How do you listen to music?
These days I mostly listen on Spotify and sometimes CDs in the car. I listened to vinyl when I was very young, but now we don’t even have a record player.
What was the last piece of music you bought?
Charpentier’s opera Médée – I was studying it (for the Swiss premiere at Theater Basel) – it was the version with Bill Christie and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing the main part.
What’s your musical guilty pleasure?
Probably listening to a lot of Ella Fitzgerald recordings - I like anything she did! Maybe the Cole Porter songs too, which I love.
If you found yourself with six months free to learn a new instrument, what would you choose?
I studied piano but I always wanted to play the cello. I like deep instruments first of all, and the cello sings the best of all the lower-voice instruments.
Is applauding between movements acceptable?
Yes, definitely. Of course it’s nice when you don’t get interrupted between movements, but if people are enthusiastic and want to reward the musicians by applauding, it’s sweet. It doesn’t disturb me and I think it shouldn’t be considered bad. It’s lovely if people have never heard a symphony and they really love it enough to clap after a movement – why make them stressed by the fact that you’re not supposed to and it’s not what we do?
What single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?
I find the format of the classical concert perfectly good and I don’t know why we would want to improve it. Maybe a better selection of white wine in the interval!
What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?
Hearing pianist Krystian Zimerman play Brahms’s first piano concerto at the Baden-Baden Easter Festival in 2013 with the Berliner Philharmoniker and my husband (the conductor, Simon Rattle) is one of the strongest experiences for me of the last 10 years.
What was the first ever record you bought?
It was a record of Carmen – the moment the border line opened in 1989, when we had the Velvet Revolution, I went to Vienna immediately and bought a recording with Karajan and Leontyne Price singing. I remember that very well.
Do you enjoy musicals? Do you have a favourite?
I haven’t seen enough to have a favourite but recently I saw The Lion King on Broadway with the children, which was really cute. It was well done and well sung.
How many recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies do you own? Do you have a favourite?
I have two copies of my own (though of course at home we have at least 10!). I love the one of my husband conducting the Vienna Philharmonic but also the version from John Eliot Gardiner and his period instrument orchestra - the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique: definitely one of them would be my favourite.
Which conductor of yester-year do you most wish you could have worked with?
Carlos Kleiber. I just think he is a complete masterpiece on his own. Anything he did I always admired and enjoyed so much.
Which non-classical musician would you love to work with?
I don’t really believe in combining classical musicians with non-classical so I don’t think this would be something I would do in public, but for pleasure, maybe I would! I really love the Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, so perhaps something with him.
Imagine you’re a festival director here in London with unlimited resources. What would you programme – or commission – for your opening event?
I would probably do two things: 1) An opera by Rameau, because I love them and they are so rarely done and deserve more attention; 2) Or, as a Czech person, I would maybe programme some of the Martinů operas, perhaps Julietta or The Greek Passion.
What do you sing in the shower?
Nothing! I am so happy when I can have a shower and I don’t have to sing!
Magdalena Kozená performs with the Berlin Philharmonic in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at the Royal Festival Hall on 14 and 15 February. The London Residency (10-15 Feb, Barbican & Southbank Centre) is broadcast on Radio 3 and BBC Four.
