Graf set to bid farewell to the Houston Symphony

Hans Graf, who has led the Houston Symphony since 2001, begins his farewell season this week. Hans Graf, who has led the Houston Symphony since 2001, begins his farewell season this week. Photo: Mayra Beltran Photo: Mayra Beltran Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Graf set to bid farewell to the Houston Symphony 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

Goodbyes can be bittersweet. But maestro Hans Graf intends his farewell season with the Houston Symphony to be a celebration of the orchestra's achievements during the 12 years of his leadership.

Beginning with the gala season-opening concert Saturday at Jones Hall, Graf will conduct 12 of this season's programs, including such eagerly anticipated events as the Best of Brahms festival and a concert staging of Alban Berg's landmark 20th-century opera "Wozzeck."

The esteemed Austrian conductor, who assumed the Houston post in September 2001, becomes the longest-serving music director in the Houston Symphony's history as he leads the orchestra into the celebration of its centennial in 2013.

"I'm very happy with what we have accomplished," Graf said. "That we could maintain a very responsible and high level of performance. That we have strengthened our connection with the community, that we are well recognized and well regarded, with a good following. And that we are in good shape as an organization."

Graf noted that financial considerations have forced the symphony to balance ambition and practicality.

"Most of the time," he said, "the price we had to pay was that we didn't tour as much as we should for an orchestra of this stature. But we have started again in the past few years, and I hope it will continue at this level."

Graf refers to well-received tours to the United Kingdom in 2010 and Russia earlier this year, and several New York engagements, including the critically acclaimed Shostakovich program in May at Carnegie Hall.

"An orchestra deserves to be seen as a great orchestra in its hometown," Graf observes. "But a good review in the New York Times doesn't hurt."

"Hans was never one to put on 'maestro' airs or needlessly exert his authority over the musicians," says Brinton Averil Smith, the orchestra's principal cellist. "He treats us as colleagues and friends, engaged in a mutual search for musical truth. His tenure began with some of the toughest times the symphony has faced. It wasn't a glamorous time to be music director, but rather than withdraw to protect his reputation, he gave everything he had to our organization. When he began, it was an orchestra musicians were leaving. Now it is an orchestra musicians are increasingly drawn to. What better legacy could a music director leave?"

With Graf, his musicians and the city harmonizing so nicely, why did he feel it was time for a change?

"It's a blend of many things," Graf says. "Chiefly, it's my experience that a period of eight to 10 years usually is the right amount of time for such a directorship. It's necessary that after a certain time, an institution deserves new ideas and a new leader, just as an individual in such a position may feel it's time to change the outline of his work and seek new inspiration.

"About four years ago, I started telling (the orchestra's leaders) that it might be nearing time for me to close this circle, for them think about somebody else for the job. But we decided that with this incredible milestone coming up, it would make sense for me to stay and see the orchestra through ending its first century, with a new music director coming aboard to start the next one."

Austrian roots

Graf was born in 1949 in Marchtrenk, a town near Linz. He graduated from the Musikhochschule in Graz, with degrees in conducting and piano, then attended the Leningrad Conservatory on scholarship. His early career breaks included a post as accompanist and vocal coach (and later conductor) with the Vienna State Opera, and winning the Karl Bohm conducting competition in 1979. Prior to Houston, Graf was music director of the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, from 1984 to 1994; of the Calgary Philharmonic, from 1995 to 2003; and of France's Orchestre National Bordeaux-Aquitaine, from 1998 to 2004.

Graf and his wife, Margarita Graf, have a home in Salzburg and a grown daughter who lives in Paris.

During his tenure here, Graf has continued his busy schedule as a guest conductor across the U.S. and Europe. Last week, Graf was in Germany for a set of concerts with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin.

Taking risks

With his lilting Austrian accent, his voice conveys a graciousness, soft-spoken yet precise. That reflects his subtle, studied style on the podium - not as flamboyant as some, but no less incisive and effective at interpreting the wide-ranging repertoire he relishes. He is proud of getting "Wozzeck" on the 2012-13 lineup.

"It's the thing I most wanted to do and perhaps as risky financially as it is laudable artistically."

It will continue Graf's efforts to expand the concert repertoire to include operas, as when he led Bela Bartok's "Bluebeard's Castle" here in 2005 and a bill of Giacomo Puccini's "Suor Angelica" and Paul Hindemith's "Sancta Susanna" in Berlin earlier this year.

"The Brahms festival also will be a key factor," he says. "It's a special effort for everyone in the orchestra and the organization. We'll have a good selection, including most of the major works. I think giving the audience the chance to immerse themselves in his music this way will be a joyous experience for everyone."

The Brahms festival spans five programs rotating through three weekends. Graf conducts all but the final weekend's programs, which will be led by guest conductor John Storgards.

Graf says seeking another long-range commitment is not necessarily a priority.

"If I put all my years as music director with various orchestras together," he says, "I've been doing it for 39 years. There's not a pressure any more to get somewhere and hold a leadership role. Maybe it's time to just conduct wherever I feel I want to conduct and where they want to hear me. And I hope it's going to mean that my wife and I get to have a little more time together. Her work in my life has been the real wonder and success, the constant."

Yet Graf does not rule out another directorship.

"With every orchestra I've had in my life," Graf says, "I never applied or presented myself as a candidate. In each case, they had seen me work and they offered me the job. If in the near future, an orchestra decides they would like me to help them with a couple of years as music director or some sort of advisorship, I would consider that."

Graf's work also includes years on the conducting faculty of Rice University's Shepherd School of Music.

"Hans' presence has significantly impacted the Houston Symphony, our educational institutions and indeed the overall cultural life of Houston," says Robert Yekovich, dean of the Shepherd School. "His superb artistry, musical knowledge of encyclopedic proportions, embrace of the modern and contemporary, and his warm, giving and unpretentious personal qualities are among his most salient characteristics."

One area in which Graf is uninvolved is the search for his successor.

"My decision instinctively has been to stay completely out of it," he says. "I feel they have to judge what they need, which direction they want to go and what type of personality. That it might be something completely different from me is necessary probably and at least legitimate and understandable."

Not slowing down

After concluding his term as music director, he will continue as conductor laureate, returning for two weeks each year for two more seasons. As a guest conductor during the next two or three years, he will be busier than ever.

The down side, he admits, is the travel.

"I will be doing more traveling than now, and I'm not crazy about flying. You arrive tired from traveling, go to the hotel, then rehearsal, perform the concert, then go to the airport and arrive somewhere else, tired from traveling. It's like being a mouse in a treadmill."

He may give that up, too, in a couple of years, he said.

"I have a friend in Spain, who not too long ago found out he was very sick. He told me: 'Live now, don't wait.' The idea of seizing a little personal time appeals to me. One thing I am dreaming of is just listening to music, without having to study - for instance, to just listen to all the Beethoven sonatas. And I want to read. As I young adult, I had an ambitious program of reading, but I stopped at 30. Now I'd like the time to return to reading words, not notes. That, and spending time with my wife in some of the beautiful places of the world. That will be my retirement."

everett.evans@chron.com