Following his regular appearances at the annual Salzburg Festival - which have included productions of Saint François d'Assise, Doktor Faust and the world première of Kaija Saariaho's rapt Medieval love story, L'Amour de Loin, all of which have been at the invitation of the then Festival Director, Gerard Mortier - Nagano took the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin to Salzburg for its first full opera production in 2002: Zemlinsky's final, uncompleted opera Der König Kandaules, completed by Anthony Beaumont.  This was at the request of the new Festival Director, composer Peter Ruzicka and opened a recurring theme in future festivals about 'Exile.'

It was very, very well received.  It was described by much of the press as the high-point of the festival this year.

It was a big responsibility for us because Dr Peter Ruzicka was doing his first season there after a very successful, although controversial, era with Gerard Mortier (a controversial yet somehow very successful next chapter, following on from Herbert von Karajan).  So the responsibility that Peter Ruzicka had - as you can imagine - was a very heavy load to carry.  He wanted to launch a new series - to somehow address the exile questions that Austria has as a part of its history, not only the Anschluss, but also the forced exile of many composers, some of whom were considered the elite or certainly who held very, very prestigious positions.  Alexander Zemlinsky was included in that group.  He was revered not only as a composer but also as a professor, as a music director of a theatre house and as a conductor. Dr Ruzicka's idea was to set up an important series featuring these exiled composers, to review their music within the context of Salzburg which, of course, had its own controversial past with Nazi Germany.  It was quite a risky thing to do or, at the very least, certainly provocative.

The responsibility to launch this series was given to the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin and it made the occasion special.  It was the first time the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin had done a residency in Salzburg, the first time they had played opera there and we were also given the honour of performing in one of the matinee concerts (we chose Mozart).  We were all aware how important it was to launch this series successfully, at least musically.  When one does something for reasons other than the aesthetic quality of the work, then it opens the door to quite severe questioning and criticism.  You can always debate what role politics have in shaping peoples lives and therefore their careers, but if the politics take a higher priority than the actual quality of the work they've produced then it becomes really quite a different matter.

I have been an admirer of Zemlinsky's for quite some time - not all of his music, but certainly some of it I find more than fascinating; I find it excellent composition.  He died quite young and so there are questions that remain whether he was really able to reach his potential.  Certainly he is a figure of the 20th century that had such important ties to the 1800s as well as to opening the doorway to the 1900s. He was an important figure. 

The opera Der König Kandaules was even more problematic, in that Zemlinsky died before he was able to finish it, and he died in exile, in America.  I'm an American, of course, and am interested in the issues of being an exile, having to deal with the psychological pressure of, overnight, losing your prestige and monetary security and being reduced in status to [being] a virtual no-one.  That is the other side about immigration into the USA that often what happens when you come, as he did, in extreme conditions.  Zemlinsky had the added burden of being a generation older than Schönberg (his brother-in-law), Martinu, Bartók - his music had long since been considered 'out of vogue'; and in America if you're 'out-of-vogue' you've committed a sin!

It was a very complicated but interesting perspective for me as an American living in Germany to reflect upon, especially with my own family history.  My parents and family were put into concentration camps in the Second World War in America, as American citizens.  Having to deal with that, the darker side of the American past was one aspect.

Also we had to deal with the fact that Der König Kandaules was completed by Anthony Beaumont, who is British, and therefore the score was not really Zemlinsky's.  The piano vocal score was virtually complete, parts of that piano score were short scored and there were a few sketches of orchestration.  So to prepare for the opera meant that one had to know very well not only Zemlinsky, but also the various phases and periods that he went through in this composition.  Fortunately, the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester was one of the leading orchestras of the big Zemlinsky explosion during the 70s and 80s, and they recorded virtually the entire Zemlinsky canon, so it is part of their repertoire.  Of course, they had not played Der König Kandaules before, because it didn't exist.

All in all, it added up to what I felt was a very interesting team with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin's history; my own history, with Zemlinsky himself.  To complement the opera in our symphony concert, I wanted to have a dramaturgy that made sense.  We chose two pieces that were also unfinished - Mozart's Requiem and Schönberg's Die Jakobsleiter (Jacob's Ladder).  We played the Requiem up to the first eight bars of the Lacrimosa (the last bars Mozart completed) and then we began Die Jakobsleiter after a pause (to rearrange the stage), stopping it when Schönberg stopped composing.

So the experience was a very important one for the orchestra on many levels. Artistically, they all unanimously agreed what an inspiring experience it was and how much they grew as an ensemble.  On the other hand they were able to display their unique qualities, their extraordinary sound as an orchestra; their presence as an ensemble and the chance to give the proper kind of aesthetic competition to the other orchestras who were there at the time, in the healthiest sense of the word.  It was an important time, and we were very, very happy that we were able to at least help in making Dr Ruzicka's first season successful.

Nagano took the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin back to Salzburg in 2005 to close the 'exile' theme with a staging of Franz Schreker's Der Gezeichneten (The Stigmatised Ones) which was originally commissioned by Zemlinsky.  In 2003 Nagano returned to Salzburg himself for Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffman with the Vienna Philharmonic.