Classical fans: How important is the conductor?

[DavidMahler]

The conductor can make or break a piece, as can an orchestra or a soloist. But the importance of the conductor's roll is independently significant because the conductor is your messenger more than anyone else. This may come of strange, but picture a piece such as Beethoven's 9th or Brahms 1st as "god's word". Obviously its not god's word, but pretend for a second it is.........the conductor is responsible for translating the notes on the page (god's word into emotion, into structure, and most importantly into musicality. The composer may not be alive anymore to consult so the choices of interpretation are instinctual. If he has a good orchestra and the orchestra and him/her get along well and understand eachother this translation can be met by incredible musicianship and the results can be extremely rewarding. In my opinion, even if you don't love an interpretation of a piece, you can always tell a good conductor, by how nsync the orchestra is with eachother. If the orchestra can play together, cohesively this is the work of a good conductor....granted you still may not like the artistic choices the conductor has made.

All that being said.....if i had to choose between a GREAT conductor conducting a MEDIOCRE orchestra, or a MEDIOCRE conductor conducting a GREAT orchestra, i would choose the latter because.........great orchestras have instincts of their own....even if the conductor is no good it may still land up being an exciting performance. For instance, if you took Carlos Kleiber (wonderful conductor) and threw him a conductor's baton to conduct a bunch of middle school students who couldn't play very well, the results would be worse than if you took a first year conducting student and tossed him on stage with the Vienna Philharmonic.

[Quaddy]

very important, as long as A.S.I.M.O is conducting, i'm all ears!

[Pars]

Originally Posted by tev

The problem today is that resident music directors seem to have less influence in forging a sound with their orchestras than they did 30 or 40 years ago. Perhaps it's the limitations of the unions, financial constraints, limited contracts and the unwillingness of so many conductors to relocate to the cities in which they serve. Real formative directors like Szell, Reiner, Solti, Bernstein, etc. who really built a tradition seem less common these days Yet some of these guys today rake in $2 million dollar salaries. IMO, some are still worth it, especially compared to a lot of ball players.

And some of those conductors on your list had the reputation of being tyrants... a trait which is probably not too PC these days

[bigshot]

A better way to describe it was that they were in complete control, and they were greatly loved and respected by their orchestras. (Well, maybe the most accurate description of Reiner's relationship to his band was "feared", but for some reason that never came through in the music.)

See ya
Steve

[analogbox]

Originally Posted by DavidMahler

All that being said.....if i had to choose between a GREAT conductor conducting a MEDIOCRE orchestra, or a MEDIOCRE conductor conducting a GREAT orchestra, i would choose the latter because.........great orchestras have instincts of their own....even if the conductor is no good it may still land up being an exciting performance. For instance, if you took Carlos Kleiber (wonderful conductor) and threw him a conductor's baton to conduct a bunch of middle school students who couldn't play very well, the results would be worse than if you took a first year conducting student and tossed him on stage with the Vienna Philharmonic.

An interesting thought. I have a record which show a great potential for the orchestra to really shine but the conductor was all but. If I had to choose between even a somewhat skilled conductor conducting an orchestra or just a brilliant orchestra without a conductor, I'd choose the later. A conductor is important but conductor cannot exist without an orchestra but an orchestra can exist without a conductor.

[scompton]

Leonard Slatkin occasionally gives talks after conducting the NSO. They're very informative. After conducting Beethoven's 9th, he talked about fast tempos of HIP versions of Beethoven, and convincing the orchestra to play at a faster tempo than they ever played it before.

Since Slatkin was essentially fired as of the end of this season, and no one they offered the directorship to accepted, I doubt that this tradition will continue. I'll miss it.

[mbriant]

as long as it's a *good* orchestra, basically the orchestra acts as the musical instrument for the conductor, "the artist".

So you're sort of saying the conductor is something like a producer/recording engineer who uses a baton to shape the end result instead of a mixing board?

[Bunnyears]

Originally Posted by DavidMahler

The conductor can make or break a piece, as can an orchestra or a soloist. But the importance of the conductor's roll is independently significant because the conductor is your messenger more than anyone else. This may come of strange, but picture a piece such as Beethoven's 9th or Brahms 1st as "god's word". Obviously its not god's word, but pretend for a second it is.........the conductor is responsible for translating the notes on the page (god's word into emotion, into structure, and most importantly into musicality. The composer may not be alive anymore to consult so the choices of interpretation are instinctual. If he has a good orchestra and the orchestra and him/her get along well and understand eachother this translation can be met by incredible musicianship and the results can be extremely rewarding. In my opinion, even if you don't love an interpretation of a piece, you can always tell a good conductor, by how nsync the orchestra is with eachother. If the orchestra can play together, cohesively this is the work of a good conductor....granted you still may not like the artistic choices the conductor has made.

All that being said.....if i had to choose between a GREAT conductor conducting a MEDIOCRE orchestra, or a MEDIOCRE conductor conducting a GREAT orchestra, i would choose the latter because.........great orchestras have instincts of their own....even if the conductor is no good it may still land up being an exciting performance. For instance, if you took Carlos Kleiber (wonderful conductor) and threw him a conductor's baton to conduct a bunch of middle school students who couldn't play very well, the results would be worse than if you took a first year conducting student and tossed him on stage with the Vienna Philharmonic.

For the most part I will have to disagree with this statement. Depending on the music being played and the size of the ensemble the conductor becomes more important. If you are talking about Bach with one or two instruments per part, then the conductor becomes less important. If, however, you are talking of music from the classical period and later, especially late romantic music such as Mahler with his huge orchestra, having a great conductor is more important than the quality of the orchestra musicians.

Only consider the recordings by Horenstein of Mahler where his orchestra was not the greatest but the performances are so insightful that they rise above the mediocre instrumentalists. I have also heard some lesser or eccentric conductors leading first class ensembles where the conductor's command of the music was so poor, it resulted in rough play and thoroughly mediocre performances. In fact, the world is filled with recordings by great orchestras with lousy conductors that are just awful. Christian Thielemann's recordings come to mind as an example. His ensembles always play extremely well, but it doesn't matter because his musical vision is so eccentric.

[stewtheking]

Having played myself with some good and some GREAT conductors, they are more important than you could ever hope to understand without experiencing it for yourself.

One memorable occasion that really showed me the importance. I was used to playing in a youth orchestra and a symphonic band, both under (different) good conductors, but both very different. Anyway, in the symphonic band we had a party piece, which we all hardly needed the dots for any more. We could nail it, and nail it every time, and it was always brilliant.

So, one night on a tour, the orchestra conductor steps in, just for the hell of it, to conduct this one piece. And the transformation was beyond staggering. We finished playing (audience going predictably wild) and just looked at each other in amazement. It was just that step higher, without us consciously doing anything different apart from following the different conductor. That was what really showed me the difference.

The conductor makes the piece, and a great one can get really startling results from players.

[xenithon]

Interesting description I came across:

The Rise of the Conductor

Conducting is a relatively new practice in the history of classical music. As the eighteenth century came to a close, a new role and persona developed for music directors. Before the 1780s and 1790s, the words conductor and conducting had little or no connection to music. Gradually, the meaning of the words grew to encompass musical direction; and the words acquired new nuances of meaning to coincide with the birth of the modern conductor.

Prior to this development, orchestral and choral directors existed, but they served more as timekeepers than interpreters and often played or sang in the ensembles that they directed. Generally speaking, prior to the late eighteenth century, the job of the musical leader was to maintain an even tempo and mark the beat.

The role was far from consistently fulfilled, and it involved a number of practices in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that appear quite foreign--and even humorous--to our notions of conducting. Musicians often rapped large wooden canes, waved handkerchiefs, or stomped loudly before the baton was introduced in the 1820s and became a standard conducting tool in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In musical periods before the Romantic Era (roughly 1820-1900), the composer typically found himself directing his own works, especially if he served as an official court or church musician. In this tradition, the Kapellmeister (literally "chapel master," or provincial conductor) served in many different musical capacities--composer, orchestral organizer, and conductor. Well-known composers such as Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven often led performances of their music from the keyboard.

As the very structure of classical music began to change, both in terms of the music itself and how it was produced, the roles of composer and conductor grew apart and the conductor began to take on new functions as interpreter of the score and performance coach of the orchestra and choir.

The need for a professional conductor partially grew out of the rhythmic innovations of the music itself. Composers such as Mozart and particularly Haydn and Beethoven began to introduce rhythmic irregularity into their music, altering one of the chief characteristics of the prevailing classical style. As composers experimented more with syncopation (the accenting of "off beats") and rubato (flexibility of tempo), ways of achieving rhythmic unevenness in a work, ensembles had greater need for a director not only to maintain an even tempo and steady beat, but also to guide them through the new style of musical expression that such innovations required.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, musicians also began to rely less on the aristocracy and the church and more on public audiences and concerts for support. The new market for music created new professional and artistic independence from the previous system of patronage, but it also demanded higher standards for musicians and greater accountability. The conductor gradually assumed responsibility for the musicianship of the ensembles he directed. (He, for until recently almost all conductors were male.)

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the conductor became increasingly more influential and powerful. He grew into a celebrity in his own right. He was expected to be a charismatic leader who inspired the orchestra, interpreted the music, and attracted audiences to his ensemble's performances.