Yes.

Let's go.

If you're here, then you already know who she is, and that is one of the most important musical figures of our time.

Lydia Tarr is many things.

A piano performance graduate at the Curtis Institute, Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard.

She got her Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Vienna, specializing in the indigenous music of the Ucayali Valley in eastern Peru, where she spent five years among the Shipibo-Kanibbo people.

As a conductor, Tarr began her career with the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the so-called Big Five.

A string of important posts followed, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, until she last arrived here at our own New York Philharmonic.

With the latter, she organized the Highway 10 Refugee Concerts in Zaatari, which were attended by over 75,000 people.

She's become particularly well-known for commissioning contemporary work from, among others, Jennifer Higdon, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolf, and Hildur Gunadalter, and she's made a point of programming their works alongside composers of the canon.

She's been quoted as saying, these composers are having a conversation, and it may not always be so polite.

Lydia Tarr has also written music for the stage and screen.

She is, in fact, one of only 15 so-called EGOTs, meaning those who have won all four major entertainment awards, an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony.

It is, as you can imagine, an extremely short and shimmering list that includes Richard Rogers, Audrey Hepburn, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and, of course, Mel Brooks.

In 2010, with the support of Elliot Kaplan, she founded the Accordion Conducting Fellowship, which fosters entrepreneurship and performance opportunities for female conductors, allowing them residencies with major orchestras around the world.

In 2013, Berlin elected Tarr as its principal conductor in succession to Andris Davids, and she's remained there ever since.

Like her mentor, Leonard Bernstein, Tarr has a particular affinity for Mahler, whose nine symphonies she recorded during her Big Five stints.

However, she never managed to complete the so-called cycle with a single orchestra until now.

Under her direction, Berlin has recorded eight of the Mahler symphonies, saving the big one, Symphony No. 5, for last.

Due to the pandemic, that performance, which was scheduled for last year, had to be canceled.

But I am told that next month she will make a live recording of Mahler's Fifth, which will complete the cycle and will be issued in a box set by Deutsche Grammophon just in time for Mahler's birthday.

As if that's not enough, her new book, Tarr on Tarr, will be published by Nantalese's imprint at Doubleday just in time for Christmas.

A perfect stocking stuffer, especially if you have a very large stocking.

All of us at The New Yorker welcome you.

Thank you for joining us, maestro, today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lydia, I couldn't help but see you flinch just a little bit as I was reading your bio.

Was it because I forgot some other amazing achievement, or do you have a slight self-consciousness about the incredibly varied things that you've accomplished?

Well, in today's world, varied, it's a dirty word.

Our era is one of specialists, and if you're trying to do more than one thing, it's often frowned upon.

Every artist gets typecast.

Oh, yes, aggressively so.

Well, do you think there'll be a moment, though, when the classical music community decides not to use sexual distinctions to differentiate artists?

I'm probably the wrong person to ask since I don't read reviews.

Never, really.

No.

But it is odd.

I think that anyone ever felt compelled to substitute maestro with maistre.

I mean, we don't call women astronauts, astronettes, but as to the question of gender bias, I really have nothing to complain about, nor, for that matter, should Maren Alsop, Joanne Folletta, Laurence El-Kilbey, Natalie Stutzman.

There's so many incredible women who came before us, women who did the real lifting.

That's fascinating.

Who, for instance?

Okay.

Sure.

First and foremost, Nadia Boulanger.

I mean, that would be the happy example.

The sad one would be Antonia Brico, who, by all accounts, was an incredible conductor, but was ghettoized into the non-glamorous status of guest conductor, and essentially treated as a dog act.

She never got the chance to lead a major orchestra.

Yes.

Yes, she did conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, as well as the Met, but, again, only as a guest conductor.

I mean, at that time, it was all gender spectacle, but fortunately, times change, and the Pauline conversion is, if not complete, then it's evolving nicely.

No less, having fallen off its horse.

Liddy, could we talk a little bit about translation, because I think there are still people who think of the conductor as a kind of human metronome.

Well, that's partly true, but the end of keeping time, it's no small thing.

But I suspect there's a lot more to it than that.

I would hope so, yes, but time is the thing.

Time is the essential piece of interpretation.

You cannot start without me.

I start the clock.

My left hand shapes, but my right hand, the second hand, marks time and moves it forward.

However, unlike a clock, sometimes my second hand stops, which means that time stops.

Now, the illusion is that, like you, I'm responding to the orchestra in real time, making the decision about the right moment to restart the thing or reset it or throw time out the window altogether.

The reality is that right from the very beginning, I know precisely what time it is and the exact moment that you and I will arrive at our destination together.

The only real discovery for me is in rehearsal.

It's never in performance.

Hard question, I know, but if you could define one thing that Bernstein gave you, what would it be?

Kavanaugh.

Yeah, it's the Hebrew word for attention to meaning or intent.

What are the composer's priorities and what are yours, and how do they complement one another?

Right, Kavanaugh.

I think that's a word that will have slightly different meaning for many in our audience.

Well, yes.

Yes, I imagine so.

Am I right in thinking that a conductor was not always an onstage presence in classical music?

No, that's right.

I think I read someplace that it actually was the first violin for a long time.

Yes, the first violinist, whether they had any interest or skill in it or not.

When did that change and who changed it?

With the French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully, who reportedly used a rather enormous, rather pointy staff to pound the tempi into the floor.

It's not something I imagine the player has particularly appreciated.

Anyway, that technique ended during a performance when Lully accidentally stabbed himself in the foot with the thing and died of gangrene.

But anyway, the conductor really becomes essential as the ensembles get bigger.

Once again, we go back to Beethoven.

Now, that doesn't start with the eighth note.

The downbeat, it's silent.

So someone had to start that clock.

Someone had to plant their flag in the sand and say, follow me.

And when that someone was Lenny, the orchestra was led on the most extraordinary tour of pleasures, because he knew the music, Mahler especially, as well or better than anyone.

And he would often play with the form, because he wanted an orchestra to feel that they had never seen, let alone heard or performed any of that music.

So he would do radical things, like disregarding the tempo primo or ending this phrase molto ritardando, even though it had no such marking.

Was he over-egging it?

Oh, no, no, no, not at all.

He celebrated the joy of his discovery.

You told us a moment ago that your discovery takes place in rehearsal.

When will that process begin again for you?

We start on Monday.