Christian Thielemann: Germany's most sought-after conductor I ask Thielemann how he would define the orchestra's uniquely cultivated sound. It's typically soft, and never brutal. There are several reasons for this, and the main one is that they play opera. Playing opera means that you have to react - and a good opera orchestra player has to listen to what the soprano or tenor is delivering each evening. The Dresdeners are trained, as with the Vienna Philharmonic, to play a different opera every evening, and it's a test of flexibility. If the right conductor is in front of them, you can get many things you won't manage with a symphonic orchestra. And Thielemann, 53, is that "right conductor," a figure in demand at the world's smartest musical addresses: his regular circuit includes the Berlin Philharmonic, Bayreuth, Salzburg and Vienna in addition to Dresden, an itinerary equalled in the past only by his mentor, Karajan. Like Karajan, too, he has enjoyed a warm relationship with the Philharmonia in London, but scheduling has meant we haven't heard him here for several years. After a tumultuous decade that has seen the ever-controversial Thielemann fall out with the managements of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (where he was Generalmusikdirektor from 1997 to 2004) and Munich Philharmonic (Generalmusikdirektor, 2004-11), Dresden - with its calmer musico-political air - seems like a good place for him. But calm is a relative thing, and the recent announcement that Rattle is to step down from Berlin in 2018 has opened the floodgates of speculation. Whichever way you look at the situation, Thielemann is an obvious and leading contender for the Berlin Philharmonic, best placed to restore its Teutonic credentials, if that is what the orchestra wants. Whether Thielemann wants it is still far from clear, though it is hard to imagine him resisting the lure of Karajan's old orchestra. Dresden is a place where you can concentrate on art, Berlin is about politics. I do feel the difference being here, and I'm so lucky to work in this ambience. In Berlin I hated all the supposed Barenboim-Rattle-Thielemann rivalry. I've never been envious of the others, because we've all got so much to do and we all need to say "no" 10 times every day. It's liberating to be in Dresden. But how different will things feel with the Dresdeners at Salzburg? The combination is very different. Now you have an experienced opera orchestra, with an experienced opera conductor. So much for old rivalries having been buried. Advance bookings for this year's Easter Festival were boosted by the prospect of Thielemann taking the helm, and as the German-speaking world's most idolised conductor, with a loyal audience just down the autobahn in Munich, he is certain to take the audience with him. Parsifal will also be televised live, something that would have never have happened in the Rattle era. For anyone nostalgic about the Karajan years at Salzburg, this new era at the Easter Festival is likely to have a reassuringly familiar aura about it, while for Thielemann things must feel as if they have come full circle. It was at the Easter Festival in the early Eighties that he assisted Karajan on Parsifal and Der fliegende Holländer. He had been introduced to the maestro at the tender age of 16. The first piece of advice he gave was to go back and finish school. A year later he said, "Yes, you'll be a conductor, but you'll need to study things with singers." A year after I left school, I became Karajan's assistant. They were without a pianist for Parsifal, so everything began from there. When he worked with singers in Berlin I played; when singers came to audition for him, I was there at the piano. I learnt a lot from him, and Karajan also taught me about another kind of flexibility - that you can never do exactly what you want as a conductor! Having wondered how best to raise the subject of podium dictatorship with a conductor known for being a bit autocratic and moody, I needn't have worried. It's about leadership rather than dictatorship. In an age when the great monsters of the podium have gone the way of dinosaurs, conductorial charisma has vanished with them and there are few old-fashioned maestros left. "Ja, ja," he says wistfully, "old-fashioned is a wonderful word, and there is a need for it still. Conducting is not a democratic profession. Thielemann has relished many past controversies, but not the one in which he was accused of making anti-Semitic remarks about Barenboim. He has always denied them, and their timing - at one of those moments when the Berlin scene was in a state of flux - certainly led to widespread suspicion that other forces were at play. He remains grateful to Barenboim for taking him to Bayreuth - the senior conductor, for his part, is known to rate Thielemann's Beethoven interpretations higher than those of any other contemporary conductor - and such remarks are unlikely to have come from one who has enjoyed a close working relationship with the Israel Philharmonic. Despite the solidly German Romantic tone of his operatic repertoire over the last decade, Thielemann is keen now to stress his wider interests. He has just conducted his first Italian opera in over a decade (Manon Lescaut in Dresden), but the truth is he spent much of his early career conducting repertoire with which he is no longer associated. When people hear we're planning Italian opera at Salzburg they seem so surprised, but this is a misunderstanding. If they looked back at what I did as a young Kapellmeister, they'd see Traviata, Trovatore, Tosca and Trittico. I did Pagliacci in Nuremberg already, but this is when I got my first Wagner opportunities and became known as the young Wagner conductor. Now if I show an interest in operetta people seem taken by surprise that this goes back a long way. The Salzburg Easter Festival runs from March 23 to April 1; www.osterfestspiele-salzburg.at/en