"Present Tense"
In Conversation with Joana Mallwitz

Words: Aeyde
Date: 29.10.2026

AEYDE: You began playing the violin and piano at a very young age. What did music mean to you before it became your profession?

JOANA MALLWITZ: From the beginning, music was always around me. My parents would sing to me, and we had a piano, which I started playing at three years old. It was like I learned my mother tongue and music at the same time. I’m not from a family of musicians, but my mother can play the piano, so she taught me the basic harmonies and how to play songs I liked by ear. Later, I had a teacher and started getting deeper into the world of music, which is when I started doing competitions, concerts, and meeting other young people who were musically talented.

A: It’s interesting that you were so drawn to music without growing up in a musical family. Did you always feel that pull toward it?

JM: As a child, I never thought of music as something that could be a profession because of how fun and natural it was. Only much later, as a teenager, did I realize how interested I was in this world and how I wanted to spend my life doing it. It was a great revelation to realize that I could be with music all the time.

A: In 2023, you became the first woman to lead a Berlin orchestra as chief conductor and artistic director. Has taking on this role changed the way you see yourself as a conductor now?

JM: No, it hasn’t. As a conductor, I’m many things, and one of them is that I’m a woman! [laughs] To me, it doesn’t make any difference. But at the same time, I can’t even count the number of places I’ve worked where I was the first woman in the room conducting. It’s happened many times in my career.

A: When you look at classical music more broadly, how much of this has changed?

JM: Back then, orchestras would only include men, whereas today there’s much more of a balance, like 50/50. But if we look at leading positions, like chief conductors or general music directors, you only see a handful of women in these roles worldwide. My role isn’t only about the music. It’s about being the leader of an orchestra, creating programs for the city of Berlin, and shaping part of its cultural life, so I can say firsthand that these leadership roles are not equal.

A: How would you describe your role as a conductor?

JM: There are many aspects to being a conductor. It’s more than just the music-making part of it, which is already very complex. I’m in charge of having a technique I’ve mastered over many years that allows me to communicate with a big ensemble of musicians, like a symphony orchestra, which is sometimes made up of 60 people, sometimes 120. And while every player is a master of their instrument, I need to bring all of the musical ideas, feelings, inputs, and impulses together so the puzzle fits. Every masterpiece is like a world of its own. The composer who wrote it created it within a cosmos that has its own set of rules, and I have to get to know this world and understand it from within. It’s my job to analyze a score, build on it, and then communicate it to an entire orchestra so the music can happen.

A: Do you try to put yourself in the composer’s mind when analyzing a piece?

JM: Yes! There are many steps to an analysis, from reading the piece countless times to doing the harmonic analysis, shape analysis, and so on. I try to get as much information as I can about the composer, like the situation they were in when writing, the period of time, the location, and which pieces were written by other composers around that time. All of this brings you closer to the piece and makes it feel warmer. But the most important of all is what lies in the music itself, all its riddles and secrets. Think of it like this: a composer has a vision for a piece and breaks it into little black dots and markings, but then I come in and do the opposite by taking all these details and fitting them together to have an idea of what the composer was trying to say.

A: And I imagine this experience changes every time you work on a new piece, right?

JM: It does. It’s funny but also wonderful that I never have this feeling of comfort when learning a new piece. Every piece is a new world, you always start at zero. The masterpieces I’ve learned have accompanied me through my whole life and career. Every time I come back to them, I see them changing, like a relationship I could have with a person, getting to know them under different circumstances or at a different point in your life.

A: Tell me how you approach working with an orchestra for the first time.

JM: The first part is the preparation, which is 90% of a conductor’s job. This is where I sit alone with my score for hundreds of hours. The second part is trust. I need to have trust before going into the first rehearsal, and with my first upbeat, I have to trust them, even if I’ve never met them before. Even during a concert, it can happen that things sound completely different from how we rehearsed them, so it’s important to be open to each other and to what the music does to us in that moment. Music will always rescue and carry us through, but we have to give it room to do so. Conducting is a game of balance between control and freedom.

A: Even if something worked once, it doesn’t mean recreating it will work the second time around. Vulnerability becomes important in that process.

JM: Recreating or redoing already has a passiveness in the word, which doesn’t work for performing because we have to be completely active and in the moment. As you said, vulnerability is important, especially as a conductor because I’m in charge of a huge group of musicians while also planning an evening for 2,000 people. Something special will only happen if we’re vulnerable and transparent with each other.

A: Has being a conductor changed the way you listen to music in your free time?

JM: Definitely. The most important tool for a conductor is our ears, which I’ve spent my whole life training. I choose not to listen to music in my spare time, unless I’m traveling, because I’m constantly surrounded by it. Even when I’m not rehearsing, I have the music playing in my head, which is loud enough! [laughs]

A: So much of what happens between a conductor and an orchestra is communicated without words. How do you build that kind of communication?

JM: It’s very important to have a clear technique to communicate with the orchestra because so much is said in a short moment, things you can’t even describe, like what I show, what I breathe, what someone plays, and how everyone moves and breathes together. A symphony orchestra is one of the only places where you can communicate with so many people at the same time. It’s miraculous. The orchestra expects me to have a clear, functional way of communicating and to be quick and efficient.

A: How much does the space you’re performing in shape the way you perform?

JM: This applies to what I said earlier about being open. The orchestra needs to be open to the hall they’re playing in because the acoustics can be different, and so can the size of the audience and its energy. The audience’s energy is something we feel very strongly. For example, if we feel like the audience is more relaxed, we might go on a more adventurous journey with them. It’s important to pull them into your world and take them with you.

A: As AI becomes more present in our lives, do you think it will change the way we experience classical music?

JM: No, I don’t, and to be honest, I’m not scared of that happening because people choose to make a promise that they’ll go through this emotional journey from start to finish together. You can find recordings of great symphonies online, but the sound of a cello reaching your ears or the feeling of eight contrabass players making the ground shake is something you can only find live in a concert hall. And humans will always be thirsty for that. No matter how many concerts I conduct, I’m always so touched to see how we can get a stage full of people to make music together at one specific moment in time. But we need to make sure everyone is exposed to this world, and that it’s approachable and accessible. Younger generations don’t learn about Beethoven anymore and don’t even set foot in a concert hall. Everyone has the right to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, but we can’t hang up a Beethoven symphony. It’s a human right to experience these masterpieces live.

A: When does tradition come into play for you, and when is it most important?

JM: On one hand, I feel like the rituals and traditions we have, like how the conductor shakes the concertmaster’s hand before performing, are incredibly important, especially as we have less and less of these rituals in the world today. On the other hand, there are these “fake” traditions that end up restricting us. A typical classical concert today starts with a short overture followed by a soloist who plays the concerto, then an intermission, followed by the symphony. Yet this structure has nothing to do with how these concerts were done back then. Beethoven would organize a concert himself and play so openly, switching from a symphony to an aria and then suddenly to a piano solo. Another one is the tailsuit, which stands for something completely different from what it did 100 years ago. Then, it was a symbol of participation. Now it represents something elite, and people have this image in their minds that a conductor is an older man who wears this tailsuit, which sends the wrong message.

A: With the world becoming more digitized and automated, what do you hope will remain human about the way we make and experience music?

JM: I hope and believe what will remain is the live experience, which is the core of it all. So much today is designed for us to stay home, like streaming a film instead of going to the cinema or texting friends instead of meeting up, but this is too isolating. Coming together is essential as humans, which is why I believe live performance will remain.