Symphonies & Scorpions: A Modest Beginning

WELCOME! THIS IS THE FIFTH DAILY INSTALLMENT OF SYMPHONIES & SCORPIONS: AN INTERNATIONAL CONCERT TOUR AS AN INSTRUMENT OF CITIZEN DIPLOMACY.               


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A Modest Beginning

[image error]BOSTON, Monday, April 14


I had an inkling it was going to be a long day when I overheard the following exchange at the table next to me while breakfasting at Salt Lake City International Airport, waiting for Delta Flight 1210 to Boston:


Haughty Customer (jabbing at the menu): Excuse me. What’s this number next to the item? Patient Waiter: That would be the price, ma’am.


On the other hand, it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you’re stuck in a plane seat for four hours with no phone, no computer, no nuthin’. I make substantive progress on music I’m composing for the Moab Music Festival. Little do I realize my preoccupation with this project will turn out to be a blessing in disguise, as a half hour before we land in Boston the woman seated next to me tells me she noticed that I had been working and had refrained from “disturbing me” until I was finished. She then proceeded to yack nonstop until the plane parked at the gate, having been released from her vow of silence.


From Logan Airport, I hop on a rush hour subway and take the T to the boarding house in Brookline where I’ll be staying the next two weeks. Somehow, regardless of all the repair and maintenance—I refrain from using the word improvements—the city has made in its subway system over the past forty years since I first lived in Boston, it has somehow miraculously retained the same dingy, creaking, screeching, slower-than-molasses, charmingly-in-decline ambiance. Schlepping my forty-pound suitcase, computer attaché, and violin doesn’t make life any easier, but eventually I arrive unscathed at the mildly disheveled boarding house, which matches the feel of the T, to a T.


[image error]

With my BSO buddy, Ronan Lefkowitz (left.) In the old days, we were occasionally referred to as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.


Rabbit Out of the Hat                                                                                                                    The hectic day ends with some very positive news: My cross-country trip will not have been in vain. Tony Fogg has done it again, engaging Maestro Charles Dutoit to replace Lorin Maazel both in Boston and on tour, with nary a change to the repertoire. There’s a slight rearrangement of the rehearsal schedule in order to accommodate Dutoit, who is polishing off some concerts in Germany. But considering what the collateral damage could’ve been, those changes don’t even register a blip. As I later learned from Lynn, the whole tour might well have been canceled had they not been able to recruit Dutoit.


Un Dutoit                                                                                                                                                I have the good fortune to have worked with Maestro Dutoit many, many times over the years and through most of his hair color changes. Though some years younger than the octogenarian Maazel, Dutoit is no spring chicken, but he has nevertheless managed to retain a vigorous conducting style. The BSO has performed the gamut of the repertoire with him, with memorable performances of the French masterpieces for which he is renowned: Symphonie fantastique, Damnation of Faust, La Mer, La Valse, Mother Goose. The list goes on. He has also conducted thoroughly enjoyable performances of music from Mozart to Stravinsky. Just a few summers ago at Tanglewood he conducted one of the most charming and sensitive performances of the Mozart Symphony No. 29 in A Major that I’ve ever heard or played. In fact, I had the opportunity to conduct it several months later in Salt Lake City in a program of Mozart and his less known contemporaries, Cimarosa and Myslivecek. Dutoit’s approach most assuredly influenced my interpretation—but please don’t tell that to the musicians.


Though Dutoit, a professional in the best sense, always knows precisely what he wants and insists on a very high standard, his relationship with the BSO hasn’t always been warm and fuzzy. (Not that relations between musicians and conductors are ever warm and fuzzy, or even need to be.) Many years ago, Dutoit conducted Stravinky’s Petruoushka, a piece the BSO can play blindfolded, in the dark, with eyes closed. Maybe not with hands behind the back. Nevertheless, Dutoit was in a particularly prickly, picky mood at one of the rehearsals, and with the BSO maybe that wasn’t such a winning combination. At least on that day.


In any event, on several occasions he asked the one of the veteran musicians—one of the world’s sweetest ladies and now long-retired—to play this phrase a little differently and that note a little differently. At one point when he stopped her, she said, in a tone unmistakable for its acerbity, “What do you want now?”


But that wasn’t the end of it.


“Madame, don’t you like this music?” Dutoit asked, a little too sarcastically.


She stood up—in itself a very nervy thing to do—and said, with voice shaking: “I’ve played Petroushka all my life, and have always loved it. But you’ve just ruined it for me.”


You could have cut a knife through the silence. I think Dutoit was more surprised than angry at the outburst, and I believe felt badly that his criticisms had been heavy-handed.


Though it’s almost unheard of for even the most cantankerous musician to unload on any conductor, even the bottom feeders, it’s an example of the ever-present dynamic tension between the musicians and the conductor. Fortunately, the Petroushka incident got ironed out and the performance was terrific. And the audience had no idea.


Conductors don’t need to be, or expect to be liked by everyone in the orchestra. The essential qualification to be called Maestro is the respect for, not necessarily agreement with, a conductor’s musicianship. Though many conductors may not have been successful instrumentalists, the instrument they play with virtuosity is the orchestra itself.


Dutoit fits the bill. There is no question he’s the most accomplished musician on the stage. There are times, however, when like many conductors he can seem a bit pompous. For musicians, who universally take vicarious delight at conductors’ comeuppance, there are a couple of humorous though uncorroborated stories of exchanges between an elderly Jewish Montreal Symphony violinist (whose name I can’t remember) and Dutoit when he was its music director.


The story goes that Dutoit did not like this violinist’s playing. One day they were rehearsing a contemporary piece of great rhythmic complexity. Dutoit stopped the orchestra and, singling out this gentleman who appeared bewildered, said: “Sir, do you know where we are?” To which the violinist replied, “Oh, are you lost, too?”


Their relationship deteriorated to the point that Dutoit called him into his office, possibly with the intent of asking him to step down. He said to the violinist, “I’ve been hearing some very negative things about your playing from some of your colleagues.” To which the violinist immediately replied, “Oh, I wouldn’t listen to them if I were you.” “And why not?” Dutoit asked, surprised at such nonchalance. “Because,” said the violinist, “you should hear some of the things they’ve been saying about you!”


Simple, Foolproof Do’s and Don’ts for When You Rehearse the Orchestra.    Performances are generally a simple affair compared to rehearsals, where all the musical knots get untangled. Many excellent conductors, Dutoit included, are very effective and efficient rehearsers. With Dutoit, it’s ninety-five percent playing, five percent talking. The paradoxical inverse relationship between productivity on one hand and minimal talking on the other is easily explained. Good conductors communicate with their hands, and as much information can be transmitted in a single gesture as can be explained in five minutes of verbalizing. So many mediocre conductors feel compelled to explain orally in infinite detail what they are doing, why and how they are doing it, why it is so important, and “what the composer meant.” The reasons for this verbosity are usually 1) they have little experience conducting great orchestras, for whom these tutorials are superfluous time wasters, 2) they are insecure on the podium, and 3) their baton technique is inadequate. Too much talking wastes valuable and expensive time in which the upcoming performance would be better served by just playing the music or even going home early. It also bores the hell out of the orchestra, adversely affecting its involvement even more. I recall the great Thomas Beecham once discussing his rehearsal technique in an interview. I’ll paraphrase: “First, we play straight through the piece, just to let the musicians know how I want it to go. Then I point out a few things that might not have gone according to plan. Then we play it again, and usually it goes perfectly well.” There’s a story that Sir Thomas was once conducting a rehearsal of Brahms Fourth Symphony. He said to the orchestra, “You all know this piece. I don’t think we need to rehearse it.” To which a first-year horn player exclaimed, “But Maestro, I’ve never played Brahms Fourth.” “You’ll love it,” Beecham replied.


***


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Published on July 07, 2020 06:56
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