Stuart Challender Interview with Bruce Duffie . . . . . . . . .

Conductor Stuart Challender

A Conversation with Bruce Duffie

Stuart David Challender (February 19, 1947- December 13, 1991) began his professional conducting career in 1970. His first engagement was Kiss Me, Kate, for the Lucerne Opera. He was appointed assistant conductor at the Staatstheater Nürnberg; then came engagements in Switzerland at Zürich and Basel, where he was resident conductor at the Opera House from 1976 to 1980.

Upon returning to Australia from Europe, he joined the staff of The Australian Opera. In late 1980 Challender was assigned to conduct a single performance of The Barber of Seville, and soon after he was appointed resident conductor of the Elizabethan Sydney Orchestra and went on to conduct many of the great standards of opera.

Challender succeeded Zdeněk Mácal as chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 1987 to 1991, to great acclaim. In Australia's bicentennial year (1988), he led the orchestra in a successful tour of the United States, a 12-city tour that culminated with a concert at the United Nations General Assembly in New York to mark 200 years of European settlement in Australia. He conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Hong Kong in 1989, and in 1990 conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in four concerts. Several recordings which he made with the SSO are still available on commercially released CDs.

On 26 January 1991, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) "in recognition of services to music". In June of that year, his health visibly failing, Challender conducted his last concert in Hobart, with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.

Challender died of an AIDS-related disease on 13 December 1991. One week later, on 20 December, at the Sydney Town Hall, Justice Michael Kirby led the speakers at a celebration of Challender's life. A seven-minute piece for solo cello by Peter Sculthorpe titled Threnody: In memoriam Stuart Challender was performed by David Pereira.

In his will, Challender provided for the establishment of the Stuart Challender Foundation, to aid the training and development of future Australian conductors. He bequeathed his extensive collection of scores to the Music Library at the University of Tasmania.

Ross Edwards's Symphony No. 1 Da Pacem Domine (1995) was dedicated to Challender's memory.

== Names which are links in this box and below refer to my interviews elsewhere on my website. BD

In the fall of 1988, Stuart Challender and the Sydney Symphony toured the United States, and one of the concerts was in Chicago. The program in the Windy City included the Symphony #5 of Shostakovich, the Piano Concerto #2 of Saint-Saëns played by Shura Cherkassky, and the Symphony #2 of Carl Vine. I arranged to have two interviews, one with the composer and the other with the conductor.

A portion of the Vine conversation was aired on WNIB, Classical 97 that evening to promote the concert, and fourteen months later, part of the chat with Challender was aired when he returned to conduct the Chicago Symphony in music of Beethoven [Piano Concerto #1 with Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich], Richard Strauss [Four Interludes from Intermezzo], Percy Grainger [The Warriors], and Richard Meale [Very High Kings].

Material from each was used subsequently on WNIB, and I am pleased to present the entire encounters on my website. The thoughts of Carl Vine can be read by clicking the link above, and the Challender interview is now [2024] on this webpage.

Bruce Duffie: As chief conductor and artistic director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, are you responsible not only for designing all the programs that you conduct, but also approving the programs that others conduct?

Stuart Challender: Yes, in conjunction with the general manager and programming director of the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra is the biggest of six orchestras. They are all administered by the ABC, which is the Government-funded radio station. It was the organization that initially introduced the professional orchestra to Australia on any sort of full-time basis.

BD:   How long ago was this?

Challender:   In the early 1930s. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra in its embryo form was formed in about 1932, and then after the war it was turned into a full-sized symphony orchestra. Sydney and Melbourne are the only full-sized symphony orchestras in Australia, which have 96 players each. In the other states there are smaller orchestras which are built up with casual players to full-sized orchestras for major concerts. But the Sydney orchestra is, along with those other five other orchestras, administrated to a certain extent from a central body. The power of the central body used to be much much more extensive. A very famous, if not infamous report called The Tribe Report, came out in 1983, which recommended that the orchestras be divested from the ABC, mainly because of bad administration. I think it’s fair to say that the ABC had become a little bit lax in their administration of the orchestras. Certainly those of us that were outside the system, as I was then, saw what was happening as very tired and dull.

BD:   Now that you are the administrator, do you have enough artistic control over what you do?

Challender:   We have an amazing amount of artistic control. When the last director of music, Trevor Green, came to that position, the first thing he did was to appoint general managers to all the orchestras, and immediately put them at arm’s length from the ABC. Up to that time there was no such thing. It was all governed by the central organization, and there were people in the various states doing what was dictated by the central administration.

BD:   So now each is fairly autonomous?

Challender:   They are now, and are becoming more so. The divestment is progressing slowly, and everybody is aware that this is happening. The results have been nothing but positive. On top of that, in various states we appoint chief conductors to the orchestras. The situation with Sydney is totally unique, in that it was decided they would appoint me as chief conductor, with a long-term residency. I live in Sydney, and up to that point I’d worked with the Australian Opera on a permanent basis as a resident conductor. I also guest-conducted both overseas and within Australia. But the idea that a chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra should actually be living in the city, and actually turn up at other people’s concerts, and go to all the auditions was something unique, though it probably did happen in the early ’50s when Sir Eugene Goosens lived in Australia, and was the chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. I’m not aware of exactly what that situation was then, but it was considered the golden age of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. So it was with that in mind that they appointed me.

BD:   What was John Lanchbery’s contribution to all this?

Challender:   John Lanchbery worked with the ballet for a considerable time as musical director, but never was chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He may have worked with them during that period.

BD:   He made a few recordings there.

Challender:   Right. That was in the ’70s, and I was in Europe at that stage.

BD:   Do you like having both the administrative and musical responsibilities?

Challender:   Yes I do. It’s terribly important that a chief conductor, if he wants to make something of the orchestra, be involved in everything, even the paper clips. [Both laugh] I’ve always been a great admirer of people like Charles Dutoit and Simon Rattle, who have gone to one orchestra and built it.

BD:   Are you also an admirer of some of the older generations of conductors?

Challender:   Very much so. Not just because I’m sitting here in Chicago, but I’m a great admirer of Georg Solti. I never saw them conduct, but from recordings I certainly cannot help but admire Arturo Toscanini, Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Bruno Walter. They were certainly the three conductors that most heavily influenced me, in my listening in my younger days, and just in reading about them. The other conductor who has been a huge influence on me, although I haven’t had much to do with him directly is Sergiu Celibidache. I studied with him for a couple of weeks in Stuttgart. It wasn’t any sort of formal study, but he teaches all the time. There are always people around him. He was a profound influence on the way I think about conducting, and the way I think about music, really.

BD:   Then let me ask the question directly. How do you think about conducting, and how do you view music?

Challender:   When I was very young, about 11 or 12, my father took me to my first symphony concert in Tasmania. I thought the sound that came out of this group of musicians was the most glorious I’d ever heard. I had been studying piano a little, but I determined there and then that I wanted to learn to play this instrument.

BD:   You wanted to play the orchestra???

Challender:   Yes. I really had that sort of concept. I had considered the piano, and I could play little pieces, and I could also play the clarinet. It was a small orchestra, but there were 60 or 70 people, and they were making this fabulous sound. There was this person up there in front of them waving his arms around, making it happen, or so it seemed, just like I did at the piano. I was pretty naïve because this was the first symphony concert I’d ever seen, but I’ve never been able to get over the idea that a true conductor actually plays the orchestra. In other words, the gestures that you make must all mean something. This is something that was really brought home by Celibidache. He said that you stand up in front of the orchestra, and unless you’re in rehearsal where you can say something, all you’ve really got is what your body’s going to tell them. This is the body language. He is very much like a ballet dancer who is dying to communicate to the audience. So basically it’s a process of refining, so that all extraneous gesture is removed.

BD:   Do you play each orchestra differently?

Challender:   Yes. It’s not so simple as the 11-year-old would imagine it. [Laughs] Of course you do play every orchestra differently. Every orchestra has its own personality, and it’s part of your job to get to know that personality very quickly. If you’re coming to it for the first time, you must adjust things accordingly. But not only that, stylistically things change and make you change as well. For example, the move from French to German repertoire requires a whole different set of gesture at times. The way you think about the music is quite different. The other thing is that each hall has its own characteristics which have to be taken into account.

BD:   When you’re on tour like you are now, does this have to be done almost instantaneously?

Challender:   Yes. This has been a wonderful experience for the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and for me, playing in a different hall every night. In Australia we know the halls. They’re all known quantities. This tour has been very good for us, because we’ve had to have that flexibility. We’ve had to suddenly adjust the volume levels between the strings and the brass, and fix it up very quickly, sometimes without even a seating rehearsal if it was not possible to get into the hall early enough.

BD:   Do you have to remind them to watch like hell?

Challender:   [Laughs] Well, I hope they watch like hell all the time!

BD:   Is all the work done in rehearsal, or do you purposely leave something for the performance?

Challender:   I try to leave something for each performance, because the other thing that Celibidache taught me, or at least made me aware of, was the fact that music is not just a physical or emotional sort of excitement. There is another element to great music that is very hard to describe, and that is what it does to the spirit. Great music is edifying, and there’s no way you can actually rehearse that into a performance. It’s either there or it’s not there. One has to be aware that the reason certain pieces of music have survived so many years is more than just the fact that they’re well-written. In fact, some pieces, like the Schumann symphonies, have enormous problems, and yet spiritually they can have the same impact as a Beethoven symphony.

BD:   Let me pounce on that word. What are some of the strains that go into making a piece of music ‘great’?

Challender:   It’s that indefinable quality that makes it, that edifies us, and teaches us something about ourselves that we weren’t aware of before, and are not necessarily aware of afterwards. It’s very fleeting. It’s also got something to do with the fact that music, like all the other arts — and like nature, and like mathematics, and a lot of other things in life — approaches a sort of perfection, and this perfection is probably the spiritual side of things. If there is a God, then the God, I presume, is perfect, and all these things that we have — like nature, and the creations of our own lives, such as art and sciences — reach towards that perfection. That’s why they are, or can be, edifying.

BD:   Are there any pieces that achieve this perfection, or come really close to this perfection?

Challender:   Oh yes. Some pieces come very close to that. Some pieces are so close to perfection that it’s breath-taking — like the Beethoven’s 5th symphony, or the Bach B Minor Mass, or his 48 Preludes and Fugues, or the Mozart Jupiter Symphony. It’s one of the reasons that something so deceptively simple as a Mozart melody can just leave you breathless. It’s something other than just the sheer notes, surely. Anybody who has a little bit of information about how to compose a tune can string a series of notes together. But how many of them actually make you weep with happiness?

* * * * *

BD: In your role of selecting music, how do you balance the great works with less great works, and perhaps even mediocre works?
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Challender:   That’s a case of trying to make a great program, such as you do on the air or for the airlines. There is such a thing as a good program, and it may well contain pieces that set other pieces off, or frame them, or give a balance that makes the whole program work in a funny sort of way. Programming is a real art in itself. Not only do you have the restrictions of how long you’ve got, and how many instruments you’ve got, but also the money, and the box office, and any soloists, as well as what the conductor’s good at. When you look at the repertoire in its entirety, it seems vast. When you’re trying to make a program, it suddenly seems incredibly small... at least that’s been my experience.

BD:   Do you have a specific calling to play new works, and specifically new Australian works?

Challender:   Absolutely. That’s absolutely essential. Every performing musician does, otherwise music is going to die, and that would be terrible. It is, at the moment, somnambulant. Fortunately, there’s been a bit of revival in America, or at least it seems that way to us in Australia. You have the minimalists, if I may use that rather unfortunate term.

BD:   They have reluctantly accepted the use of that term. [Laughter]

Challender:   That hasn’t happened in Australia. We can’t fill the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House with John Adams yet, but it’s marvelous to see it happening here in the U.S. It’s wonderful to see immense amounts of moneys lavished on productions of one of his new operas, and of those by others. People actually going and getting excited about it. We have a duty to keep the pot boiling. It’s sometimes very difficult. The orchestra doesn’t want to rehearse it, and the audience doesn’t want to listen to it.

BD:   Why doesn’t the audience want to listen to it?

Challender:   In the ’60s and ’70s, music did lose a certain spiritual element. It probably lost it a little earlier than that, because everybody became so concerned with the technique of writing and composition. As important as that is, it got to the stage where you couldn’t see the forest for the trees any longer. We only seemed to talk about the trees. I remember when I as at school in the ’60s, and we read and studied Perspectives of New Music and all those other magazines that were coming out of the United States, you sort of had to have a mathematics degree to read half of it. I felt, as many others did, totally intimidated by it, even by the analytical writing. Then you put the music on, and it didn’t make any sense on any other level, except than that which was in the magazine. Once I went to a lot of trouble to try to understand a particular comparison, and then the music did mean something on that level. But it never, ever meant something on an emotional or spiritual level, except that it caused vast irritation, if that can be classed as an emotional level. [Laughs]

BD:   Have we lost some of this and gotten back to an emotional level?

Challender:   In the midst of all that, there were people who hadn’t lost it. For example, George Crumb back in ’60s made you sit up and think. It’s very modern music, but it means something. Unfortunately, the reputation of modern music had been made, and it was a bad one, and nobody wanted to listen to it. You’re stuck with a prejudice, and even if you put a great piece of George Crumb into your program, and even if it only lasts five minutes, and even if it’s surrounded by Beethoven, 95 per cent of the audience is not going to listen to it. They’re just going to turn off, and then turn back on when the Beethoven comes. One had to realize that this was just a fact of life. The big problem is breaking through the prejudice, and getting people back to the idea that there are George Crumbs out there, who are doing something really interesting and really rewarding when you get to know it. But as the disintegration was over a long period of time, the healing is also going to be over a long period of time. But it’s starting.

BD:   So you’re optimistic about the future?

Challender:   Absolutely.

* * * * *

BD:   You conduct symphonies, you conduct operas, and you do some recordings. How do you divide your time amongst those various activities?

Challender:   Don’t forget the administration. [Both laugh] I just try and organize things the best I can. Sometimes you have days where you just don’t know how you’re going to fit it all in, and maybe you don’t fit it all in. Then on other days it’s much easier. You just do the best you can. I always try to make sure I’ve got mornings free to study.

BD:   Study old scores, or new scores?

Challender:   Anything. I study everything. If I’m doing something again for the umpteenth time, I would study it. Then, the rest of the day, if I’m not rehearsing, is put aside for administrative meetings and so on. If I’m rehearsing, presumably I’ve already learned the scores, at least for that concert, so I don’t have to do the study bit. Then the meetings come in between the rehearsals. Somehow you manage, but I must say that sometimes you don’t think you’re managing. [Laughter] But somehow it gets done. Certainly, it gets done to the best of one’s ability, one hopes.

BD:   I assume that you’re presented with a lot of new scores to look at. How do you decide which ones you want to play, and which ones you’ll cast off, or pass on?

Challender:   I must confess that about eight years ago, when I started out running a contemporary music ensemble, I tried to be terribly fair. I tried to give everybody a go, and after doing that for three years, I looked at it very carefully. What we achieved out of a lot of commissions was about three scores that were really worthwhile doing again. Now I’m going to go to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and it’s going to be a much more complicated procedure to get money to commission a work for that group.
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BD:   So you’ve really got to do some weeding-out first?

Challender:   You’ve got to make some decisions, and that’s something we decided as a policy to do. We decided that there would be certain people that we believed in and would promote. Carl Vine, whose symphony we’re playing tonight, is one of those, and come what may, we would just have to be less fair. It was simply not possible to be any other way, despite the sense of fair play that is around in Australia a lot.

BD:   But you will keep a certain flexibility?

Challender:   Absolutely. One goes and listens all the time. When I first went to Sydney, there was a feeling that everybody should be given a go. If you ran a contemporary music ensemble, there was so little opportunity to have works played that you should give everybody a go. But when you’re running a symphony orchestra with millions of dollars involved, it just gets to the stage that in the end you have to sit down and make artistic decisions. I have to say, “I believe in X rather than Y, and X is the one that’s going to get a symphony commission.”

BD:   This is what I’m trying to hone in on. What is it that you look for that helps you decide yes, you want this piece, or yes, you want this composer?

Challender:   It is entirely my reaction to the work or the composer, and whether I think it’s terrific or not.

BD:   [Gently pressing the point] What is it that makes it terrific?

Challender:   Well, I suppose, all those things we talked about before. It must be something that grabs me within the first 10 seconds, and doesn’t let me go. It’s not always possible to have works that are as good as those other works that I that mentioned earlier, but they can be pretty good, and even if there are problems with it, if it says something to you that you haven’t heard before, that’s what makes me sit up and take notice. If I haven’t heard that sound before, or I haven’t heard the particular way the phrase goes, or how a rhythmic cell is startling... It’s very hard to explain, but it needs to be something that makes you wake up.

BD:   What advice do you have for composers who want to write orchestral works, or chamber music, or operas today?

Challender:   You must master the technique, just like anything else. You can’t do anything without a technique, and mastering a technique takes a lot of hard work. There’s no way you can learn originality. Either you have it, or you don’t, but you can certainly learn technique. That’s already a lot, and the rest of it is just slog. One of the things that concerns me, in Australia anyway, is that people don’t finish pieces on time. I know this is something that happens in the whole world, and there are very famous examples of it, but sometimes I think that people don’t finish pieces on time because they are waiting for inspiration. This is something that you really have to fight as a composer. There has to be some way that you can make yourself sit down and just work. Then, if it doesn’t come out as well as you hoped, it just doesn’t come out as well as you hoped! There are works by the greatest of composers that were written under similar circumstances that are not as good as the pieces that come before or after. I don’t think there is anything to be ashamed of if you produce a well-wrought piece that doesn’t perhaps quite have the impact of the work that came before, or the work that came after.

BD:   Is it a partly mistaken expectation of the audience that every new piece should be the next masterwork?

Challender:   Oh yes, that’s another problem. It’s partly our fault because we do nothing but play masterpieces in our concerts. Part of the process of breaking down the prejudice is to try to get through to people. Maybe you’re not going to get the next masterpiece, but if you don’t listen to this piece that is less than a masterpiece, and don’t listen to the piece next week that’s less than a masterpiece, then you’re going to miss the one the following week that is a masterpiece, and that’s a tragedy. Once, when asked why I did so much contemporary music, I said jokingly, half-jokingly, “Because I’m terrified of missing the next Mozart.” I meant it, though. I’m terrified of failing to notice the next great genius. One of the great problems of Vienna in the late 18th century was all those musicians who missed him. It’s shocking, isn’t it, that they could have been so blind?

BD:   We think that if Mozart were around, we’d certainly know him, but we don’t. Without naming names, is there perhaps a Mozart in our midst?

Challender:   I don’t think that the sort of person Mozart was, and the sort of music he wrote, can exist in our day. He was a child of his time, and a genius of that stature in our time will be a different sort of personality.

BD:   Do we have geniuses of that stature in our time?

Challender:   [Sighs] You ask the most difficult questions. [Much laughter] Olivier Messiaen came to Australia this year [1988], and everybody expected him not to come. Last year Witold Lutosławski came and said, “Messiaen will not come. He won’t even come to Warsaw.” But he came this year, which is Australia’s Bicentennial year, and we played From Canyons to the Stars, in an excellent performance conducted by Marc Soustrot. It lasts nearly an hour and a half. The audience sat there enthralled for that hour and a half. I was on the edge of my seat. Messiaen has music that’s immediately recognizable, with bird songs and all that rhythmic material which sounds new and different. But if he can do it for an hour a half and still have you on the edge of your seat, you’re talking genius.

BD:   Did the audience stand up and cheer?

Challender:   Yes.

BD:   [With great optimism] Does this mean that next season perhaps you’ll program his Turangalîla-Symphonie?

Challender:   Unfortunately, we did it last year, so we can’t bring it back again so soon. It’s too expensive. [Laughter] But I would, absolutely. It probably was because of the Turangalîla that some of the people may have come to The Canyons to the Stars. These are the things that break down barriers, and the presence of this living legend was a big help. Last year, exactly the same thing happened with Lutosławski, but on a slightly less grandiose scale, because, unlike Messiaen, he wasn’t sent out by the French Department of Foreign Affairs, with all the hullabaloo that went along with that. He came very quietly as our guest, and yet 700-800 people heard him conduct his Third Symphony, and were on their feet cheering at the end. So you want geniuses I’ll give you those two unequivocally. So there are geniuses in our midst, though I wouldn’t like to make too many, or even any, predictions about the younger generation because it does take time for their talent to become apparent.

* * * * *

BD:   What advice do you have for young conductors coming along?

Challender:   [Laughs] Conduct anything!

BD:   Anything at all???

Challender:   Yes, because you have to develop a technique, and the only way you can develop a technique is to conduct, and the only way you can really learn to conduct is to conduct other people. Conducting to records, or for yourself in front of a mirror is fine in getting the beat patterns right, but it’s not going to teach you anything about what it’s like when you’re standing in front of people. If somebody asks you to conduct a modern piano trio because they can’t get it together, do it. People teach you something about clarity of beats, and how a piano or a violin make an attack together because they are so utterly different in the way an attack is made. If the local church wants you to conduct the choir for a piece, you listen to intonation, and correct it. You can just imagine a few of the things that I did along the way. Some of them might seem very menial, and not perhaps this grandiose idea which motivates you in the first place of becoming a great conductor, and leading Brahms and Tchaikovsky and Mahler symphonies with a big orchestra. It’s going to take you a long while to actually get there, so you may as well do other things along the way if they’re going to help you. When people come to me and say, “I want to be a conductor,” I say, “Leave the country. Go to America or to Europe, because in Australia it’s very difficult. You don’t get enough peer pressure. If you’re good in Australia, then you’re one of a couple, and it’s not necessarily good. What’s good is to go to Juilliard and be one of 40.

BD:   But does this not produce too many conductors for the availability of performers?

Challender:   Yes, I suppose it can, and that’s a problem. At the moment, we have a position available in our orchestra for tuba. We advertised overseas and got 173 applications. The same things can be said for almost every instrument, I imagine. There are just too many people in the world. [Laughter] I don’t know what the answer is.

BD:   Are there too many people, or too many tuba players?

Challender:   [Laughs] It’s the same in flute, or clarinet, or trumpet. Surely it’s a wonderful thing if people want to play music, rather than build atomic bombs.

BD:   Should ‘concert music’ be for everyone?

Challender:   Absolutely. If I had my way, I’d have the government subsidize the arts totally. I hope that doesn’t sound too left-wing for the United States, but I absolutely would. I’d have everything, even sports. Anything we humans endeavor to do that approaches that sort of perfection that we were talking about before, needs to be very carefully nurtured.

BD:   Is there a way to approach people who go to football games and get them into the concert hall?

Challender:   We have a very extensive education program we’ve instigated with our orchestra. It’s been very successful, on the level of kids going and having a good time at concerts, but I don’t know if they’re going to start paying for it themselves one day. It’s based on the idea that every kid in the state of New South Wales, of which Sydney is the capital, must be given the opportunity to hear the Sydney Symphony Orchestra once in their high school life. We play real repertoire, so it’s like my first musical experience. I might not be sitting here talking to you today if I had not heard that symphony concert at that moment in my life.

BD:   If you’d been taken to an art gallery, might we now be across the street at the Art Institute viewing your latest painting?

Challender:   I don’t know... I don’t think I have that sort of talent, but there are other talents that I do have which may have been developed instead.

BD:   You might be a bank administrator?

Challender:   [Laughs] No, not that, but I might have been a scientist of some description, or an engineer.

BD:   Is studying a score like a scientific expedition, to probe into it and see what it has?

Challender:   It can be, yes, absolutely. It’s taking it back down to its essential elements. Study of the score is the composition process in reverse. Then you put it back together again. At least that’s the way I feel about it when it’s happening. I just pull it apart, and put it back together again, piece by piece. However, you don’t do it the same way the composer did. That would be impossible.

BD:   It’s not like a machine where you might have a piece left over when it’s all done?

Challender:   Well, you can, actually. [Laughs] I’m doing Die Walküre next year, and it is indisputably a masterpiece, but there is a moment in Act II where Sieglinde makes her vocal entrance, having waked up after being asleep. There is a theme in the violas that Wagner never uses again, and, effective as it is at that moment, I’ve often wondered why it’s there. So that’s sort of a piece that seems to be left over! [Laughs]

* * * * *

BD:   Staying with opera, tell me the joys and sorrows of working with the human voice.

Challender:   Working with the human voice has the world’s greatest joys, and the world’s greatest sorrows. I rather think the human voice is where music began, along with hitting pieces of wood together. When it’s working right not only technically, the human voice is a rather good analogy for what I was talking about before in composition. Most people can sing whether the voice is trained or not, and some voices make you sit up and take notice and some don’t. It’s unfortunate. It’s just the way the dice fall.

BD:   Have there been times where you hear a voice that you just want to grab the person and say, “Get interested in music!”?

Challender:   Yes, except that sometimes when I’ve seen that happen, they’ve lost whatever spark there was. That’s wrong, and they just need to be left alone. One can over-refine something until it finally becomes rather bad for you, like sugar. [Laughs] If you’re not careful, you get rid of everything except the sweetness, and there’s no body left in it at all. There needs to be a bit of fiber as well.

BD:   How much opera are you conducting these days now you’re with the symphony?

Challender:   I conduct a lot less opera simply because the time spent doing all that administrative work, as well as the conducting of the Symphony precludes it. However, I’m also able to pick and choose a bit, so I just do the pieces that I want to do now.

BD:   Tell me a bit about Voss.

Challender:   We did the recording at the end of ’86 and the beginning of ’87.   It was an opera that was premiered at the Adelaide Festival in 1986. Some people liked it and some people didn’t, but the extraordinary thing is that more people liked it than didn’t. For the first time in the history of the Australian Opera, and perhaps even in the history of opera in Australia, we found ourselves with a new opera that was attracting an audience. It was subsequently done in Sydney and the same thing happened. People came, and much to their surprise found it enthralling. Then we took it to Melbourne, and again, the same thing happened. So with the success of all that behind us, we made a video, which is about to be shown in Australia, and we also got sponsorship to make a full-scale recording.

BD:   Is the recording the sound-track of the video?

Challender:   No, it’s not. It’s quite separate, but with exactly the same cast. We all sat down in the studio and did with the Sydney Symphony, simply because that was my orchestra by then, and I wanted to do it with them. Lo and behold, this recording of Voss started to sell in Australia, and it was on the top of the classical best-seller list for several weeks in a row. People just couldn’t believe it. Then it was released in England, and it’s been released in America and Europe as well. So it’s a bit of a success story for us, because nothing like this has ever had this sort of attention or public success.

BD:   Does that please you?

Challender:   Yes, it pleases me enormously. As much as I think it’s fair to say that while there are some weaknesses in the structure of the opera, it has a quality that not only is distinctively Australian, but says something very profound about our country and us that live in it. It’s my feeling that the reason for its success is that people came along thinking, “I don’t know about this, and I don’t know about modern music,” and suddenly they saw themselves and their psyches on stage. One of the great things that has shaped the Australian nation is the fact that we live on the edge of a very empty and very hostile continent. In some ways, you Americans experienced the same thing when you came here from Europe. You explored your country and discovered that it was very fertile. We explored ours and discovered it was very dry. Because of that, there’s a certain affinity between Americans and Australians that began to grow many generations ago, and continues to grow today. The influence of America on our country is quite profound... not just McDonald’s and things like that, but something deeper. We love to read your literature and play your music. For the first time ever, somebody dared to put these ideas on the operatic stage. Obviously, they were there already in the novel. Voss is the story of an explorer who goes out trying to cross Australia, and dies in the attempt. But it’s more than that. It’s an exploration of the mind and the human soul.

BD:   Is it a real person, or a fictionalized figure?

Challender:   He is a fictionalized version of a real explorer of the early part of the 19th century called Leichhardt, who was German. The parallels are there, but he’s entirely a psychologically fictionalized creation of novelist Patrick White. Voss is considered not only to be one of White’s best books, but one of Australia’s best books. It is an extraordinary piece of literature.

BD:   Does the music that has clothed this immense work help to project the story forward?

Challender:   Yes it certainly does. Act II is really terrific. One of the successes of Voss is the fact that it gets better. Richard Meale, the composer, is now working on another opera, and with the experience he has gained having this one done, and done so often, I suppose one shouldn’t say this, but we are all expecting a fantastic one this time. [Laughter]

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BD: I understand you’re coming back to conduct the Chicago Symphony next season.
challender

Challender:   Yes, and I’m looking forward to it very much. In fact, tomorrow I meet with the powers-that-be to discuss what Australian work we’re going to bring.

BD:   That was my next question, of course.

Challender: I can’t answer that question now, but I might be able to answer it at five o’clock tomorrow. [Both laugh]

BD:   It is your burning desire that an Australian work will be on the program?

Challender: Yes, and it’s also their burning desire, which is fabulous. Henry Fogel [president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra] said to me, “You’ll come and conduct, and you must do at least a 15-minute Australian work.” So I’ve been making suggestions and sending tapes, and I’ve got another one with me to take in tomorrow. Maybe we’ll decide then, or in the next few weeks.

BD:   So it will be an existing work rather than a new piece?

Challender:   Oh yes, that’s essential.

BD:   You can take a risk, but not a huge risk?

Challender:   Yes. The risks of first performances, or premiere performances should be done at home.

BD:   Are you a big proponent of second performances?

Challender: Oh absolutely. In Australia we have The 20th Century Orchestra Series, which the Symphony does in conjunction with the Australian Chamber Orchestra. It’s a set of six concerts where they do three and we do three, and it’s nothing but contemporary music.

BD:   In general, it seems fairly easy to get a first performance, but very difficult to get that second performance.

Challender:   That’s what is special about this series. We have a deliberate policy of doing pieces that have been neglected. We’ve revived a number of pieces, as well as giving some world premieres, but we deliberately look at the repertoire and think about what’s been and what needs to be reassessed.

BD:   One last question. Is conducting fun?

Challender:   Yes, it often can be. [Laughs]

BD: Thank you so much for taking time out of your very hectic schedule to speak with me.

Challender:   It’s been a very interesting interview. You ask very tough questions which made me think.

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This conversation was recorded in Chicago on November 1, 1988. Portions were broadcast on WNIB in 1990 and 1992. This transcription was made in 2024, and posted on this website at that time. My thanks to Thomas Liddle for his help in preparing this website presentation.

To see a full list (with links) of interviews which have been transcribed and posted on this website, click here. To read my thoughts on editing these interviews for print, as well as a few other interesting observations, click here.

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Award - winning broadcaster Bruce Duffie was with WNIB, Classical 97 in Chicago from 1975 until its final moment as a classical station in February of 2001. His interviews have also appeared in various magazines and journals since 1980, and he now continues his broadcast series on WNUR-FM, as well as on Contemporary Classical Internet Radio.

You are invited to visit his website for more information about his work, including selected transcripts of other interviews, plus a full list of his guests. He would also like to call your attention to the photos and information about his grandfather, who was a pioneer in the automotive field more than a century ago. You may also send him E-Mail with comments, questions and suggestions.