The Lebrecht Interview

Sir Clive Gillinson began his musical life as a cellist, holding positions in the Philharmonia Orchestra and the London Symphony Orchestra. When that orchestra got into financial difficulties in the 1980s he was asked to become Managing Director. He held the position for twenty years, turning around the fortunes of the orchestra and establishing relationships with some of the leading conductors like Michael Tilson Thomas, Mstislav Rostropovich and Sir Colin Davis. He also helped plan some of the most innovative and succesful concert series in London musical life, developed the orchestra's education department and established LSO St Luke's in a previously derelict church. Gillinson was also behind of the launch of the LSO's own CD label.

In 2005 he became Chief Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall in New York one of the leading concert venues in the world. It actually consists of three halls and presents hundreds of events every year. Clive Gillinson talks to Norman Lebrecht about his life and career, the challenges he's faced in his various orchestral roles and the differences between working in the arts in the UK and America.

Producer Tony Cheevers.

Norman Lebrecht talks to the American born pianist Stephen Kovacevich in the year of his 70th birthday.

Originally from Los Angeles, Kovacevich's father was Croatian and his mother American. After studying with the Russian pianist Lev Schorr he won a scholarship which brought him to London where he met and studied with Dame Myra Hess. She helped him develop the sound he made at the keyboard. In 1961 he hired the Wigmore Hall and made an acclaimed debut in music by Berg, Bach and Beethoven: the Diabelli Variations. This was the real start of his career in public which continues to this day.

His recordings date back to the 1960s when he made acclaimed concerto recordings of the Beethoven and Bartok Concertos with Colin Davis and of Beethoven Cello Sonatas with Jacqueline Du Pre, both artists he admires greatly. More recently his latest recording of the Diabelli Variations has garnered praise.

He has mainly confined himself to the great Classical pianist composers, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms with occasional forays into the twentieth century though he's never played the music of Rachmaninov in public, the pianist he most admires.

Throughout his playing life Kovacevich has suffered badly from nerves and he talks frankly about this and the way his more recent conducting career has helped him to deal with them.

Producer Tony Cheevers.

Norman Lebrecht meets the acclaimed American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. The sixth child of an Irish Catholic family in Prairie Village, Kansas, she married young and was almost thirty before anyone was prepared to back her talent. In the decade since then, she has taken on mezzo roles in Rossini and Handel with a wide-eyed zest that audiences find irresistible, and an openness that appears to be innate. The very model of a 21st-century communicator, Joyce DiDonato writes a chatty blog and decorates it with photographs that she snaps wherever she goes. She tells Norman Lebrecht about her early life in Kansas, her studies in Philadelphia and Houston, and how she bounced back from a string of rejections to become one of the world's great operatic stars.

Sir Roger Norrington has been one of the major movers and shakers on the classical music scene for nearly half a century. He founded the Schutz Choir and the London Classical Players, and was Music Director of Kent Opera for 15 years before taking his place on the podium with some of the great orchestras of Europe and America. The son of an Oxford Vice-Chancellor, Norrington was put to work in academic publishing before the musical imperative took over. His approach differed from other historically informed leaders, concentrating less on old instruments and more on texture of sound. He has outlasted many of his noisier contemporaries, a fact more remarkable since he was told two decades ago that he'd developed a brain tumour and had only months to live. Norrington talks to Norman Lebrecht about his early years growing up in Oxford and Canada, how he made the decision to become a musician, and how he battled ill health to come through fighting.

Simone Young is an Australian conductor whose career has centred around the opera world and conducting the great Austro-German symphonic works. She appeared as a judge in the BBC TV series Maestro and has conducted here occasionally. She is currently Music Director of the Hamburg opera but her career began in her native country where she learnt the basics of her craft under a variety of mentors including Richard Bonynge and Stuart Challender at Opera Australia. Taking their advice she went to Europe and became assistant to a number of conductors including Daniel Barenboim whom she worked with on Wagner at Bayreuth. She later became the first woman to conduct both at the Vienna State Opera and the Paris Opera. She was Music Director at Australian Opera in the early 2000s but left after a dispute over funding and artistic standards. Hamburg followed where she will remain in her post until 2015.

Norman Lebrecht talks to the American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, tracing her career from precocious Shirley Temple sound-alike, to pirate recordings of pop songs in the 1950s, to dubbing the title role in the movie of the Oscar Hammerstein musical Carmen Jones, and finally the breakthrough to the major mezzo Bel Canto roles of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti for which she was justly famed. She also talks about her experience of early masterclasses with the veteran singer Lotte Lehmann and how the sometimes unhappy experience of that has influenced her approach to helping young singers and teaching masterclasses in her retirement. She discusses her relationship with other musicians such as Stravinsky, Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge. In her frank and direct manner she also reveals to Norman Lebrecht the difficulties she had with her family when she married the black conductor Henry Lewis.

In the first of this year's Lebrecht Interviews, Norman meets the Italian conductor Riccardo Chailly. For more than 30 years, Chailly has been one of Europe's most important conductors. The son of a well-known Italian composer and music administrator, his career has taken him from the opera house in Bologna to the Radio Symphony Orchestra in Berlin, the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, and most recently the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig. Aged 57, Chailly specialises in the masterpieces of the symphonic repertoire and the summits of Italian opera. Yet some would say the Chailly story begs more questions than it answers. Although fluent in English, he's never held a major post in Britain or America; his moves have often been jagged and contentious, at odds with his calm and smiling persona. He talks to Norman about working with the likes of Pavarotti, Abbado and Karajan, his decision to leave Amsterdam (the first conductor ever to walk away from the Concertgebouw), the death of his father, and the possibility of a future post with a major American orchestra.