacted in kind.

“As for conductors, certainly Toscanini. To start with, his standards and ideals were so incredibly high. He was a perfectionist, and his results were outstanding. That’s a wonderful measuring stick to have. He was extraordinarily humble towards the composers’ music he conducted. His philosophy was that he had a responsibility to the composer, and if a performance didn’t match the ideal he had in his mind, he felt that it was his fault and that he had let the composer down.”

Q: “Is it still necessary for American artists to establish themselves in Europe before gaining a strong foothold in the U.S.?”

CC: “That’s a good question. Some of the biggest orchestras, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New York and Philadelphia still have foreign-born music directors, and interestingly, there are a lot of Americans working in Germany—conductors and singers. When I’ve toured Russia, there was always considerable media coverage because I’m a foreigner, and an American at that.

“The scenario is slowly changing though, because there are now American music directors in several U.S. cities. The notion of: ‘That which is imported must be superior to that which is domestic’ is psychological. For example, it also pertains to wine and cheese in addition to performing artists. A wine menu at a five-star restaurant will list overpriced French wines beginning on the first page, with the California wines on the back pages, when those from California are often wonderful.”

Q: “Your choice of repertoire often emphasizes large 19^th century romantic compositions. Why is it that you conduct neither very much 20^th century nor contemporary music?”

CC: “Orchestra boards and managements are very careful about programming. And conductors too, are sensitive to the receptivity of their audiences. It’s a question of education. There’s no reason why audiences anywhere can’t be introduced to new music and fully enjoy it.

“From the 20^th century I’m particularly attracted to the music of Ives, Bartok, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Strauss and the contemporary Latvian composer, Peteris Vasks. I believe their music will survive and be part of the standard repertoire 200 years from now.

“Although I’ve conducted lots of world premieres and first readings, my priorities have been to embrace the great monuments of Western music—Beethoven’s 9^th, his Missa Solemnis, Verdi’s Otello, Wagner’s Ring cycle, etc. This doesn’t cancel one’s responsibility to perform new music, but its success is heightened if we create the best timing and conditions for its presentation.”

Q: “Why are so many orchestras not able to gain enough financial support to stay healthily afloat?”

CC: “Patrons of the arts have traditionally saved countless numbers of arts organizations in this country time and time again. It’s a matter of education. In the last few decades, music has been canceled in most public schools. If during the first 12 years of school, students do not receive instruction in music appreciation, in singing and/or playing in school ensembles or choirs, are not brought to concerts, opera or ballet, if arts organizations don’t come to the schools regularly to share their art with the students, then it would be foolish to expect these students to listen to classical music when they become adults. It’s up to us. It’s everyone’s responsibility to share great art with young students. We have to undergo a huge paradigm shift when it comes to arts education, and not rely on nor expect schools to provide music instruction, nor should we should expect the government to subsidize the arts. Sure, in Europe and many Asian countries, governments have supported cultural institutions historically, but in the United States, the arts have always been funded by the private sector. I’m certainly not opposed to government subsidy of the arts, but the reality of the U.S.–irrespective of which party is in office at any given time, the arts should be available to everyone. And it will happen. It’s wrong to just depend on a handful of angels to support an arts organization. There are tax incentives for wealthy individuals who have established trusts and foundations to give money to the nonprofit sector, and there are huge global corporations that have accumulated incredible piles of cash from which arts institutions benefit.”

Q: “Audiences are not getting younger. Will there eventually be a box office crisis as audiences age and are not replaced by successive generations?”

CC: “The pianist, Gary Graffman, once gave an interesting talk in which he stated that in his youth, “audiences were mostly grey-haired, and continue to be so today, 50 years later!”

“Perhaps spending a lot of money to experience live performances may not be the future, but it’s not as bleak as it sometimes may seem. For example, there are opera companies all over the U.S. that certainly didn’t exist 30 years ago. There’s a great profusion of summer music festivals in the mountains, in the desert. You can now purchase recordings of the complete works of many composers. There are now videos and DVDs of almost every opera that is performed today. It’s become quite common to create music at home with virtual recording studio software to be had for hundreds of dollars, replacing equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars, making digital music more accessible and easier to compose. Many public libraries have recordings of much of the standard repertoire, and a lot of the more esoteric repertoire, and of course one can listen to just about any recording and many live performance recordings on YouTube for free. So it’s hard to generalize and say: ‘Everything points downward’, because these very positive developments are part of the current overall reality.”

Q: “What are your preferences with regards to orchestral sonority and color? Are there particular orchestras whose style is closer to your ideal sound than others?”

CC: “What is sonority? It’s an expression of the players’ hearts. It’s very subjective. This may surprise you, but I celebrate the sounds and colors and styles that differentiate certain orchestras and regions from one another. In one way, as orchestral standards have continually grown higher and higher over that last 100 years, there has been a tendency toward an overall unified homogenized sound. But there’s still something very unique about a Russian orchestra playing Tchaikovsky. It’s definitely a certain sonority that can’t be matched anywhere. It’s an extraordinary, spiritual experience to conduct Russian music with Russian orchestras for Russian audiences. By the same token, I’ll never forget the first time I heard the Vienna Philharmonic play the 1^st movement of Beethoven’s Pastorale Symphony—Now THAT’S a unique individualized sound! One can truly marvel at the ability of some of the American and English orchestras to practically sight-read anything.

“There’s no superior color or style. Historically, conductors were legendary for creating certain styles of sound. Stokowski was an organist and was highly interested in color. He’d even ask woodwind players to change reeds to get a different color. Toscanini and Ormandy were string players, and this was a key to their sound. Toscanini, initially a cellist, was constantly admonishing orchestra players to sing on their instruments, while vibrating over his heart on an imaginary cello fingerboard. Orchestras and singers once played with portamento. That is now considered taboo—but in the 1920s and early ’30s it was quite common, and extraordinarily beautiful.”

Q: “This brings us to the original instruments concept. Do you utilize original instruments and specialist players in your performances of 17^th and 18^th century music?”

CC: “There’s a psychological attraction to the attempt at recreating what orchestras may have sounded like in previous centuries. Certainly composers such as Bach and Mozart and Beethoven were constantly seeking out and celebrating new, improved, superior instruments that were increasingly stronger and more flexible and versatile. This evolution in the development of instruments has continued to the present day. And I see no reason to limit the vast, dramatic improvements of instruments that continue to be made. Personally, I don’t want to hear those experiments. Generally the sound was softer and gentler, the color was darker, and the range of pitches was more limited.

“Certain aspects of articulation and bowing were influenced by the design and limitations of old instruments. It’s a hard call to make: When do we heed the notation and articulation composed for instruments of a certain period vis à vis what is inherently expressed in the music?

“Leonardo da Vinci designed a fascinating instrument which combined the sonority of string instruments with the agility advantages of a keyboard, with the seamless sustaining power of an organ through a foot pedal, which caused a wheel of bow hair to turn! In Barber’s Adagio for Strings, where one wants this very long lyrical line to be unbroken, the last thing you’d want to be aware of is a uniform changing of bow direction by a string section. Here, this instrument of da Vinci’s would be ideal for the task. In this composition I insist that the musicians use free bowing to maintain an unbroken line.

“Clearly there are advantages to utilizing certain performance practices from each period. At the same time I’m convinced that composers of the past would be ecstatic upon encountering the evolution of the sound and capabilities of the modern instruments being built today. The wisest outlook is to keep a very open mind. And more important than which instrument or what articulation is being used—is whether the performers are really playing from their hearts. Are they excited about the music? And is the audience thrilled, excited, saddened and moved?”