On August 30, the morning after a concert with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, we met the Austrian conductor and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Manfred Honeck for an interview. It was a typical program for Honeck, who has made his reputation as a vital interpreter of what can only be described as the orchestral warhorses: Wagner’s “Siegfried-Idyll,” orchestrations of Schubert songs (with Matthias Goerne), and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. Honeck is the kind of conductor who can easily compare different versions of various Beethoven biographies. We spoke to him about teaching a youth orchestra, his dissatisfaction with his early approach to rehearsals, and the viola in his life.

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... earned degrees in development studies, Asian studies, and cultural anthropology from universities in Berlin, Seoul, Edinburgh, and London. He is a founder of VAN, where he serves as publisher and editor-in-chief.

… has been an editor at VAN since 2015. He’s the author of The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form (Boydell & Brewer), and his journalism has appeared in The Baffler, the New York...