Translator: Feike Laffeber Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I stood on a stage with a conductor's baton,
conducting orchestras and choirs.
Now I'm on the stage with technology, to take you into the story of my life,
into the story about classical music for everyone, not just for a small group.
I will show you how classical music has been an adventure
that at first was very personal,
then became a passion that I shared with a large crowd,
and finally, my current mission, to ensure that everyone in the world
has access to classical music and will start to appreciate it.
Of course, it all began somewhere.
When introduced to classical music, I wasn't all that young.
I was 21.
There was something that gave me the spark.
I went to study musicology and knew nothing about it.
That was something.
Then, when I started studying music, I thought,
"I'd better start listening to something."
My brother in the US said, "Rob, I'll listen along."
We'll start with Gustav Mahler -- never heard of.
His seventh symphony. Go buy it, we'll both listen.
No sooner said than done.
We went on to listen to Gustav Mahler and it hit me like a ton of bricks.
It went like this.
(Music)
Here brilliantly performed
by Claudio Abbado, with the Luzern Festival Orchestra.
This was a lightning strike.
Something happened to me that had never happened before.
And what exactly was it?
To fully explain, we need to take a few steps back.
This was a sledgehammer blow,
but for me it all started like it did with everyone else.
I have a history.
I grew up with music, like most of us did, not at all classical.
Let's go through my LPs and CDs from that very start.
(Music)
The Beatles, what else?
Six years old, my mother enthused me.
Then came Elton John, joyous music, the first LP I ever bought.
But there were more lovely things.
The Eagles, I was about 12. Enjoying it fully, goose bumps.
Electric Light Orchestra, already somewhat classical, wonderful music.
Stevie Wonder. Who didn't enjoy 'Songs in the Key of Life'?
But more followed. Pop music became my inspiration.
'Pretzel Logic' by Steely Dan. That was the next phase, more jazzy,
but it came back to The Beatles, because they are a leitmotif in my life,
they are the classical music of pop music.
That is where I came from.
But whoever made me passionate?
I do need the right slide.
My father.
My father was a great fan of jazz music.
I still remember him -- here he's behind his saxophone --
I still remember him standing there when Frank Sinatra was on,
swinging with the big band.
He was conducting the big band in the room, totally thrilled.
Now that was passion, he taught me what passion was.
But my parents also created the conditions for me to make music,
for which I'm very grateful.
A few examples.
(Guitar)
They let me have guitar lessons with Piet Balen.
I played this, I could back then. This was way in the beginning.
Then I went on to play the organ.
(Organ)
Emile Simonis, playing work from Jimmy Smith, a bit jazzy.
I never really learned to play well, mind you.
Then I made the move to classical. Piano, Mozart.
His simple symphony.
It can't be more simple.
But it can hardly be more beautiful either.
So, I was lucky, my parents allowed me to learn about music.
I thought, I have a bit of background,
I am passionate, I have learnt some things,
but what do I actually know?
Not much, really.
Like so many others, I knew nothing about music.
That's why I started studying musicology, and it was a great adventure.
I want to share that adventure with you, the discovery of classical music.
Let's take our time. I think that's important.
I'm about to have a lot of goose bumps, and I hope you will get some as well.
Here it comes, the discovery of classical music.
Monteverdi, Vespers for the Blessed Virgin.
Music written around 1610.
More beautiful is hardly possible.
I'm having them.
The teachers at musicology introduced me to all kinds of music.
The Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky, a ballet. I had never heard about it.
So beautiful, I didn't know it was so beautiful.
And what about Bach? The Brandenburg concertos.
One of my first classical LPs.
Thoroughly enjoyed this, the Combattimento Consort from Amsterdam.
Or violin.
The translation of the heart,
the translation of the human voice onto an instrument.
Here in Thaïs, by Massenet, wonderfully performed by Joshua Bell.
(Violin)
Wagner. He writes operas lasting sixteen hours,
like this 'Ride of the Valkyries'.
Fierce music, often used in films.
(Music)
'Messiah', we all know that one,
it's 'music for the millions', but how beautiful it is.
(Music)
I learned about American music, George Gershwin, later John Adams,
'An American in Paris', sensational.
(Music)
Who doesn't know this opening?
We're all familiar with it.
The best opening ever composed.
Beethoven.
(Music)
That's all it takes.
Onto the next one,
The Rite of Spring, Le Sacre du printemps.
Exactly 100 years ago, a sensation.
There were casualties at the first performance.
(Music)
The police had to come up onto the stage,
because the audience was attacking the musicians and dancers.
Or the heavenly choir music from the Renaissance.
Giovanni Palestrina with his 'Missa Papae Marcelli'.
(Music)
What else could have happened?
The passion was born, but the discovery continued.
I wanted to discover more.
There is this wonderful moment in my life,
it's when I went cycling with friends in the Dordorgne in France.
We were in Sarlat, a beautiful medieval town,
and in the church, the cathedral, was a small orchestra and a pianist.
We walked in there by chance.
I sat down and was again hit, as if with a sledgehammer,
by the opening of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20.
(Music)
Pianissimo.
(Music)
Sorry, I have to interrupt, because there is more to tell.
The music had truly reached me, and now we went on a pilgrimage.
My wife and I went to Vienna,
because Mozart and Mahler were the composers
who were already completely in my system.
We went to Vienna to witness where they were born,
where they had worked, all that had happened.
It was a great exploration, but there was also a collision.
We went to the Musikverein, a temple, like the Royal Concertgebouw.
In that beautiful concert hall we heard Bruckner's Symphony No. 5.
On our way back to our apartment, in the tram, I told my wife,
"This has to be the most wonderful thing we have ever experienced."
She looked at me and said,
"Who can enjoy Bruckner Five? It's terrible.
There is not a single person who believes it is any good."
We had a huge argument, which made me realize,
"So, my experience is not necessarily someone else's experience."
I was totally addicted, but that didn't mean,
that others shared the same addiction.
It was a private experience.
All that happened to me was still quite personal,
until I started to conduct and teach.
That was the moment, I began to share music with others.
A new phase in my life.
First, choral conducting.
During my studies, they let me conduct choirs.
Really great, to experience choir music together with 15, 16, 20, 30 singers.
Imagine that you are making this music together.
(Music)
Salve Regina by Francis Poulenc.
What a blissful experience.
(Music)
Sorry, Poulenc.
The second experience, I could study orchestra conducting.
Which I did, by the way, with Hans Welle, in Hilversum.
We got a kick out of conducting 75 people.
Making music together, reaching a very high level.
That was fantastic.
But teaching, educating, that was yet another phase.
Then you're in front of a group of people,
and you get to transfer your enthusiasm and your knowledge to others.
That is great.
I found out during teaching,
that I wasn't the only one getting goose bumps,
but that others shared those with me.
I remember, at the end of my course, I always used Mozart's Clarinet concerto.
There Mozart is again.
And the Clarinet concerto had the same effect on everyone else
that it had on me.
Goose bumps.
(Music)
Played beautifully by Karl Leister, many years ago.
I found it again, it's available on CD now as well.
A marvelous performance.
I made some discoveries.
I discovered that classical music is a universal language.
Not only for me, not only for those I share it with,
but also in China, also in Africa, also in America.
Everywhere, if you put in some effort, you can thoroughly enjoy classical music,
because it is a universal language.
What I also discovered is, when you learn to understand the language,
listening to it again and again, it will make you blissfully happy.
But you have to put some effort into it.
Pop music is plugged, you hear it 40 times and you think,
"Oh, that's a nice song."
Classical music you hear only once. What will you remember of it?
Now image hearing a classical piece 40 times.
It'll go way beyond pop music, of course.
I received a mission,
and that mission was to make classical music available for everyone.
Not limited to a small, elitist group, but for everyone.
That has become my mission in life.
At that time, I was still catering to enthusiasts.
But to enthuse everyone, I had to be able to explain
just what makes classical music so special.
I found that terribly difficult.
I could tell a good story, those came natural,
but how to point out the special aspect, the magical aspect of classical music?
That is what I saw for the first time in the movie 'Amadeus'.
'Amadeus' to me is the best movie about classical music.
Let's watch.
Video: The beginning is simple.
Rob Overman: Salieri, his great enemy.
Video: Just a pulse.
Bassoons and basset horns, like a rusty squeezebox.
RO: He explains just what is so special.
Video: Then suddenly, high above it,
an oboe.
A single note, hanging there unwavering,
untill
a clarinet took it over.
RO: Too good. Watch the entire film and you'll be convinced.
That taught me that it was possible to explain
what is so special about classical music.
I discovered that storytelling
enthused others as well.
I started sharing it with enthusiasts.
It went like this, first on my own, as we know.
Then educating groups of 10, 20, 30 people.
Then I started conducting, those were bigger groups, 20 to 80 people.
I had the opportunity to write for newspapers,
reaching 20 to 30,000 people.
I tried to convert them all into enthusiasts,
regardless of the feedback I received.
Then, of course, the symphony orchestras.
I worked for orchestras for many years,
playing for some 2,000 people at a time.
Or at the Gergiev festival in Rotterdam, with 25,000 attendees.
Wonderful. Ever larger crowds came to join my experience.
However, on a very important note,
it still was classical music for the happy few.
It was limited to those who already knew it.
So, there was another step to be made.
How to get classical music available for the everyone?
My first step in that direction was meeting Peter Kroone.
Peter Kroone was organizing operas in the Ahoy venue,
he called them stadium operas.
I got to witness how he filled football stadiums
in Paris, in Shanghai and in Stuttgart,
and played Aïda, Carmen and Traviata for 80,000 people,
at a very high level.
The audience all enjoyed it thoroughly.
That was classical music for a large crowd,
and they all enjoyed it just as much as the audience at the Concertgebouw.
Suddenly, classical music was for everyone,
but it still wasn't enough.
I quit the orchestras because I thought,
"I'm still only working for my own venue, while the audience is all over the globe."
There are billions of people who know nothing about it.
Technology was going to help me to reach everyone.
First, there was broadband.
I started using the internet,
and when we set up a large portal in 2006, we thought,
"Broadband will ensure that everyone will start to enjoy it."
You know, apps didn't exist, iPhones didn't exist.
It was really difficult. Hardly anyone contributed.
But I knew there was a lot of potential there.
Then I could return to the old world.
I went to work for television.
That's very interesting, you can bring beautiful classical music
to vast amounts of people.
An opera on TV in the Netherlands attracts some 50 to a 100,000 viewers.
The lovely program Maestro, recently made for Dutch TV,
was watched by 1.4 million people.
Those are huge numbers and they all enjoyed it immensely.
So television is a very important channel.
But the new media, of course, are so much more
than just broadband and television.
Because if you make a good recording,
you can bring it on television, you can make a DVD,
you can order it through video on demand,
YouTube has become the channel for classical music,
but the Metropolitan Opera is bringing classical music to cinemas.
Tens of thousands are watching all over the world.
In fact, the best performance brought 500.000 people
to 5,000 cinemas around the globe to see an opera.
That is sensational.
So, the new media had become an enormous benefit for classical music.
My claim is that new media is the greatest opportunity
classical music has had in 800 years time,
because the new media ensures that classical music
now really becomes available for everyone.
But it does require hard work.
We're moving toward the finish line.
What do we have to do?
Storytelling is the necessary virus.
You can't plug the music, so you will have to get the word out.
Not just by me,
but by many people around the world, like Leonard Bernstein used to do,
Michael Tilson Thomas, or in Holland our very own Jan-Willem de Vriend
who often does that in the popular program 'De wereld draait door' and other media.
The new media have to be used wisely as a means of distribution.
And we do, we're reaching a lot of people already.
But for me, the future lies in youth orchestras.
There are thousands of youth orchestras worldwide.
Here in Almere, we have our own Almeers youth symphony orchestra,
we have the student concerts in Utrecht, we have the VU-orchestra in Amsterdam.
In the Netherlands, there are 300 youth orchestras.
Worldwide, there are several hundreds of thousands.
They bring forth an enthusiasm that is unrivaled.
I would like to close with the hope for the future
in these three elements, but mainly the youth orchestras.
Let's end with a very remarkable fragment
of the Simon Bolivar youth orchestra from Venezuela,
led by Gustavo Dudamel.
Here, classical music is truly a celebration.
(Music)
The opening of their new concert hall.
Only young people in the audience.
Well, almost.
This, of course, makes it easy to bring classical music
to a very large audience.
It's funny, but classical music's hope for the future, which is grand,
starts at this moment at the youth orchestras in Venezuela,
of which there are 200.
And I hope that you and I will make sure that the most beautiful sound,
that Western civilization has ever produced,
will be brought to millions across the planet.
Thank you.
(Applause)