Jaap van Zweden

Scofield: Just before our interview began, one of your colleagues here asked me a question, and I said, “let’s ask Jaap,” because that’s a really good question and she wanted to know, how do you teach people to enjoy classical music and how do you open them up to Wagner?

van Zweden: I think that starts already when young children start to sing in a chorus at school. I think that’s important. It makes your heart open for music. But more important, I think, is you become a more social person when you sing, when you do something together, and you create something when you sing in a chorus.

I remember as a young boy singing in a chorus at school. It really opened my heart to music, number one; number two is that, I think there is absolutely a road to Wagner. We have to understand as parents, that we feed our children every day, and that’s very good, but we should realize that we also should feed the soul, and to feed the soul of a human, we do that with art. Not only music, not only classical music, it can be Frank Sinatra, it doesn’t matter. Go to the museum, go to see from where we came, what did our great-great-great-great-grandparents do. I think art, overall, is food for our soul, and especially food for the children’s soul. And so, if we realize that with the children, then we can without any doubt, I can say, that we will create a human race which still loves music.