THE great Russian conductor Valery Gergiev does not do small chat. On the concert platform he is a whirlwind of emotion who has won legions of admirers – and though he is more restrained when I meet him in a small boutique hotel near the Barbican in London, he is just as intense.
There are hints of a non-musical hinterland in his conversation – at one point, he eulogises the great Dutch football team of the 1970s – but all he really wants to talk about is work. Today, that means the revamped production of Richard Wagner's monumental 15-hour Ring Cycle that his beloved Mariinsky company is bringing from St Petersburg to London this summer.
The production has already been seen by audiences in other parts of the world, from La Scala in Milan to the Met in New York, with Korea, Japan and Germany also getting a look. British audiences had their chance when it was seen at the Millennium Centre in Cardiff three years ago, although only if they acted quickly – it sold out in four hours.
Some have loved the four-opera epic, hailing "thrilling moments" and suggesting it "made you listen afresh", although others have inclined to agree with the New York Times critic, Anthony Tommasini, when he said: "A major Wagnerian conductor is lurking within Mr Gergiev, if only Mr Gergiev would find the time and discipline to let him emerge."
However, it will be different in London, promises Gergiev. He has enlisted the young Anglo-Russian theatre director Alexander Zeldin to redirect the existing production – the word being used is "reimagining" – so the version we see will be tighter and fresher. Zeldin is a 24-year-old Oxford graduate who has worked at the Arcola in London and, somewhat impressively for his age, previously with the Mariinsky, when he directed the Russian premiere of Thomas Adès's opera Powder her Face.
"London will see what other cities didn't see," Gergiev says. "We're developing all the time. Video installations, lighting… the power that major opera houses now have in purely technical terms give new opportunities. It will be different and in certain aspects radically different."
But the governing vision remains as Gergiev has described it before: "In Ossetia, where I come from, our own folk tales parallel the myths that inspired Wagner, so I knew we would be able to find a new visual approach to the Ring that was internationally understandable."
Though his conversation is still littered with obscure details of Russian musical history, Gergiev has worked hard on being "internationally understandable" in recent years. He was born in Moscow in 1953 and brought up in the Caucasian province of Ossetia, which hit the headlines with the massacre at the school at Beslan – for whose victims the conductor later directed a fundraising concert. He was made associate conductor with the Mariinsky aged 25 in 1978, when it was still known under its Soviet era name of the Kirov – the Maria, of Mariinsky, being the wife of Tsar Alexander II and, therefore, anathema to the communists. By 1988 he was artistic director and was named general director in 1996. But he has been a regular visitor to London for more than two decades, the link being formalised when he took over as the principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra two years ago (he is also principal guest conductor of the New York Metropolitan Orchestra and, until last year, was principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra).
His mission, he says, has been to find "quite daring, brave ideas" in programming unusual works alongside repertoire staples. "I really don't want to be seen as the man who does the same thing all the time."
He likes London audiences, whom he finds receptive, and appreciates the "tremendous public support" for projects such as the complete cycles of symphonies by Mahler and Shostakovich, as well as Prokofiev. And despite carpings from some critics that he does too much work with too few rehearsals, the LSO's recent tour of the United States saw them hailed by the Americans for "incandescent playing" under his "steely control". An equally successful tour of eastern Europe followed.
Gergiev defends himself against the criticisms. "I enjoy working with the orchestras I trust totally and orchestras who trust me totally. That's why I conduct a rather limited number of orchestras. People sometimes don't see this detail," he says, pointedly. He adds in an unconvincing attempt at levity: "I haven't conducted in London for nearly two months. If you think it's too soon for me to come back, it's worrying…"
He is passionate about the LSO, but the Mariinsky is evidently his first love and he cites details from its history with the precision of an obsessive. "There's a whole thing of Wagner in Russia or Wagner and Russia," he says. The first performance of Parsifal outside Germany was supposed to have been in St Petersburg until illness and the First World War scuppered it. Wagner himself visited Russia in 1863 and spent months conducting with the Mariinsky. "He was offered my position (as general director], and he accepted," Gergiev says, pride at the connection bringing a glow to his slightly tired features.
The move to Russia never happened after the new King of Bavaria made his own bid for Wagner's services. "The Mariinsky didn't suffer," Gergiev smiles, and rattles off a string of other composers to have worked there, from Berlioz to Verdi.
At the Royal Opera House next month, he will conduct the four operas of the Ring over four consecutive nights. It is the most difficult of physical challenges, needing great concentration and flexibility from the musicians, who switch parts on different nights to vary the pressure. "It's like what was called 'total football'," he explains. "About 30 years ago, there was a great national team of Holland who introduced 'total football', where the defender was able to attack and the forward was also able to defend."
It's an enormous challenge, and that may explain his curious dearth of views on what anyone else is doing in London, though he admired the recent visit of Gustavo Dudamel with his Venezuelan youth orchestra and considers Esa-Pekka Salonen, principal conductor of the Philharmonia, a "very good friend".
But he is upbeat about the state of classical music in general. Whatever other people's concerns for the future, he doesn't share them. "The LSO plays to young people and has a fantastic reaction," he says. "The most important thing is live music – you still go to the concert hall to experience the magic of live performance."
As for his personal life – in 1999 he married Natalya Debisova, who is 27 years his junior, and has three children – he permits no deviation. It is easier to extract from him the complete history of the Mariinsky than it is to discover what he thinks of the joys of fatherhood, or whether he ever goes on holiday.
And very quickly, my time is up. He patiently poses for photographs with not a hint of the driven taskmaster of repute. His record label has hundreds of pictures of him, he says.
"But they only ever choose the ones that fit the image and make me look like Ivan the Terrible," he says with a resigned shrug. And finally, he grins broadly.
• Valery Gergiev conducts the Mariinsky Theatre production of Wagner's Ring at the Royal Opera House, London, 29 July-1 August.
www.roh.org.uk.
• Kenneth Walton's classical column will return next Wednesday, and you can read his preview of this year's East Neuk Festival in this Saturday's Scotsman.
The full article contains 1277 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
