Evil lurks in monster's eyes
he has plans for those he spies ...
tender skins are what he's after,
strung like toys across his rafter.

I gave up the count of my own performances. I am sure I have made hundreds. Performances were counted by EMI when they released the CD in 1997. It came to nearly a thousand. Since that time, it must have been four or five hundred more. It is definitely one of the most performed pieces of contemporary music.

No. Probably I'm better since I did it in Tanglewood in 1980. I am a better actor now. I have a lot of experience with the stage. I work a lot with singers and actors. So I think I do it much better, more convincing.

Also, I'm lucky in that I have very good orchestra partners. It's now the first time for me to do it with the San Francisco Symphony. That's an old favorite orchestra of mine. I'm a fan of American symphony orchestras since my childhood. The very first Stravinsky performances I heard when I was 12 were played by American orchestras. I really couldn't stand hearing Austrian or European orchestras, because the American orchestras — they played much more sexy! The difference between European and American orchestras is that in America, the orchestras have a much longer tradition of playing music that is dominated by rhythmical elements.

I know the San Francisco orchestra because I listened with big interest to the first recordings of music by John Adams, with members of the San Francisco Symphony: Harmonielehre with Edo De Waart. [That is how] I discovered one of my favorite composers, John Adams. It's a big honor for me to call myself a fan of him, and a friend. I conduct his music also. I conducted Harmonielehre two times, and also Slonimsky's Earbox, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and Chairman Dances.

My background goes back to a kind of battle against the stupidity of the Central European avant-garde. You know there's a central community and politburo that tells in which direction modern music has to go. In the 1960s, I decided to ignore them, because they said it is not possible to write tonal music anymore. And I thought tonality is an ancient device. It has the same age like the human beings. Why should I give up tonality? Tonality is the possibility to speak to everybody on this world without any dictionary. We have nothing to translate. Frankenstein!! was in fact my very first international success, and it was one of the first tonal pieces I wrote.

I have found audiences everywhere on this planet, and I'm completely independent from these experts. From time to time, I'm very amused when they make their festivals for new music and I see always again these 40 experts. And they do not change their faces. Every time since the last 40, 50 years, the same faces. Can you imagine these stern faces? And I have not a very big wish to confront these faces in my own concerts, where I see happy faces, people who are laughing, people who are understanding the humor.

Making a piece funny doesn't mean I'm not serious. I must confess I am the most serious person I ever met! But my language is telling serious stories with some funny elements in it, ja? So that's the only difference. But I would call my music very, very serious.

Children take the piece one by one, but grown-up people can read behind the lines, and they might find hidden political statements. The interesting thing: These poems were written in 1968. This was a time when youngsters like me were against the establishment, ja? Like the Beatles and flower power. That was the time when I was very, very young. And in these texts, when there were hidden statements, it meant the political situations in 1968. But now, in these days, in addition to what the music is bringing to this text, the text is suggesting political problems of our days. But since the message is hidden, everybody can construct his own message.

H.C. Artman belongs to a group of poets that was called the Viennese Group. They developed the idea of "sound poems," composing "music" with only words. When you read Artman's poems, you will discover a musical element in his texts. And he brought me to the idea of making a theater piece on an empty stage. Only the sound of the words. And the people who are conveying the words, the actors, are imagining theater. Frankenstein!! is a kind of imaginary theater based on this idea.

The English translation was made by Harriett Watts, an American. She was a teacher at Boston University, a specialist in Dadaism and the Viennese Group. She was an expert in Artman. She translated the German original into a very American slang language.

In a text by Artman, each word has to be understood. If you go into an opera house, normally you don't understand each word. I work a lot with singers. I make workshops with singers. The goal always is we have to make sure that we make each word understandable. It's the onomatopoetic quality of each word that makes the imagination so rich.

Artman himself told me after a performance, "The orchestra, when I concentrate on the text, for me is a moving sculpture." That was, for me, a sign to ask my musicians — now next time in San Francisco I will tell to the orchestra — please, be never private on stage during these 30 minutes of performance. Because the audience discovers you as a moving sculpture. Whatever you do with your fiddle bow, or the bassoon (which could be a gun with a bayonet), or the tam-tam (which could be a moon), and so on — whatever the musicians are doing on stage, the listener is including, integrating to his own creation of imaginary theater. Everybody has to be concentrating. Everybody has to do it in a poker-faced manner. No smile on stage. Like Buster Keaton, ja? The whole orchestra has to be a Buster Keaton orchestra. In the piece, there are many, many passages where the orchestra has to remain frozen, ja? Nobody's allowed to move. So this is very theatrical.

For instance, after the tango movement, 13 musicians of the orchestra are jumping up. They are having plastic hosepipes and making this plastic hosepipe noise. And when they come to end, they have to stand still for 12 seconds, and have no movement, ja? That is a very interesting moment, and I always wait for reactions in the audience. The reactions are sometimes, "Oh, what's going on?" or big laughter, or other people are snorting. Or this kind of reaction: "Are we allowed to laugh or not?" It is because everyone has their own associations.

It is absolutely just a gossip, as I have no evidence if that is true. Gruber is a very common name. If you come to Vienna and you look into the telephone book, you find hundreds of Grubers. I decided to have a double forename. So the H.K. comes from Heinz Karl, my original two names, to make the Gruber a little bit serious sounding, ja? But when I was very young, I thought I should make an artist name of Gruber and read it from the other side, so it would have been Reburg. The sound would have been much more interesting. But then I thought, "Oh, that doesn't make you a good composer. Try to be a good composer, and then it is not important if your name is an interesting name or not."