Because this is Paul’s first collaboration with Teatro Mistral, I thought it might be interesting to ask him a few questions
about his work, how he came to conducting after his initial work as a pianist and what brought him to the work he
does now.
To find out more about Paul Schrage, please read on…..
- What keeps you inspired as a performing pianist/conductor/artist?
That’s an interesting question, because of the adjective “performing”. What keeps me inspired as a pianist/conductor/artist is the music, plain and simple. Through this wonderful music we can experience the fullness of life over and over. Some of life’s most important moments: falling in love, welcoming a child, experiencing loss or war, and even our own deaths, we experience these only a small handful of times in our lives, if at all. But through this music we can experience the fullness of life as often as we wish.
Now, what inspires me as a performing artist? I could easily just study scores and practice in the comfort of my home. To me the performance focuses the mind. The performance helps answer the question: what do I think is the ultimate expression of this work, and how it reflects on our lives? By offering our work to an audience, I believe we artists push ourselves to be our best. Nothing helps creativity like a deadline.
- You began your musical life as a pianist, what drew you to conducting?
It started with a girl. I had been living in California for a little over a year and was seeing somebody. We were madly in love, but had a fight and broke up, and I was feeling pretty down. Summer was coming up, and as a college faculty member I had a good chunk of time off. I decided I wanted to get out of town for a while and mend my broken heart, so going to a music festival sounded like a good idea. I had taken a few conducting classes in conservatory, although I never took it very seriously – I was determined to be a pianist. I decided to go to a festival as a conductor, also not take it very seriously, and mostly just hang out with musicians.
I had heard of George Hurst, and knew he taught at a summer festival in Canford, England. So I sent my pianist resume and asked if I could come as a conductor, and they said yes. George is very much a conducting legend, especially in England. He studied with Pierre Monteaux and had been chief conductor of the BBC Northern Orchestra. He taught part time at the Royal Academy of Music and Canford, and every English conductor, big name and otherwise, had to go through George at some point. I thought it would be really cool to hang with him for a few weeks, when I wasn’t scouting out pubs in the area.
Well, by the third or fourth day of the festival I had fallen in love again, this time with George’s conducting and musicianship. I was completely in awe of his ability to control the orchestra with the utmost sublimity and nuance. I actually started to take conducting seriously. I went back the next year, determined to gain as much from George as I could.
At this point I still wasn’t contemplating a full time career as a conductor – the piano and making the sound myself was still too important to me. But I desperately wanted to understand how George did what he did. However, continuing to fly to England every year wasn’t possible on my lowly college salary. At that point somebody invited me to a concert conducted by George Cleve, who I didn’t yet know. But George Cleve also studied with Pierre Monteaux, and had the same technique that George Hurst had. Now I had a local conductor to gain this knowledge from. I convinced George Cleve to give me lessons, and I studied with him until his death.
So after a couple trips to England, and then years of working with George Cleve, I slowly accepted the idea that I didn’t have to always make the sound. I haven’t completely stepped away from the piano, and still perform on piano at least a dozen times a year – usually chamber music or concerti. It took a long time, but now I say I’m a conductor & pianist, not pianist & conductor.
- What is it about conducting Opera that appeals to you?
I’m drawn to opera for a few reasons. First, the challenge of it appeals to me very much. The conductor is the link between the singers and the orchestra, who can’t see each other and possibly can’t hear each other very well. Singers’ voices change if they’re tired or sick, or a different singer may be singing a role on any given night. So the conductor needs to be absolutely on top of everything going on and guide the performance, which may be quite different from night to night. There’s no “this is how we do it” in opera like there is in orchestral performance. That challenge appeals to me very much.
Another thing I like about opera is the amount of time we get to work on a production. In the orchestral world, when conducting a professional orchestra, I’m lucky to have four rehearsals. Three rehearsals is the norm these days, and frequently we do concerts on two or even just one rehearsal. That always feels like a sprint to me. But in the opera world I get to work on a production for several weeks, then usually have more than one weekend of performances. It’s much more satisfying to me. I also get to work with singers, directors, and designers who have thought about the work as much as I have. It’s much more collaborative than what a conductor experiences in the orchestral world.