"John Williams? A gentleman!"

Paavo, how often do you watch films?

Very often, especially on the plane. As I fly a lot for work, I see everything sooner or later. I like documentaries because I always learn something. It doesn't have to be anything profound, but it's about real people, that's what interests me. Sometimes I also discover feature films where you don't already know how they're going to end after three minutes. But sometimes I just feel like watching something pointless with aliens. Although I generally avoid anything that has to do with aliens.

Do you remember the last film you saw in the cinema?

It was "Killers of the Flower Moon" by Martin Scorsese, in Pärnu. It was a very good film about how the whites treated the indigenous Osage tribe. The music was also good - it always is with great directors, they know exactly what sounds can achieve.

What is a good film score for you?

One that not only illustrates, but also contributes something of its own to the action. The best soundtracks even outlive the films for which they were created. Apart from a few classics, films are a time-bound art. If you ask a fifteen-year-old today who Marlon Brando was, he probably has no idea. Maybe he hasn't even seen "Star Wars" - but he certainly knows the music. Even the music by Nino Rota for Francis Ford Coppola's mafia film "The Godfather", which we play in concert, is more famous today than the film itself.

Many soundtracks are inspired by classical composers - Richard Wagner, for example, has influenced thousands of film scores. Nevertheless, many film fans would never venture to a Wagner opera.

In fact, the reverse connection only works to a limited extent. Perhaps because we are less aware of the music in a film? It is also noticeable that contemporary sounds are much more easily accepted in the cinema than in the concert hall. But a large proportion of soundtracks actually have a close connection to classical works, and by no means just to Wagner. Early Hollywood films were often set to music by Jewish composers who had fled Germany - Erich Wolfgang Korngold, for example, who won two Oscars. He was a pupil of Alexander Zemlinsky, who in turn was a good acquaintance of Gustav Mahler. You can hear this in the epic size of his scores, and also in how well they are orchestrated. Or think of John Williams' music for "Star Wars": it's magnificent, but it would be unthinkable without Gustav Holst's "Planets".

When you conduct music that was created for films or used in films: Do you have the images in your head?

That happens to me almost more often with ballet scores. I once started out as a ballet conductor, and at the Oslo Opera I did all the Stravinskys, "Petrushka" and "Sacre du Printemps" countless times, and very often Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" or Ravel's "Daphne et Chloé". Now, when I conduct "Petrushka" in concert, I know exactly what's going to happen on stage, which characters will appear; that's very helpful. But when I conduct Bartók's music for string instruments, percussion and celesta, for example, I don't think about "The Shining". I know which motif from it was used for the film - but the work was already there beforehand, and I'm more gripped by how well it's written.

And what about the absolute music?

There are also very visual works. Of course, for example the Mahler symphonies: All the bells, the marches, the funeral music, the over-the-top Ländler - you "see" immediately what is meant. But mostly it's about a feeling rather than concrete images. I can also feel the mood in Debussy's "La Mer", but I don't see any real water.

That's exactly what film music is about: intensifying feelings.

Yes, you can see that in horror films, which I don't like by the way - "Tagesschau" is enough for me. If you switch off the music in a scene from a Hitchcock film, it's only half as scary. As I said, good directors know the effect of music. They are wise enough to hire the best people. And sophisticated enough to know enough works that they could use.

And if they don't have an idea, do they come to you?

That does happen. I know the Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón well, for example, and he often sends me requests along the lines of: I need a slow waltz, but not the one by Shostakovich, Stanley Kubrick already used it.

Speaking of Shostakovich: the waltz you mention, which you will also conduct at tonhalleNIGHT, was not written as film music. But he wrote many other soundtracks. Was that simply a job for him - or more?

I don't think Shostakovich was really interested in this work. But it's like this: where there's film, there's money. You might work on a symphony for five, six or even ten years, nobody gets rich doing that. But you can make a good living as a film music composer under certain circumstances.

But it's not always just about the money, is it? Nino Rota or Ennio Morricone, who started out as "normal" composers, came to film for financial reasons. But they also had a special talent for it.

In any case! And that's exactly how it should be, that everyone discovers their niche in which they can develop their talent. That's why it makes no sense to compare absolute music and film music - each style has its own rules, and not every good composer can write soundtracks. Stravinsky, for example, tried in vain, he was too original, too uncompromising, he didn't want to prioritise the screen. Shostakovich, on the other hand, had a talent for it, he was able to switch on this "light side" without losing his independence. The aforementioned waltz from the "Suite for Variety Orchestra" sounds very accessible, but at the same time it is extremely refined. If you listen carefully, there's a lot in it that doesn't really belong in a waltz.

Does that also apply to another waltz in the programme, the one by Aram Khachaturian, which is used in Robert Dornhelm's film version of "War and Peace"?

Yes, Khachaturian was also a very good composer, I think he is vastly underrated. His music is really special, it has these Armenian colours - I really like that. I knew him personally, by the way; he came to our house when I was a teenager, just like Shostakovich. I once played his famous "Sabre Dance" for him on the xylophone, there are even photos of it.

And the other two composers of the evening?

Nino Rota died when you were still in Estonia, but did you meet John Williams? I met him once when I was still chief conductor in Cincinnati. Back then, he conducted an open-air concert there with his own works. He was incredibly charming, modest, a gentleman. And he told the audience a very nice story about Steven Spielberg: He had asked him to do the music for "Schindler's List". But John Williams turned him down on the grounds that a really good composer was needed for such a big subject. Spielberg's response was: "You're right, but they're all dead!" So John Williams wrote the soundtrack anyway - and you will hear just how great it is in the concert.