La Maestra: portrait of Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra | Music Documentary

[Music] i remember when i was 13 14 that i already wanted to be a conductor that i thought how am i gonna be a conductor if i don't look anything like the conductors the conductors are supposed to be german and very old and with white hair and i'm mexican i'm i'm a kid and you know i'm a woman [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i just want to make music with people who want to make music as much as i do who cannot find anything more important than the moment that they're in when they're making music so then i do want to conduct the best orchestras in the world because i want that drive from the gut [Music] drive passion imagination and putting all of an energy in one place [Music] it he's very methodical in rehearsals but really the performances where she's at her best or um is in her element you know she has an animal instinct about performing [Music] it's awful needless to feel good and i'm [Music] to say alondra de la para's career has been very unusual would be an understatement she's a mexican conductor who has taken the world's concert halls by storm born in 1980 she studied in england and the united states and now she's the mother of two children her great dream has taken her on a long journey and it is not over yet by any means her roots are here in mexico but her orchestras and her audiences are to be found all over the world she's already conducted more than 100 orchestras in 20 different countries [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] almost 13 000 kilometers from mexico city the australian metropolis of brisbane its cultural heart is the district of south bank since 2017 alondra de la para has been music director of the queensland symphony orchestra one of nine professional orchestras in the country in brisbane alondra de la parra has taken on not only the artistic leadership as music director she also has management duties a major step in her career [Music] in the 21st century if an orchestra is going to survive and thrive we must be um part of the community very approachable um breaking down old stereotypes of orchestras and conductors and alendra to me represents the music director of the 21st century the music director has a great influence on the concert program the bulk of the music she plays with her orchestras is from the classical european repertoire but this week they're rehearsing works by latin american composers alondra de la parra is passionate about this project but for the orchestra it's uncharted territory i think generally everyone celebrates change it's a really great change she still tackles the huge symphonies we're still doing marla was still doing a lot of um you know mozart beethoven but she's also brought a lot of different fresh repertoire to the orchestra so this symphonic poem was based on a poem by a cuban poet called nicolas and sensei maria the poem is about the ritual of the aboriginals of cuba afro-cuban indians and it's about how to kill a snake and the snake of course is the base clarinet and if you read the words to the poem every word and every phonetical idea is placed into the music so all those actors relate to when you read the poem how it would sound okay 23. uh [Music] [Music] i always want to promote the music of the americas and that's why this concert is so important because it's probably the first time that this music is played in australia and i believe this repertory deserves a place in every orchestra's core repertoire and i'm gonna of course do that with my orchestra those chords in this in the strings uh after 36 is basically it's not a bow you you have imagine you have a sword and you're a mayan going behind some enemy and just stabbing okay 36. [Music] this kind of music has a very very different kind of rhythmic concept to uh sort of 19th century european music for example the rhythmic structures or cycles of a strauss tone poem are very very different comes from here so it shouldn't never sound like anything latin there's nothing latin it's cavemen so it's more like pop you know no no no you know that kind of thing [Music] [Music] it's easy for any foreigner to fall into cliches about our music and think oh mexican latin american music is all about moving your hips and being you know sexy and it's not at all [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] alondra de la para spends around three months every year in australia brisbane has become something like her second home she has a lot of meetings and appointments but this saturday she's taking time out with her son luciano they're visiting the popular davies park market [Music] this city really combines the things i like the most of my favorite cities like i love berlin because of the markets and buying healthy food and all that it has the beauty of the cities that are on the beach where there's lots of nature and the weather is beautiful there's no traffic it's really child friendly i love that it's really hard to get here it's really far away but once you're here it's quite quite a paradise my dream is to just live in one place and not have to move to have a routine to not have to pack i hate packing because i have to do it so often that that it's so tiring um so i would love to just stay in one city but but i can't right now because my career is in europe my home and my family is in mexico and my job is here in australia [Music] me i'm so sweet because yesterday we were drawing we were drawing instruments and he was saying i want a pig that plays violin he goes [Music] more than eight million people live in the mexican capital this is also alondra de la parra's hometown and mexican culture has left a deep impression on her her family and many of her friends live here she visits her father as often as she can [Music] uh with beans cream foreign is um she has a fantastic word why and that changed everything that put you in different world because you cannot say oh alondra we have to do this why and that that why was very interesting i didn't realize that was this particular porque why that really make her the girl she is now alondra was born in new york city in 1980 but grew up in mexico her father is a writer her mother a teacher her parents divorced while she was still small she has a brother who's a rock musician and a sister who works as a linguist well alondra was very enthusiastic she was always willing to give a smile a giggle she's a director a conductor you say and it's hard to be a mother of a conductor you know why because i enjoy all what she does but sometimes i say wait a minute i am your mother wait a minute because it's too much too much literature [Music] she was very demanding but in a very kind way and she would ask to be taken to the theater we would take her to concerts she would be interested in attending partings and social gatherings but she had a very good hand to ask for things [Music] we did fight a lot we always with love always with with good attitude but yeah it wasn't that easy you know it doesn't matter you have a sister that she's a conductor since she was born so she did exactly what to do what not to do who to play who not to play [Music] back in the days when she was seven or eight i remember uh going to my soccer practice and then go to my sister's piano lessons to pick her up and i was always listening and listening to her every day you know every day and every day and i say oh why is she playing that awful song that is not even a song and she's she's getting getting the notes wrong you know and i was like hey you're getting the nose wrong i'm like yeah i'm trying you're gonna play [Music] this is my uh this is what um a business meeting in the living room these are my programs agent tanya door has arrived from germany together they go through the calendar for the year after next [Music] in the classical music world it is common to plan programs and concerts very far into the future this program should be completely different than your program has come up for money premium because here they will also present one concert in berlin at concertos so we have it has to be something completely different especially because it's two yeah but commission opera is full of orchestra right yes yeah even as a small child alondra de la parra was excited about music she learned piano then cello from early on she seemed destined for a career in music this is this is my brother giving me flowers in one of my first piano recitals probably the first i mean i was there maybe seven or eight seven eight maybe and he was five do you remember what you played yes i played rondo a la tourka i played uh the entertainer and i loved it uh yeah a lot maybe that was my first reference huge favorite and the beautiful thing about that time was that my first piano teacher amparo alcaraz she's a wonderful lady she is and she was more like a grandmother to me that was at the time where my parents were splitting up so yes i would play the piano but i have the lesson i would just tell her how i was feeling i would cry it was more like a therapy it sort of felt like yeah my parents can't split up they can go their ways but what i can have is music and that will never leave me and so that i sort of grabbed onto to music then yeah i spent so many years with it i gave up so much for it you know no vacations no weekends just attached to a piano everywhere where i would go is there a piano and always struggling and and also this feeling of this insecurity i had uh it was the most frightening thing i can imagine that i've lived is having to walk on stage as a solo concert pianist is just and then as a conductor i never felt that not from day one and you can see it in some of the videos you know i didn't know how to move and i was all awkward and i didn't have any technique but i was fine there it was there was some sense of yeah i'm fine i can do this um that i never got to the piano alondra went to a boarding school in england and it was there that she began to conduct later she studied in the united states at the manhattan school of music her teachers both challenged and promoted her among them the american conductors kenneth kiesler and marin alsup in 2003 she was chosen for a workshop in new york with the great german conductor court mazua [Music] and there was this list i remember going up to the boards at manhattan school of music and then seeing the 10 people here 12 he had picked and i seen my names ah wow and i remember telling some of my my friends he he picked me and then some people saying oh he picked you really yes well maybe you should consider withdrawing because you know he's really really really mean to his students and someone like you who hasn't conducted much you know will be basically eaten up and you won't survive do you fear to be not enough men lie no no come on keep yourself going you have a position i hope your heart doesn't stand still come on it's much better it's much better once more somebody taught you to paint don't paint yeah years later i said okay you've taught me for many years now tell me what i need to work on and i thought he was going to say well the schumann this and the mozart and the mendelssohn and he said no no just one thing be strong my friend be strong that's it but give me be strong just be strong and every time every day almost i hear be strong the coordination between your breathing and the beating you are painting you're making it [Music] come on let's breathe together good now no it's still not good [Music] not because of my beard because of my natural he was really generous and wonderful with me and that really propelled everything because it was the students who were playing in that orchestra who then became poa they were the same players that became my orchestra a year later and it was masur's endorsement that really helped help me get their their respect because otherwise they would have thought oh she's a pianist why would we listen to her but oh my sour thinks she's worth a while so you know so it was really huge help the young conductor's career quickly gathered speed in 2004 she founded a mexican-american symphony orchestra in new york which later became known as the philharmonic orchestra of the americas alondra de la para is both its conductor and its business manager [Music] [Applause] [Music] germany is another important waypoint on alondra de la parra's journey she's conducted many of the country's major orchestras such as the bamberga symphonica one of the country's top ensembles but her first encounter with the orchestra led to disappointment [Music] ten years ago i was here already once as a competitor in the mahler conducting competition and i remember entering this hall and listening to the orchestra for the first time and how impressed i was and thinking wow that's really the level of orchestra that i would love to get to conduct i tried my best but actually didn't make it past the very first round it was disappointing of course and i remember thinking i really wish that somehow the world goes around so that i can get one day at the opportunity to conduct this orchestra bravo clarinet and plank is there bravo horn bravo you have such a huge program and you're still playing so beautifully with all that other things you have to do really my respects really wonderful wonderful okay just a few things i'm not going to torture you to death but there are a few things [Music] germany has been the place where i conducted the most even more than in my own country even more than in the united states where i was formed and started conducting most of the major composers came from here that's why i'm fascinated and that's why i'm i'm doing my little attempts to learn german as well because i i find that the language is so connected to the music four days sex for days um because they're having to really scream and we just want to be under them um uh straight line we want the feeling of the waltz come away [Music] my job is to come in with a very clear plan with an idea about every single note every single phrase so i come with that but i'm flexible because there might be better plans coming from them and then i'm totally adaptable to changing them but what's not allowed is to come out without a plan i have to as a leader always propose a plan as a matter of fact the way i think about this is [Music] in a two so you're an offbit of a two yeah yeah one more thing from the beginning very happy with the um when he played yes yes in the beginning you mean yeah yeah no i think we should you know because that's why i was suggesting you and yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] da you really want to fall you really want to for your ballerina one excuse i'm probably [Music] that's it [Music] lunch break but alondra de la para doesn't have time to eat she's doing a radio interview you know already very early that you wanted to become a conductor what were the reasons for that i was a very curious child and very excited and in love with music and i i would go to concerts with my parents and always just yearn for being on stage with the musicians and being part of that magic [Music] has been successful all over the world but mainly outside her home country she's often invited to take part in festivals and give guest performances in mexico but so far she's not enjoyed major success there [Music] she still have critics or criticism in mexico which is sad because [Music] when you have a great talent you have to use all the opportunities you have to keep it in your country and keep it in your in your concert halls and with your young musicians and and and we have lost alondra first of all she is a woman the second is she is young and beautiful the third is she is an entrepreneur in the autistic world she is an artist in the entrepreneurial world and finally she did not follow what in the mexican musical world is the um normal procedure she did not study here she did not study with the old teachers at the uh national conservatory and she went abroad so i think all these elements um have not turned out in her favor so far but her talent is so great that it will overcome all of these elements when i was starting the fact that i'm a woman definitely was not something that people liked nobody said it i have no proof to show you exactly but i could feel how it was happening and for many years i always in interviews when people ask me as a woman have you had any trouble have you been facing difficulty say absolutely not it's been absolutely fine because i so wanted to believe that i so wanted to believe that everything was fine and and i didn't want to pay any attention or bring any attention to the issue or say it in front of a camera or or i didn't want the interview to be about that and i still don't i really don't like the subject but it would be absolutely um untrue to say no it hasn't been an issue yes of course it has absolutely [Music] with two children to look after combining job and family is often a challenge [Music] the orchestras are expecting you to fly in there and conduct for a week and get out of there yes okay and then you have music directorships you can be the music director of the place but all the rules and the way that it works is absolutely not even close to considering that you may be a mother [Music] what happened is uh is typical in in her life that she opens many fronts at the same time she has some problems here and she come up with another problem to resolve and then another problem to resume and then in the end she has 10 to resolve but honestly she can handle that and i am one push i said what you intuition are a lot of what really think that may happen and they have having too many problems they have that i've had two babies another night they have to go to australia so many fronts open but after she say that she i know that she's going to come around that's for sure what drives her is passion she loves what she does and she is willing to go places with it and she's willing to fight whoever gets in her way and she's willing to go as far and as deep as she as she can regardless of any anything and everything she will get where she wants and that's determination and i admire a lot about her liquids papa that's the stuff [Music] so [Music] it's saturday evening at the queensland performing arts center the musicians of the queensland symphony orchestra and alondra de la parra have thrilled the australian audience with symphonic music from mexico [Applause] hi how are you that was fantastic thank you very much lovely to have some of your music yes somewhere the orchestra was amazing yeah yeah this guy i want you to sponsor us thank you thank you that was amazing i'm sorry that was so much fun that was just a lot of fun okay thank you for bringing great joy to our city the queensland symphony orchestra is proud of its more than 70-year history but classical music faces intense competition for audiences and the budgets are small the orchestra's management is seeking strategies for the future and here too alondra de la parra is setting the pace this is not enough to just come and play great music and go you need to be aware of who your audience is and take care of it and grow it the what is great classical music and symphonic music is amazing this is that people don't know that it's for them the music center composer and wrestling soloist recording storing that's what we just spoke about new audience how do we reach new audiences then community engagement in the mornings in the little studio i love for us to have baby mommy classes there are 30 minutes and it's you need one teaching artist one teacher and some instruments and it's fun and there's a huge market for that and so we have the studio it's empty and then the point is yes it'll be great for the kids it'll be great for the mothers we'll make money hopefully from it but the biggest thing is audience building [Music] okay [Music] i just came back from australia to mexico i was there for two weeks and i had a concert and a talk i got home barely got over the jet lag and then i came to bremen and hamburg for a week i'm leaving in a couple days back to mexico two three weeks later i'm back in cologne and then i'm back in mexico and then i go back to australia and then et cetera et cetera andre de la parra is on the way to a concert in hamburg with the musicians of the deutsche kamma bremen it's the second time she's worked together with this top german ensemble which is run by the musicians themselves yeah my son still loves the orchestra because he's so so young he thinks it's the coolest thing so whenever i tell him you want to go to the playground or to the orchestra really of course he's just absolutely he wants to watch on on dvd uh uh-huh and you know cliver and stuff like that it's really funny and he says mama mama when he sees the conductor like no that's not mama but okay oh sweet but it's really sweet [Music] their destination is the elb philharmonie in hamburg perhaps the world's most spectacular concert hall [Music] nice nice yeah nice nice weather yeah it's amazing yeah it's really really massive wow i never expected it to be so big and so high stops from there yeah and what's on there what's all this office it is a giant venue constructed on top of an old dockside warehouse the evening concert is sold out like all the concerts since the alb philharmonie opened wow now i'm going to move here wow i don't think i've ever had a dressing room this beautiful look at this now everybody's going to think that that's what my life is like and it's not this is the most beautiful uh dressing room i've ever had wow and view and the piano and wow they're organized okay it's like the future feels like you're in another dimension yes how does it sound good yes this piano is very beautiful yes but the only thing in the basement more basically yeah yes it's beautiful we know that already it keeps you a little bit more i'm busy everything up up at the dynamic thank you thank you very much okay they run the orchestra and they commit to their music making the level of preparation before the rehearsal is really high everybody comes not only perfectly able to play every note but also with a real concept as if they were going to lead the rehearsals everyone every single person so when when you come in as a conductor and you start shaping things up you have in front you know 30 collaborators who really have ideas have insight into the music and care so much [Music] she is my [Music] it's all for the audience and for the experience between everyone who's involved people go to concerts to have a peaceful moment of introspection or to think or just to listen for different reasons but what is true is that they're silent sitting and listening to something that is so beautiful and when it's done with care love passion it connects and hopefully that makes them dream of what i don't know but it's nice to think that that there's 2 000 people in one place and let's say half of them are having great dreams or thinking about their lives or what they want to do or remembering someone or some moment through the music it's really nice [Music] [Applause] when i think of myself as a kid having these dreams of being a professional musician conducting [Music] and then i find myself on stage and the orchestras that i get to work with i think of that girl you know i i just want to cry because it's so huge it just moved me so much that if that girl got to see or actually stand there she wouldn't be able to handle it because she would think this is way more than i ever dreamt way more than i ever thought i deserved and would be completely disarmed that girl is still here but somehow i've learned to handle it you know so it really does kind of break my heart to think that i never thought i could do it [Music] do i have the career i dreamt of no i haven't had the career that i want and i'm always dreaming of more [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: DW Classical Music

Views: 223,302

Keywords: DW, Deutsche Welle, DW Classical Music, alondra de la parra, mexican conductor, alondra de la parra danzon 2, Kurt Masur, alberto ginastera variaciones concertantes, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, brisbane australia, manhattan school of music, alondra de la parra silvestre revueltas, alondra de la parra tchaikovsky, musica maestra alondra de la parra, musica maestra, la noche de los mayas revueltas, alondra de la parra la noche de los mayas, elbphilharmonie hamburg

Id: XWQree1vqBA

Length: 52min 0sec (3120 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 10 2022