Inside the golden hall of the Musikverein in Austria’s capital, the harmonious sound of Vienna’s symphonies and concertos has been fine-tuned over centuries. A world-renowned institution founded in 1870, it’s home to the finest classical musicians of each generation – learning from pioneers who came before them, passing on the expertise of tradition and craft. Twenty-year-old Marc-André Teruel is one of Vienna’s most promising double bassists of recent years; having made his solo debut on stage at the Musikverein, he’s since established himself as a formidable soloist – he was also the first recipient of the new ICMA Classeek Award. Esteemed double bassist Michael Bladerer is one of today’s most respected and prolific classical musicians, performing at the heart of the Vienna Philharmonic for two decades, alongside residencies at the Vienna State Opera and Komische Oper Berlin. Mentor and protégé – Bladerer and Teruel are pioneering talents pushing the boundaries of tradition. 

Marc-André Teruel: Do you know the story of how I got into music? 
Michael Bladerer: Your mama is a pianist? 

MAT: Yes, that was my introduction. My mother is a concert pianist in Vienna. 
MB: I knew your mother before you were born because she lived in my student halls. When you appeared and I saw your mother I thought, “I think I know her.” [both laugh]

MAT: It’s a small world. I was kind of born into this world, she played many concerts when I was younger and there was always music in our home, she would practice for hours and hours. She took me everywhere, so when she travelled I was always with her, I got to meet all the people and hear many concerts. My favourite place to play with my toys as a kid was under the piano because I was very close to my mum for many hours and the piano is such a big majestic instrument. I could fit so easily underneath, it felt like having a giant roof over me. You have all these vibrations of sound I grew up with too. I knew very early on I had to create music, it felt very natural but interestingly it was never the piano for me. 
MB: That is interesting. 

MAT: It had to be a string instrument – the feeling of having the bow touching the strings felt like breathing to me. I started the violin at the university in Vienna but I remember the teacher always had to lure me in with chocolate because I was always hiding under the piano. [laughs] I always complained [the violin] was too small, I had too much strength. A year later we figured the cello would be a better fit for me. I was much happier with it, so I played the cello for five years until I was ten. Then I had an accident where I broke both of my arms at the same time and I couldn’t practice any more. I became very famous in my school for that accident because the helicopter had to land and take me to hospital, everyone could sign [my cast] and I was even on TV.

Although, I couldn’t practice for two months because of my broken arms and I remember this was a very interesting time because I think every child at one point needs to find themselves before going into their teenage years, and I wanted to play electric guitar. I had this vision of a red guitar with flames on it. I talked about this at a family dinner in France and my uncle who is a jazz pianist told me, “Maybe you could pick up the double bass.” His idea was I could take up some of the cello technique I had but still play electric bass if I wanted to be cool. He told me you can literally do anything with the double bass, you can do jazz, you can do pop, classical, orchestra, there is nothing you can’t do. That’s how he lured me into it. The first lesson I had was beautiful because I found the love I had for the cello again, only bigger. Now looking back, I’m someone who believes a lot in destiny and that things happen for a reason, and I think this accident was what led me to choose a double bass. Otherwise I would have never discovered it, maybe I’d have quit music… 
MB: Or become a famous cello player?

“The feeling of having the bow touching the strings felt like breathing to me”

MAT: Who knows!
MB: A career in music is not a sprint, it’s a marathon, you need endurance and patience.

MAT: Can you tell us a bit about growing up in the world of classical music and how you got started? 
MB: I grew up in a small town in the province of Lower Austria and my musical path was influenced by my wonderful music teacher in school. He had a passion for music and was the conductor of the amateur orchestra in my home town, when we were in school we had to attend these concerts and when I was twelve years old there was a double bass concerto from a very famous soloist, Ludwig Streicher. I was completely fascinated, after this concert I asked my music teacher if I could study bass and he was very happy to find me a teacher, later when I finished school I studied with the famous professors at the University of Vienna.

MAT: Did you have any challenges at first? 
MB: A lot of challenges, the instrument is rather big so my parents were not very happy about transporting it everywhere by car [laughs]. I had to carry it for miles in winter, it wasn’t easy.

MAT: Did you ever have a string break while playing a concert or when you were practising? 
MB: Not while I practised, but in concerts it happened to me three times.

MAT: Was it always the same one? 
MB: It was always the same string. [both laugh]

MAT: How do you feel about keeping the spirit of classical music alive in the modern world whilst also being true to what it is? People are playing music written a few hundred years ago, do you think there is a particular challenge in keeping the tradition alive whilst bringing something new to it? 
MB: This is the challenge for every generation over and over again, my teacher who would now be 103 years old influenced a lot of composers to write pieces for him. In a way, I did the same 50 years later. When I played my first twenty performances as a soloist, you work with a lot of different pieces and if I had difficulties arranging I would get into the spirit of the composer. I learned a lot that way. I think it’s the same with you, how many people have now written pieces for you?

MAT: Three. 
MB: But you’re twenty years-old, so when we talk in ten years it will be many more. It is also the duty of a soloist to work with the composers.

MAT: I agree, we live in a time when nobody knows what will be next. It evolves so quickly, there is no way of knowing what the music industry will be like in ten or twenty years from now, but one thing we can influence is creating new music and continuing the history. It’s a very important duty for us now in the classical music world to bring things forward while also keeping tradition alive. 
MB: At the Vienna Philharmonic, we play concerts for school children and students because we are also aware we have to be attractive to a young audience. If young people never have the chance to listen to classical music then they will not know about it. We try to bring it to them because my experience from when I was in school changed my life, maybe there will be two or three children who tell their mama they want to study violin or flute, then we’ve achieved a lot.

MAT: Can you talk a bit more about the process of making music in an orchestra compared to making music individually or in a smaller group?
MB: Everything is different. When you play as a soloist you have to think about every single note and every single phrase very carefully. You have to think about which string you’re using and which kind of vibrato is in a note. In the orchestra, this is a little bit less individual, you have to adjust to the whole section and the section has to adjust to the whole score and the bigger picture. As an individual you have to take one step back but also play your best, the most important thing is the whole score. It should always be the best performance ever. In an orchestra you also have to adjust to a conductor, playing with other people perfectly in time, and if a pizzicato is too early it can ruin a lot. It’s all about being patient, concentrated and focused on what you are doing. Chamber music is somehow in between, when you’re playing in a smaller group you also have to adjust to the others and not disturb them. Often as a bass, you’re the ground and if you play better others will perform better.

MAT: It’s a big supportive group. You have a lot more power than some people might think as a bass player in a chamber orchestra. Where do you think classical music will move in the future? 
MB: This is a very big question. Everything in our orchestra changed over
the course of 200 years so you can imagine what can change in one generation. When our orchestra was founded in 1842 there wasn’t even a train, so there was no travelling, they could only perform in Vienna. With the invention of a train, they could travel to Salzburg. In the 1870s they had their first performance outside of Vienna because they travelled by train to Salzburg. In 1900 they travelled to Paris but there was no advertising, so the tickets were not sold and they couldn’t afford the train ticket back. They were stuck in Paris. [laughs] They played with Gustav Mahler [leading Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer of the late 19th century] can you imagine? Playing with Gustav Mahler in Paris and nobody came?! Then in the 1920s, they could travel by ship to South America but they didn’t because after WWI we had difficult economic times. Travelling by plane started in the 50s, and in 1956 they travelled for the first time to Japan which was a big milestone because now travelling to Japan every year is very important for us.

Another thing is recording, our first recording that exists is from 1929, so almost 100 years ago, but in the 50s with the invention of the stereo the orchestra made an exclusive contract with a wonderful British company called Decca and they made the best recordings. Now we know this kind of industry is declining and the digital industry is coming up and we now have a collaboration with Apple Music so this is a kind of change in the recording business. What will recording be like in 30 years? Who knows. When I first started playing 30 years ago, we did a lot of recordings that would not be possible today, we recorded operas with sixteen recording sessions.

MAT: How long was one session? 
MB: Three hours.

MAT: Wow.
MB: Decca had an interesting philosophy, they always recorded a passage of fifteen minutes in one take. If there was a mistake it had to be done again, you would record this passage maybe eight times in a session. They told us what was not correct or what to make better, and then in the end they had it. It’s all about endurance. Now, of course with technical processes you can cut easily and mix chords, it’s much easier to correct these things. Our historic recordings with Decca are very important for our history. What is the future? More digital, more or less travelling, performing more for children or adult audiences – who knows?

MAT: Could you see something happening with virtual reality? Everything is popping up and Apple announced these new mixed-reality glasses – the first thought I had was, wow, what if in a distant future maybe one could really experience a full concert at home? But going much deeper into the music than just a video recording or just some kind of performance that has been recorded because you’re really immersed in the world. Could you see something like this in the distant future? 
MB: I don’t know. For me personally, this is too far away but as we all know there will be surprises and maybe this is one part of the future. We had the pandemic, which was interesting in many aspects because I could not imagine before that there would be a situation where we could not perform and not play together, but we faced it. So, what kind of challenges could come in the future? Endurance, strong will and mental power, that’s what you need. As a soloist and as a musician it’s enormous, and in difficult times you have to make some sacrifices.

“There is no way of knowing what the music industry will be like in ten or twenty years from now, but one thing we can influence is creating new music and continuing the history”

MAT: Talk to me about the Viennese sound, especially the sound of the Vienna Philharmonic. What makes the sound so special and unique?
MB: It is a mixture of different things, the most important issue is we are an opera orchestra. In the opera, every night you listen to singers and you have to adjust to them, because they will not sing in rhythm. On stage, they act and do crazy things. So you have to jump with them and if they’re jumping half bar you have to jump too, the most interesting issue is you listen to these incredible artists, you listen to the best singers in the world and you hear this wonderful voice and then a wood instrument has to play the same phrase, whether it’s the clarinet or the flute. Of course, this has an influence on you because you try to play it the same way and it will be natural because singing is the most natural instrument. We also use the Viennese oboe, which is only played in Vienna, it’s not easy but it is the original instrument and we use the Viennese horn. It’s more difficult to play but richer in sound, if you hear a symphony with Viennese horns you won’t want to then listen to one without it. The timpani drums still use goat skins, which is a completely different sound to plastic skins, it’s more difficult to play because it can get out of tune easier but the sound is beautiful. We also have the best conductors, I think that’s part of the secret. Every single conductor brings a special quality to the orchestra; one is more focused on the sound, one is more focused on the rhythm, one is a specialist for 20th century music, one is a specialist for Mozart.

MAT: Do you have any worries about new technologies interfering with the industry? Maybe AI?
MB: I’m completely worried because I don’t understand these kinds of things. [both laugh] They scare me. I think in the technical aspect of classical music I’m always very focused on a clear and good technique, but the great soloists can play in tune perfectly. The perfect interpretation is not the one that will make you happy, it may be perfect in a technical way but it also needs to be an individual world. For example when you hear Alfred Brendel play [Franz] Schubert, there is one phrase and you go, “This is so beautiful.” Why? Because he’s waiting a millisecond before this harmonic change and this is an interpretation. AI would play it perfectly which isn’t the same. I remember one sentence of [Nikolaus] Harnoncourt, he was asked if a computer could compose a Mozart symphony like Mozart did it and he said, “You can feed the computer with all Mozart compositions and ask him to do something and the result will be [Carl Ditters von] Dittersdorf,” a second a rate composer who composed the Bass Concerto. It’s the truth because Mozart was a genius and would play something you wouldn’t expect. The computer isn’t a genius.

MAT: Do you think there is also something connected to the fact it’s not about perfection but about something that brings up emotions in people?
MB: The best example would be the Viennese Waltz, when we played a New Year’s concert some people think a waltz is not difficult, but then you play it and you know why it is so difficult. At the highest level with the best conductors, it is a fine line to get right, you have to do a little or too much, it’s like eating a cake that’s too sweet. This is only something a great musician can achieve, at the moment no artificial intelligence could do that.

MAT: I agree completely. I think it’s about choosing the exact proportions of how much you want to incorporate. As you said in comparison to a cake, if there is too much sugar or cream then the balance is completely off. 
MB: The best cook in the world would not cook with a recipe and say, “I used 25 grams of salt,” they just do what they feel and in the end it’s great. When you ask a very good cook, they never have the recipe. If you do it, it won’t be the same. The computer would never understand this.

MAT: I remember my first experience in an orchestra when I was aged ten or eleven, I was so overwhelmed by all the different sounds and creating one big thing together. I remember this memory very fondly, I had this giant smile for the whole first rehearsal because it was so overwhelming discovering it for the first time, this group of people together trying to achieve one common goal. Is it special for you when you play with an orchestra, especially the Vienna Philharmonic? 
MB: After decades you get used to it and it wouldn’t be fair to say every day is so special because it’s like if you eat every day then every day isn’t as special. In concerts, there is always something special and there is always a tension, not too much, which is important. I’m proud to say the concerts are always better than the rehearsals. In some orchestras, the rehearsal is quite good then at the concerts some people are too nervous, thankfully that isn’t the case. In my last concerts in Salzburg, I played Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 with Riccardo Muti and it became better, even if it was very good already. You cannot plan it that way, you have trust a very experienced conductor and a genius like Riccardo Muti will enable us to play our best.

MAT: Do you think music history has an influence on the way you play? We are now in Vienna and it’s crazy when you think about it, any street you go down there is so much music history. 
MB: When we play Bruckner’s 7th, you have to know we performed the premiere of it and I think it was with Anton Bruckner himself. From the first moment there is a connection to what the composer wanted, there is a tradition and the next generation will transmit it. When I was your age, a colleague told me that he played with Richard Strauss and he had said, “You don’t have to play the notes exactly, I want excitement.” You have to know the composer and the spirit – perfection isn’t important.

Interview originally published in The HERO Winter Annual.

GROOMING BY LARAMIE AT DAY ONE STUDIO USING LA MER