I was extremely fortunate to spend two years studying conducting with one of the most promintent living teachers of the art form, Gustav Meier. This week I’m reliving that unparalleled learning experience through his new book, The Score, the Orchestra and the Conductor. If you have any interest whatsoever in the art and technique of conducting this is a publication you should seek out.
You Will Be Assimilated: Movement of the hands of conductor Riccardo Chailly while conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No 4, first movement. Carnegie Hall, New York City, 10 February 2000. By Morgan O’Hara. More here.
Last month at an LA Phil concert led by Gustavo Dudamel I thought I saw Alex Ross in the lobby of Disney Hall. Turns out it was him, and this is what he heard:
Although Dudamel has the image of an impulsive conductor, a wild man of lunging arms and dancing feet, his musical choices tend to be controlled, sometimes a little predictable. He favored a lush, heavy sound in Mozart [Symphony no. 40], as on old Karajan records. Tempos were on the slow side. For the most part this Mozart needed punchier rhythms, cleaner dynamic contrasts, sharper details of articulation and phrasing. The Berg [Violin] Concerto, too, was curiously subdued. You might have expected Dudamel to wallow more in the veiled Mahlerian drama of Berg’s orchestral writing.
It seems Alex and I felt the same way about those performances of Mozart and Berg, though I did expect both orchestra and conductor to be tremendous in the unbridled finale of Mozart 40 and they did not disappoint. Dudamel is certainly gifted, but given his unprecedented amount of experience on the podium and the ‘breathless reports’ emanating from his concerts I expected more urgent interpretive insight.
One real downside of the frenzy surrounding The Dude [and something I’ve noted elsewhere] is the near-total media silence on Esa-Pekka Salonen’s primary role in shaping the LA Phil into to ‘the most interesting orchestra in America.’ Indeed, SoCal symphonic audiences are much indebted to him for the fact that ‘in L.A. no messiah is required; this orchestra has already been saved.’
Update: This is what Salonen’s been up to since his final concert with the Philharmonic last spring.
This blog is a 21st-century conductor’s perspective on orchestral music. So what better way for me to broaden my ongoing consideration of the music of Gustav Mahler than to bring in the voices of other contemporary conductors?
Visit Vimeo to view interviews
The music publisher Universal Edition has recorded a series of videos with leading conductors discussing their connections to Mahler’s music for a website celebrating the Mahler centennary in 2010/11. Here are all of the UE interviews, featuring Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Esa Pekka-Salonen, Kent Nagano, Jonathan Nott, Michael Tilson Thomas, Christoph Eschenbach, Daniel Barenboim, David Zinman, Ingo Metzmacher, Franz Welser-Möst, Daniel Gatti and Wolfgang Fink. View them individually at Vimeo.
England’s Guardian, home to the finest classical music coverage on the planet and one of my favored media outlets, has been busily checking out maestros on the London scene. Ed Vullaimy annoints Valery Gergiev ‘the greatest conductor of his generation’, and offers this interview with the man himself:
Tom Service of the same publication follows up with a piece about Bernard Haitink, a venerable conductor of another generation who, according to musicians with whom he works, ‘doesn’t say much during rehearsals, but makes them play with more concentration, intensity and freedom.’ [Aside from that quote, my favorite tidbit from this profile is that Haitink has an iPhone.]
The Daily Beast’s Rachel Syme hears from Alan Gilbert about his efforts to help the New York Philharmonic become ‘more youthful, more accessible, and more involved with the city.’ [Embedded in this article is a photo feature on the ‘young rock stars’ of conducting today. Unsurprisingly, all are repped by major talent agencies - looks like I need to get myself a publicist with connections!]
Anastasia Tsioulcas reports on female conductors for Variety, noting that despite recent high-profile opportunities for maestras ‘the number of young women studying to become conductors still lags far behind female instrumentalists, singers or even composers.’
Finally, in the best piece of the lot LA Times music critic Mark Swed offers some much-needed perspective on Gustavo Dudamel and the outlook for his future, positing that he ‘is not going to walk on water and he is not going to single-handedly save an art form that has no need of life support.’
Now you know why that person beside you is waving an iPhone in cut time. More on the new Gustavo Dudamel app and the live webcast of his October 3 Hollywood Bowl concert at the conductor’s LA Phil microsite. [via Life’s a Pitch]
Star Wars + Lego + Orchestra
Could this be the raison d’être of my blog?
I just stumbled across an interesting commentary on changes to expectations about conductors’ ages by Henry Fogel, former president of the League of American Orchestras:
Somehow lost [in recent decades] was the idea of superb conductors developing their careers in smaller orchestras, either in the U.S. or in Europe. An excellent conductor at the age of 45, but one who had not yet achieved ‘stardom,’ came to be seen as passé. There are probably many conductors who will reach the height of their artistry in their 40s or 50s.We do a lot of damage to our art form if we consider them ‘has beens’ before they ever were.
No surprise here – I agree with Henry that ‘we must, as a field, rethink this.’
