‘Sadness only comes in after the concert’

Jaap van Zweden (62) shows his agenda on his phone. It consists of colored blocks, each country has its own color. This year, fifty weeks have been completely coloured. Next weekend he will fly successively to Hong Kong, France, Seoul and back to Hong Kong. Then he is home for two days around Christmas. He scrolls further, the colors flash by. Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Rome, Seoul, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Zurich. “And then,” he says excitedly, “look! I will be home there for a week.” That’s in April.

He is principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and regularly appears as guest conductor of other orchestras. He is now in the Netherlands for four days, also because of the recently published biography That’s Jaapwritten by journalist Peter van Ingen.

He doesn’t intend to continue like this for much longer. He gained this insight when he could no longer travel due to the corona lockdowns and was with his wife Aaltje, children and four grandchildren for two years. They are between three and eight years old. “The desire for more time together has grown enormously.”

In 2024 he will exchange the orchestras in New York and Hong Kong for the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. “In 2025, 2026, I want to gradually work half less. For example, I want to have the summers off and experience the Sinterklaas party with the children.”

I try to imagine, I say, how you keep things going well together when you have been mainly abroad for decades. He says that every coin has two sides and there is a lot that connects them. “I always go to bed and wake up with the family on my mind.”

His biography briefly mentions that things were not always good between him and Aaltje. That was in the first years after the birth of their third son, Benjamin. Something was clearly wrong, but no doctor knew what. They visited dozens of specialists, hospitals and institutions. After seven years it was determined that he has a form of autism. They recently learned that the autism of Benjamin, now 32 years old, stems from an extremely rare, newly discovered chromosome abnormality. At the time, it was a huge confrontation with how to deal with this as a family, he says. “Relationship pressure” arose. In 1995 they sought help from a psychiatrist.

“If you start talking to each other,” he says, “you start peeling back more and more layers. We discovered why we did certain things and started to understand ourselves and each other better.” He sees my questioning look. “Naaaah, I don’t think so… Some things you want to keep to yourself. I think I would bore people with it.”

It can also be recognizable for people with a sick or disabled child, I say. “Yes. Well. For example, the shame. Then I would take Benjamin to play football with my eldest son Daniël and he would do the strangest things on the side. Fluttering, screaming. People start looking: what’s going on with that little boy? I found that difficult at times.”

He talks, reluctantly, about the “reservoir” of emotions that emerged during the conversations with the psychiatrist. “It went back to our youth, to anger, to frustrations, to being rejected, to a thousand things. And because everything that was undiscussable became negotiable, a certain clarity emerged that took us out of that shame, anger and disappointment.” There are many couples, he says, who break up in a situation like this. “The panic that exists will also put pressure on your relationship.”

Their biggest concern now is the increasing severity of Benjamin’s seizures. A few months ago he had fallen on his head during a seizure. “His whole face… stitches, broken nose, broken this, broken that. And this has happened before. There is always that fear. We don’t know where it ends.”

It sometimes happened that Benjamin had an epileptic fit just before a concert and Aaltje did not tell him. “I was annoyed about that. I hate it when she keeps problems from me. I still carry those concerns with me.” But once on stage he is able to block out everything. “Then everything is gone.”

How does that work? You are very worried about your child, you step on stage and then…

“…Then Mahler simply has to be played well.”

Then Mahler is more important?

“Not more important. But you have to do what you are doing at that moment. I also know that I can’t do anything for him when I’m on a stage in New York. If I feel sad or annoying, it only really hits me after the concert. Then I will call immediately.”

Has it made your life easier that you can park your worries while you work?

“Yes, it is also relaxing in a way. But most of all I think the music deserves it. I have a profession that serves music. And I have a huge sense of responsibility towards the public. I have to give 110 percent during a concert.”

Do you expect the same dedication from the other musicians?

Thoughtful silence. “Yes, look, I come in with an image in my head of how I want it to be. I have sometimes had difficulty with it when people were not one hundred percent prepared. Because myself… I understand more and more that not everyone can protect things. I have learned my lesson in that.”

The food is brought, a Caesar salad served in a large leaf of romaine lettuce. He looks at it carefully. “Wow. Nice.”

How did you learn that lesson?

“I have always been very good at music and preparing scores. Over the years, people have become more empathetic. Of course I was also very fanatical because I had to catch up on a lot. Normally you start conducting as a seventeen-year-old boy. I was 37, I was in a hurry. I had to build up a very large repertoire very quickly. And occasionally I brought that fanaticism to rehearsals.”

I don’t think I ever really made any threats
to people

Between 2008 and 2018, Jaap van Zweden was chief conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The newspaper published during that period The Dallas Morning News an article in which he was accused of communicating in an intimidating manner with some orchestra members.

How do you look back on that now?

“Well, I can understand that, I come from an orchestra myself. But the funny thing was: I once asked the New York Philharmonic (where he started as chief conductor in 2018, ed.) whether that newspaper article had not been a problem with my appointment. They said that at the time they thought: now we must have all of him.” He smiles.

What exactly was the complaint?

“It was only about one thing. That I had been too fanatical with a horn player.”

What had you done?

“Constantly said that things had to be improved.”

During one rehearsal?

“Well, probably for weeks at a time.”

And what if his child was very sick?

“That was not the case. I know almost every family situation of the orchestra members. And of course you can’t say to the audience: sorry, this doesn’t sound so good because Gerard’s wife has just had a knee operation. But I won’t go to the extreme anymore. I have really changed in that regard.”

Does the current zeitgeist also play a role?

“Yes. And that’s good, the person behind the musician is now seen much more. But an orchestra is a strange thing, isn’t it? Because when I’m sympathetic, they say: he won’t follow through. And if I continue, they say: he is much too fanatical. I’m on one fine line. I’m really discovering that now. I like that very much.”

You are of course a risk factor in many respects. A white, older man…

“…Yes!”

Who is extremely demanding for himself and for others…

“…Yes!”

And it operates at the highest level. What do you think when you read messages about people who have to leave because of intimidating behavior?

“Yes, what can I say to that? I don’t think I’ve ever gone so far as to actually make threats to people. If someone does that in a work situation, then I think it’s only normal that that person should show up. I always say: when I make a correction, it is never personal. It’s about the end product. But perhaps we live in a time when people only want to have fun and enjoy themselves on stage. Which can. We will see that in the future.”

I don’t think that suits you at all.

“Well, I can be very sociable too.” He smiles. “Listen, the world is changing and it is important that you change with it. And when I worked with famous conductors, such as Bernard Haitink… They always became mellower as they got older.”

Did they also get better?

He thinks for a long time. “If you continue to invest in yourself as an artist, I have the feeling that deeper grounds will be touched. Then there can be an extra dimension as you get older. But it can also become less.”

Is it getting better for you?

“I want to discover something new in a piece every time, I want to improve myself every time. That’s how I keep things alive. I don’t think the results are getting worse, no, rather better.”

He mentions Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as an example. That piece, he says, has really grown in his hands. Because he understands it more and more. “Through filing and constant study, I get such a clear picture of how I want it to be. I didn’t have that ten years ago.”

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Everything was always dominated by his violin. By the age of nine, he was studying every day of the week, at least six hours a day. At the age of eleven he took the transition exam for the conservatory – most people do that at the age of eighteen. A jury member said: this is already final exam level. At the age of nineteen, at an exceptionally young age, he became concertmaster in the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Later he was increasingly invited to play with foreign orchestras. Until, in his thirties, he decided he would rather become a conductor.

Did that have to do with your drive for perfection? As a violinist you are a cog in the whole.

“Yes. Of course you see how such a conductor directs the whole thing. As a violinist, I felt a bit like an eagle in a parakeet cage in the orchestra. I couldn’t express what I wanted to express.”

In the biography, his wife says that he became very “relaxed, cheerful and cheerful” during the lockdowns. At the time, she wondered whether the high pressure her husband was often under “actually suits him.”

She is right about that, he says immediately. “But who does that suit? I can handle it well, because I have been under pressure since I was ten years old. Only when the pressure becomes too great should you be careful. For example, if you want to do something better than you can actually do. That is very cool.”

He says that his eldest grandson plays the piano. And his granddaughter, he says laughing, is an exceptional child. “All she wants to do is dance ballet all day. That’s something. She is very musical.”

I ask if, when it comes to his granddaughter, the talent is worth the price tag. “You now act,” he says, “as if you can separate the talent and the person. That is not possible. It’s unavoidable. If it happens, it happens. Then you can’t think about it. When a talent presents itself, you have no choice.”

Should she be pushed as hard as his own parents pushed him? “That depends on the talent. Make no mistake, a talent sometimes also requires guidance. I knew from a young age that I had a talent for music. You must then be able to develop that talent. Because it does come with a price tag.”