Jan Vogler
Jan Vogler travels the world as an internationally acclaimed cello soloist. He was in the UK in February to perform with various orchestras, including a superb performance of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 with the Hallé in Manchester under the baton of Kahchun Wong. He has been Artistic Director of Dresdner Musikfestspiele (Dresden Music Festival) since 2009. The annual Festival was established by government decree in 1978 when Dresden was still part of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Nick Holmes Music spoke to Jan in New York via Zoom earlier this month.
The Dresden Music Festival
Nick Holmes Music: How did you become involved in the Dresden Music Festival?
Jan Vogler: I developed an interest in festivals in the 1990s. I was very lucky to be a guest artist at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, directed by Rudolf Serkin, when I was a young man. And Serkin was very interested in Eastern European players. He really helped me to get out of East Germany, which was very difficult, to come to Marlboro. And when I came to Marlboro, I saw the combination of excellent musicians, good programming, and a summer atmosphere, and I understood what a festival was right away.
After four summers in Marlboro, I founded the Moritzburg Festival in 1993, together with my brother Kai and a friend who’s also a cellist, Peter Bruns. We learned about financing, ticketing, organisational skills, stage crews, and all the details one needs to know. And by about 2001, I had taken over the running of the festival.
“I like organising…”
I had installed an office in Dresden, had a couple of non-profits supporting the festival, and learned how to direct a festival. Even if you’re called ‘artistic director’, it means you are the one everybody will call when they don’t know what to do. I was fine with that. I like organising. I was always interested in the process: how does music get from the musician to the audience? Because it’s a process that in the 19th century involved musicians much more than today – think about Clara Schumann writing out her own tickets for concerts and inviting guests by handwritten letter.
At the end of the 20th century, we became a kind of protected species, soloists who travel around the world, everybody arranges everything for you, and you’re supposed to just think about your concert. I never really liked that. I wanted to get my hands dirty, wanted to understand how it works, and see if I could help bring the music to the audience in a more innovative way. And that was all expressed in the Moritzburg Festival.
Then in 2007, the mayor of Dresden invited me for lunch, and he said, “Would you be interested in taking over the Dresden Festival?” The festival was not doing too well, and my first thought was, should I really do this? Should I really cut out more time from my playing career to dedicate to the festival? But a lot of people around me, including family and friends, were excited that this would be a great thing for me to apply some of my ideas.
I took the job and started in 2009, and we rebuilt the festival in a more modern way with more entrepreneurial involvement. I wanted to make sure that I applied everything I’d learned in America with the Marlboro Festival, that you can do a festival even if there’s no defined space from the government funding for it before. So I applied some of those experiences to my work with the Dresden Music Festival, and now we have a festival that is up to 80% financed by ticket income and sponsorship, which is very high for Germany and very unusual. So this way we could enlarge our budget, have more wonderful musicians come, and have a more glorious festival.
Artistic Changes
Nick Holmes Music: What’s changed artistically under your control?
Jan Vogler: A lot. My vision was always to both observe changes in classical music that are coming anyway, and at the same time bringing my own ideas to the table. I think every director who ignores the trends in classical music will sooner or later have a problem because the audience is our main supporter. But at the same time, adjusting to what the audience is asking you to do is not always right, because they also want to be led a little bit, and they want the music to be curated as well. So I think finding a good combination of those took about five years.
I started with very high-quality music; I invited all my friends. At this point, my career was going pretty well, so I could invite lots of partners, like Hélène Grimaud, with whom I played duos. Or the New York Philharmonic. I had just played my debut in 2005 and toured with them. So I could ask Zarin Mehta [president and executive director of the New York Philharmonic]. It was a bit scary. He was a very, very strong leader. I wrote an e-mail: “Would you consider coming with the New York Philharmonic to Dresden?” He was like, “Sure, we could come. It will cost a lot of money, but we can raise it together.” And that brought the festival back on the map and also helped with sponsorships and ticket sales.
Other Genres Apart from Classical Music
But then I thought, what about other genres, such as crossover created for example by the Yo-Yo Ma and Bobby McFerrin album [Hush, 1992]. Crossover was already well-established, but it was blooming, and people were listening to playlists across different genres. So I really focused on having all these genres present and started with world music from people like Anushka Shankar. I went to jazz, and even did some rock because I liked British rock music from my childhood on. I’m a big fan of Queen and Eric Clapton.
Eric Clapton came to a concert in London. He didn’t come backstage, but I heard he was there. And then he came backstage at another concert in Edinburgh, and I recognised him, and I was like… starstruck. But then we talked about how strings feel under the fingers, and he asked me how cello strings differ from guitar strings, and he was very interested. I texted him: “Would you consider coming to Dresden to play a concert?” He said, “Yes, if you play along with me.” So we made a deal.
“Classical listeners still whistle pop songs in the shower”
Then I was in London for a Wigmore Hall concert. I had studied all his songs and had studied a little bit of rock and blues. I was super nervous, but everything went well in the rehearsal, and then we played together in the concert. And I really internalised that the same audience that would buy tickets to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra or the LSO would buy tickets to the Eric Clapton show. It was not a different audience. It was, of course, some new people, but I realised that classical listeners still whistle pop songs in the shower. It was a great honour that Sting came, another hero of mine.
Nick Holmes Music: Was it important to you that Sting is a fellow bass player, playing at the low end of the music?
Jan Vogler: Exactly. I always thought of Sting as his own musical life insurance, the bass line. There was this fantastic bass guitarist in Eric Clapton’s band, and he was my life insurance. I looked at him all the time. If he played a certain note, I knew I was in the right key. But wonderful musicians.
I’m still curious how we can be inventive and progressive with our festival, and I think it helps me that I live in New York, because the two cities are very different. Dresden is a cultural icon and incredibly dense culturally. New York is more artificial because it’s not grown as naturally here, but it’s incredibly lively and incredibly high quality, just like the big British cities like London or Manchester. So it helps me to have this perspective because lots of things will fall through if I look through my New York glasses at the programmes.
“Some human values come into play, which, for me, is important to convey through music; values that are in danger of being lost in every generation“
I want to bring the idea of a globalised cultural world that is still extremely specific in specific places, like, for example, the sound of the Hallé Orchestra compared to the LPO [London Philharmonic Orchestra]. This is wonderful, these differences, but we still have to see it in context, especially when you do a festival. What is so different about the orchestra and the sound, and which repertoire suits them? How can I host a special cultural event in Dresden that represents a certain culture with all its refinements, while still giving you an idea of how big and beautiful our whole world is? So it’s an idea of tolerance, too, and some human values come into play, which, for me, is important to convey through music; values that are in danger of being lost in every generation.
Elgar and the LPO at the Festival
Nick Holmes Music: And talking of the LPO, they’ve got a residency at the festival, haven’t they?
Jan Vogler: That’s very exciting. At first, I think my team was a bit shocked when the idea of an all-Elgar residency came about. The LPO said Edward Gardner [Principal Conductor] would like to do two complete days of Elgar. And I was like, “That is a great idea.” And everybody was shocked. They were very silent. My two artistic administrators looked at me like, “What did he smoke?” I said, “Look, who has ever done this in Germany? When did you last hear an Elgar symphony?” And the LPO are masters of this music. They really know this music better than most performers in the whole world. So why don’t we do it?” And it’s selling very well. So I’m very happy.
Nick Holmes Music: I come from the land that was famously “without music” for a long time. And then Elgar came along, and we thought, thank goodness we’ve got a good composer, finally. How is Elgar viewed in continental Europe and in New York as well? Because obviously, I view him very much through English eyes.
Jan Vogler: That’s an interesting question. I do feel that Elgar is a little bit like a bathroom where the bathtub overflows. I think the BBC Music Magazine named Elgar’s Cello Concerto the most popular cello concerto. I read that while I was in Great Britain playing Elgar last week, because I did play two Elgars, one with the Hallé in Middlesbrough, and one with the LPO in Eastbourne. It was enlightening to play Elgar with British orchestras because it seems so natural. Mostly, they are more modest than an American or German orchestra playing the Elgar, but sometimes it’s very pompous, but naturally pompous. It’s a little bit like British humour, extremely unique somehow, the way Elgar is played.
I feel in some parts of the world, there’s so much excitement about Elgar. I would say the whole of Great Britain, and then big cities outside of the UK. So if the Elgar Cello Concerto is played in Berlin, Paris or New York, it’s very enthusiastically received. I’m going to play it in Taiwan in a couple of weeks. where I think Elgar is played less. So they asked specifically, “Would you be willing to play the Elgar? We haven’t had that for a while.” And I hear that quite often in some regions. But it’s so popular in so many places that I think it’s spreading very fast. That’s why I said it’s like a bathtub overflowing, because if there is enthusiasm in the world for something, somewhere, it always spreads, because we have such fast communications. We have such wonderful ways to communicate these days that this enthusiasm will be communicated, and therefore, I expect Elgar to still grow.
“That was a mistake I made for 25 years. I always played the [Cello Concerto] so seriously and with so much darkness..”
Now in Germany, The Dream of Gerontius is being played here and there, and there are more pieces being picked up by these orchestras. It used to be entirely the Cello Concerto or Enigma Variations, but now it’s really the full Elgar repertoire that is played by the great orchestras around the world. When I play the piece, I feel that the main thing Jacqueline du Pré invented about Elgar, in a way, that made his Cello Concerto so popular, was that she understood it was a dark piece that was about empire falling and about things crumbling at the time when it was written. But she understood that the enthusiasm in it is probably just as strong.
That was a mistake I made for 25 years. I always played it so seriously and with so much darkness and everything. And the audience went, “Thank you” [he claps politely]. And then I thought, hmm, what is missing? Lately I discovered, it’s this enthusiasm that runs throughout the piece – Elgar always gets up again and he tries again, with this kind of counter-stream of positive energy. I feel that British orchestras know that there has to be positivity, even in darkness.
Nick Holmes Music: But in some ways it’s quite playful, isn’t it?
Jan Vogler: It is quite playful. And we cannot just see this very serious side. Outside of the UK, many, many countries see this as very serious music, and very, very late Romantic. But there is a lot of positive energy that counters that, and then you see the sun, and then you see the clouds closing, and then you see some melancholy, and then it all makes sense. But without this enthusiasm, of which Jacqueline du Pré was the perfect example, the music is not as effective.
Wagner on Period Instruments
Nick Holmes Music: Talking of late 19th-century music takes us to your Wagner project – Götterdämmerung – which is coming up for rehearsal very soon? Tell me about using period instruments in Wagner?
Jan Vogler: Yes, that’s another project that’s a little bit crazy. The outcome was definitely completely unclear when we took it on. But I personally believe very much in period instruments, because my father in East Germany had the early [Nikolaus] Harnoncourt recordings of the Monteverdi operas. So I grew up with these very early Harnoncourt recordings, which were extremely fascinating.
My father was a cellist. Later, he also became a fan of the [Dutch] cellist Anner Bylsma. I found Anner Bylsma’s Bach interpretations, so when I was in school in East Berlin, I was the only one playing these fast tempos in the Bach Cello Suites. And all the teachers were like, “What the hell is he doing?” Because they were still taught by the Russians with these very slow and very heavy tempos.
I studied with Heinrich Schiff, who was close to Harnoncourt and very interested in performance practice. I had a strong interest in bringing the best period instrument groups from all over the world to Dresden, and we did. We founded our own Festival Orchestra playing on gut strings about 12 – 13 years ago, and we thought, what if we get the best players on period instruments to Dresden, and play pieces created in Dresden in the Romantic era, with a different sound from the other orchestras.
That worked well, but it didn’t really make a big wave, because we would have only one or two concerts a year. It would be expensive to get all the musicians, all freelancers, to Dresden: lots of people from the UK, from [John Eliot] Gardiner’s band, and lots of great players from London. That was the first step.
Working with the Conductor Kent Nagano
Then Kent Nagano came to me – we are friends, we have played a lot together – and said, “I have this idea about doing The Ring on period instruments.” I started a little bit with Concerto Köln, but there was no chance because we didn’t have the organisational structure, the funding, or enough players. And I said, “Well, I have the [Dresdner] Festspielorchester, and it’s a fabulous group, and you can bring some of your musicians from Concerto Köln, and then maybe we can combine them, and we can attempt to do the whole Ring. I can try, on the fundraising side, to work with the Federal Government in Berlin and integrate the project into the Festival.”
Finding Period Instruments
Nick Holmes Music: In this context, though, I’m really interested to know what you mean by period instruments? You mentioned gut strings, but the symphony orchestra was pretty much established by the end of the 19th century, wasn’t it? So what are you doing that’s different from a modern symphony orchestra?
Jan Vogler: We found some original Wagner Tubas, which were very different from the ones used today. And wind instruments changed a lot during Wagner’s time; they sound a lot thinner and clearer than the wind instruments used later. The wind players who travel around Europe and play period instruments have four different flutes. They have one for 18th-century repertoire, one for early 19th-century repertoire, one for mid-19th-century repertoire, and one for Wagner. They were very excited.
Some of them collect instruments like crazy. We have a trumpet player who collects anything from percussion instruments to trumpets from this time. And he buys them at auctions for very little money. Some of them are original instruments, but they are no longer playable. There are experts in Germany who rebuild these brass instruments for these period players.
“All these little details make a huge difference when added together.”
The discussion about instruments was very detailed, and we had musicologists. That was Kent’s idea. Kent is a very interesting guy. He’s very academically interested, and his idea was to let the musicologists lead. So we have a little army of musicologists who go into the score and sit in on rehearsals. We have one musicologist, Ursula Hirschfeld, just for language, just for the way the German words were pronounced in Wagner’s time. So she would correct the singers all the time.
And all these little details make a huge difference when added together. I would say not every detail is conceivable when you hear just that one detail. But in the end, it’s stunning that, for example, in Die Walküre, when the fire starts around the mountain where Brünnhilde is captured, I suddenly saw the fire: the sound was fascinating. I saw the fire in front of me.
At the beginning of Rheingold, there’s a lot about running water, and everybody always says, ” Why does [Wagner] stay in the same key for so long at the beginning, and can you please speed up the tempo?” And many conductors tried to do it just faster. Suddenly, it was incredible, with the three Rheintöchter [Rhine Maidens], you could understand every word.
“[Wagner] said, the theatrical effect is most important. If you can sing it, speak it.”
So certain effects are almost like Debussy was later, very descriptive of nature and other subjects. The transparency of the sound allows the singers to have much more differentiation in dynamics. I’m quoting the musicologist because I haven’t read enough; apparently, Wagner liked pronouncing the words very much, sometimes even as spoken words. He said, the theatrical effect is most important. If you can sing it, speak it
And so musicologists pulled up some recordings from singers who worked with Wagner, for example, songs like Erlkönig. And it’s incredible. They change intonation. When it gets depressed, they go lower. They change the tempo all the time. That’s something Wagner encouraged, he said, “change the tempo as often as you want. If it’s dramatic, go faster. If it’s Romantic, take your time.” We learned almost the opposite: to be strict with the tempo and metronome, stay in this tempo, and be very static.
So all these little revelations would add up. For example, Matthias Naske, the director of the Konzerthaus [in Vienna], came to one of our performances in Amsterdam of Die Walküre, and he said it was maybe the most single, most impactful opera performance of his life. I don’t see it this way because I hear it too often. Kent Nagano is a very modest person. He always says, “Well, Jan, it’s different, right?” So it’s definitely different, I would say!
A Different Type of Singer
Nick Holmes Music: You were talking about singers. Does that mean that you can go for a different type of singer? I mean, we’re all familiar with Wagnerian sopranos and tenors, and the huge voices they have to have to rise above a massive orchestra?
Jan Vogler: Exactly, with our Siegfried, it was very much like that. But then, of course, our singers get picked up by the Wagner people because they hear that they’re singing with us. So sometimes it’s hard. We discover a lot of talent this way. We have a wonderful young Norwegian Brünnhilde, Åsa Jäger, who is a huge talent. Now we can hardly book her for our complete Ring because she’s making a big career. People observe her, and they hear her, and say, “Oh, we want to have her – we are fine having some influences from [period] performance practices!” So we lose some of them: Derek Welton has become quite famous. He’s a wonderful Wotan, and of course, now the Deutsche Oper [Berlin] or Bayreuth even ask, “Can we have them as Wotan?” I understand.
Playing the Cello
Nick Holmes Music: How did you find the cello? Were you following in your father’s footsteps, or was there something personal to you about the cello that attracted you?
Jan Vogler: It was put in my hands because my brother had the violin. And so, as the middle child, I got the cello, my sister got the piano. I felt a connection right away, a physical connection to the cello. And I really became very competitive to make it sound better. It was pretty clear when I was something like 10 years old that I wanted to be a cellist. And my luck was that I had two musician parents who were very strict and said, “We know you like to play soccer and meet your friends, but if you want to be a serious cellist and not end up in a very, very depressed situation, you have to practice hard.”
So they took my ambition and kind of weaponised it against me in a very good way. And they knew that teenagers can take a lot of work and a lot of pressure . I was very, very lucky when I was studying to feel that, somehow, with the cello, I’d found something special.
Nick Holmes Music: My wife came with me to watch you doing the Shostakovich at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. She said it felt as if the cello was an extension of your own body. Does it feel like that to you?
Jan Vogler: My ideal is to try to forget that it’s a piece of wood with four strings. I’d like to feel that I can make it come alive. And it helps if you have a good instrument. I am very, very fortunate to have a very, very fine instrument. Of course, it helps. And then the cello shows you the way. I don’t think I will ever reach 100%, but I’m trying to make it sound alive so you forget it’s coming from four strings. And that’s the ideal.
Nick Holmes Music: And again, looking back on that concert, I was struck by your playing style. Many players who perform the famous concertos seem to be battling with their instrument. Are you as calm as you look on stage?
Jan Vogler: No, no, no, I’m not! I’m constantly trying to improve things. But what I do feel is that the orchestra is a mass of energy, lots of individuals who unite to give energy. And the soloist has to be a dialogue partner with the orchestra. So I have to be extremely strong, because the orchestra is the energy of 60 people or something like that, with very, very strong players, and I’m alone.
“If something goes wrong, I let it go and do not worry about it”
So I team up with my cello, try to be at one with it, and then talk to the orchestra. So that’s my idea. I’m not at ease, of course. I always have my own struggles like everyone else, but I do feel that if I can somehow create a connection with the cello at home, that is not a discussion at the concert.
Even if something goes wrong, I let it go and do not worry about it, and still keep talking to the orchestra, because the orchestra is my main partner, and the audience is kind of an observer, but once in a while, you can also turn to the audience and preach a little bit. The German way of making music is a little bit like a pastor in church. Sometimes it can be too much, but when we play Bach’s Cello Suites, we tell stories to the audience.
So I feel that in the concerto, you have these few moments when you turn to the audience, but you also have a lot of moments when you try to converse with the orchestra and the conductor. And I felt with The Hallé, it was wonderful, because they were very lively, excellent musicians. And I also had a good connection with Kahchun [Wong]. And he told me afterwards he liked somehow the way I played the Shostakovich, and he said, “Does it have to do with your childhood in East Berlin?” I said, “Who knows, but possibly, you know.” I try not to copy my colleagues, even if I like a colleague very much. I try to find my own way to play.
The Reopening of the Frauenkirche in Dresden
Nick Holmes Music: Yes, and talking about East Berlin, I think one of the highlights of your career to date has been performing at the reopening of the Frauenkirche in Dresden in 2005, after it had been destroyed in WWII. And as an East Berliner, as an East German, how did that feel?
Jan Vogler: I was in the green room preparing a few minutes before, and I couldn’t feel anything. I was like, “Just remember the piece. Is everything okay?” I was very prepared, I must say, and I had created a good connection with Lorin Maazel during the rehearsals, thank God, because he was supposed to be a difficult man. He was very kind to me, almost fatherly. I had worked with the New York Philharmonic before. I recorded Dvořák’s Cello Concerto a year before with the New York Philharmonic and David Robertson. So I knew the orchestra a little bit, and Maazel had accepted me. That was a big compliment already.
So there I was in my green room, I thought, okay, this is one of those concerts. You just focus on this. My father was there. My father didn’t want to come initially. He didn’t come to many of my concerts. He was too scared. I had exceeded his expectations, I think. For him to sit in the audience, and I’d be on the stage, and anything could happen, I think it scared him very much.
But he did come to Dresden, and my mum was there. And then I came on stage and I focused and when the whole thing was done, I felt like, okay, I had I played my Schumann and the Colin Matthews, the way I could play it. And my father came, and he said, “Well done.” That was the biggest compliment he would ever give by far. But that he accepted my playing that night was already a lot.
“It was one of those moments when you can’t fold, you have to hold on”
And then I thought, the orchestra accepted [my playing], the conductor, my partners, the audience had lots of tears because the event itself, you know? But it was one of those moments when you can’t fold, you have to hold on, because your career will always have these moments, and often you play a piece that’s dear to you. If you’re lucky, you can play the Schumann or Shostakovich. Those are some of my favourite pieces. You can play something you can tell a story about, then people will trust you, maybe with more work.
It was almost like my audition in Dresden when I became principal cellist [at the Staatskapelle, at the age of 20]. Dresden. It was similar. I worked very hard. To my surprise, I got the job, and then I knew, okay, this is just the first step. Now you have to focus and learn all this music.
The Rebuilding of Dresden
Nick Holmes Music: How do you feel about the rebuilding of Dresden? Is that something that moves you?
Jan Vogler: Yes, it does. I guess every generation feels that, but do we keep all the memories of history, have we learned the right lessons from history? I still remember my grandmother telling me how she took my father and his brother to the basement when there were fire alarms in Leipzig, and how she wrapped them in wet towels so they wouldn’t catch fire, if there was a fire. I grew up with the Cold War, and there was a constant fear that the whole situation would explode. And then 1989 came, and we were all like, “Oh my God, we have new hippies or something!”
And then the Frauenkirche was rebuilt, and it became a symbol of the healing of the wounds of war and the whole of Dresden is a testimony to this incredible story of how humans can overcome great tragedies. So it does move me very much, and I get shivers when I talk about it, because I feel, aren’t those the great stories of humanity that we can overcome something? Those things, I think, are wonderful.
“We are all humans, and don’t we all want peace, harmony, and fun?“
If humans could sometimes forget the past and move on, and say, “let’s just do something positive,” remember the past as a learning experience, and go into the future with a fresh, open heart. And that’s what we all felt in the Frauenkirche, because we felt like we were enemies in the war, but aren’t we all humans, and don’t we all want peace, harmony, and fun? It was really, really very basic in a way.
And I just played last week, excuse me for the digression, but it was really wonderful. I just played the Schumann Concerto in Seattle with Xian Zhang, who was Assistant Conductor to Maazel during the concert. She said, “Oh, you don’t have to play the Schumann for me because I remember it. I was sitting in every single rehearsal.” She also remembered that trip as one of the highlights of her life.
Nick Holmes Music: Thank you very much. It was a real pleasure speaking to you today.
Jan Vogler: Same here, same here!
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
The Dresden Music Festival, ‘Lightness of Being’, runs from 14 May to 14 June 2026. For more information, click here
Read on – Jan Vogler with the Hallé…