Anne Sofie von Otter and Friends

In November Anne Sofie von Otter makes her Australian debut with the Sydney Symphony. Paolo Hooke talks to the versatile mezzo-soprano about performing with friends and walking a different musical path.

‘There are two kinds of friends,’ says acclaimed mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter. ‘There are social friends and then there are my musical friends. The musical friends are people you get on with socially and have fun with but who are very talented musicians that you can have a wonderful and special musical relationship with. I love sharing the stage with them and that is the case with both Bengt and Pekka.’

Making her Australian debut in November, von Otter will share the stage with violinist Pekka Kuusisto and pianist Bengt Forsberg in a Sydney Symphony concert of chamber-music proportions – Anne Sofie von Otter and Friends. ‘Bengt and I have known each other for a long time and he still, even though he is now getting on as I am too, has his almost childish love of music and this curiousness about discovering new music. The joy of making music is really a thing of Bengt and that is the reason why we still are working together after all these years. Pekka I have not known for so long but he is very special; he is an all-round musician, he can do anything from cutting-edge modern music or pop music or folk music to baroque music. He seems to have a very good sense of every style imaginable plus he is very quick; nobody has to write arrangements for him, he just gets up and starts playing, so with him we’ve had wonderful concerts where we’ve done all kinds [of music], from Sibelius to Paul McCartney.’

This happy band of friends will be conducted by rising young Australian conductor Nicholas Carter, who in December last year was appointed associate conductor of the Sydney Symphony, a position supported by the orchestra’s Premier Partner Credit Suisse, who are also sponsoring the Anne Sofie von Otter concert. ‘Ever since I saw the famous DVD performance of Der Rosenkavalier from the Vienna Staatsoper in 1994, conducted by Kleiber, with Anne Sofie von Otter singing Octavian, I kind of fell in love with her,’ says Carter. ‘Is that a bit too far?! She’s one of the all-time greats and has performed with the finest musicians around the world. I'm looking forward to working with her and learning from her experience and learning something about her approach to performing this wonderful music.’ As for Pekka Kuusisto, Carter says he saw him perform with the Australian Chamber Orchestra a few years ago and was blown away by his energy, charisma and commitment to many different styles of music. ‘He’s a rock star, and a wonderful eccentric. I'm sure we’ll get on well!’ Kuusisto will perform the virtuosic ‘gypsy music’ Tzigane for violin and orchestra by Maurice Ravel. Carter says that Ravel used to carry a pepper grinder wherever he went, so that just in case he found the conversation boring, he would crack some pepper to enliven the atmosphere and spice up the surroundings! ‘You hear this in his music, there’s a pungency, an intense focus for all the senses. Even in his most “beautiful” works, there’s an edge. In Tzigane you hear this intense earthiness bursting forth.’

Von Otter, meanwhile, will perform highlights from Songs of the Auvergne by Joseph Canteloube, the French composer’s most famous collection of songs. ‘They are very accessible, very colourful, they are folk songs that he [Canteloube] has collected,’ she says. ‘They are sung in a rather strange French dialect, so people if they don’t understand that this is a dialect, they wonder what I am singing. But it’s sort of between Italian and French, [with] a bit of Spanish thrown in.’ The mezzo-soprano says that this music is very lush and technicolour, almost like film music, so the songs are hugely enjoyable for their orchestration and variety. ‘They are not done that often these days but I think they’re great so I am looking forward to singing them.’

Von Otter, known for her versatility, is also performing some Broadway melodies at the concert – songs by George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and Kurt Weill. She says they require a different kind of singing. ‘I always like switching, letting my voice do the crossover repertoire is different and somehow I can relax a bit when I do that repertoire because it requires different things from the voice and I like that, I enjoy that and the songs are so great,’ she says. ‘Kurt Weill is wonderful but Jerome Kern is beautiful too, so I get a kick from singing this style and I almost always do it these days when I do recitals, I throw in a bit or a lot of crossover repertoire in the second half. I’ve been touring with Brad Mehldau, the American jazz pianist, singing that kind of repertoire, so I feel at home with it even though I would never call myself a jazz singer, it’s still a style that I enjoy singing very much.’

Indeed von Otter is an artist of great versatility, singing everything from lieder to opera to songs from outside the classical canon to pop ballads and Gershwin and Broadway melodies. She describes herself as ‘basically a restless person’ with a drive to explore different things. ‘So if I’m walking between point A and point B, I will try to vary the path as much as possible, I don’t want to walk the same way twice if I can help it,’ she says. ‘It’s the same thing with my singing, I get bored if I sing the same thing too much which means more than two times in a row! I’m exaggerating, but it’s wonderful for my brain, my voice, my personality, my hunger, my love of music, to switch quite frequently, and I’ve always done that and I always will, because it keeps me going and it’s fun.’

Both the emotional dimension and a beautiful sound are important, says von Otter, who is renowned for her exquisite sound. ‘In classical music, listeners expect a certain kind of beauty but to me it becomes a slightly boring and dead medium if you don’t add your own personality to it. That isn’t always straightforward and some people find it easier or want to do it more than others. And listeners are different too; everyone enjoys listening in different ways.’ As a young student, von Otter was told by her singing teacher in London, the Hungarian-born Vera Rózsa, that ‘this sounds very lovely dear but you must add emotion, you must add your personality’. ‘Rózsa was quite annoyed with me because she thought I wasn’t feeling anything and I wasn’t conveying anything. So I have had her voice whispering in my ear since I was 20.’

Versatility and conveying her own personality through music are important for von Otter, but so too is spontaneity. ‘I think that you rehearse something really well and then let your fantasy, your mind loose a little bit in the performance and see what happens,’ she says, explaining that you can’t do this in every kind of repertoire. ‘But certainly for recitals with piano you can, particularly if you have a pianist who is willing to come along on the ride, such as Bengt Forsberg or Brad Mehldau, they both enjoy that kind of thing. I believe in spontaneity combined with a very strict sense of learning what’s in the music and getting it right.’ Anne Sofie von Otter describes Kuusisto as also being flexible and spontaneous. ‘He won’t write things down, he will just improvise or at least he will mainly have an idea of what he’s going to do,’ she says. ‘Of course when he plays his classical repertoire he follows the music but he’s still very influenced by what’s going on in his mind right now at this moment.’ Nicholas Carter also values spontaneity. ‘What I always find when performing with close friends is that there is an amazing chemistry and collective intuition. When performers know each other so well, things don't need to be said – they breathe together, move together,’ he says. ‘It’s almost telepathic! This is why it’s so fun – you understand the subtleties of each other’s character and have fun interacting in a highly intimate way.’

ANNE SOFIE VON OTTER AND FRIENDS

Thursday 3 November 8pm
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
Tickets: from $49
Bookings: 8215 4600
www.sydneysymphony.com