Klarinet Archive - Posting 000149.txt from 1998/12

From: Ken Wolman <Ken.Wolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Fwd: Do conductors need a union?
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 14:05:32 -0500

KlarBoy@-----.com wrote:

> Perhaps most amazing is Charles Dutoit, who serves as artistic
> director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, musical director of
> the Orchestra National de France and the artistic director and
> principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra's summer season
> in Saratoga. In his spare time, Mr. Dutoit likes to guest conduct.

There are others who "double on brass." James Levine, the Principal
Conductor and Artistic Director of the Metropolitan Opera, I believe is
also the new Principal Conductor of a major German orchestra: Hamburg?
I'm not certain which one. He is still all over the Met, even though a
lot of people wish he'd quit opera because the quality of his conducting
(and the sound of the orchestra on nights he directs) have declined in
the last few years. Simple burn-out, perhaps, and the orchestra knows
him almost TOO well.

To fill in, the Met appointed Valery Gergiev as co-Principal. Gergiev
is one of the world's greatest opera conductors. I have heard his Verdi
as well as his Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tschaikovsky, etc., and he's
marvelous: when he conducted the Queen of Spades revival at the Met in
1995, the orchestra sounded better than his Kirov orchestra in the same
music (and boy, does Queen of Spades have some wonderful work for the
bass clarinet!). But Gergiev, besides being the virtual Music God and
star-maker of St. Petersburg (he is responsible for developing the
career of Olga Borodina), also is (or was?) music director of the
Rotterdam Philharmonic. Has he given this up? I don't know, but he is
much in demand.

All these guys overextend themselves. As for Domingo, he doesn't live
on the same planet as the rest of us. I saw/heard him on October 1 at
the Met sing a Samson so fresh in tone that he sounded 37, not 57; and
the next night he was in the pit conducting Aida. I gather conducting
is not his long suit; but he's been known to sing a Saturday matinee,
shower, eat dinner, and then conduct the evening performance.

> The Philadelphia Orchestra was led by Leopold Stokowski, who
> reigned supreme for 26 years until 1938, when Eugene Ormandy
> succeeded him -- and stayed for 42. George Szell had a similar
> role in shaping Cleveland into a great musical city, as did Fritz
> Reiner in Chicago.

Reiner did some guest turns at the Met, also, in the last 1940s and '50s
until he and the late Rudolf Bing had a falling out because, apparently,
Reiner wanted carte blanche to fire musicians, and Local 802 Be Damned.
In fairness to Reiner, the Met orchestra of that period tended to be
sloppy and careless. Reiner, I believe, was not invited back. Someone
once said to Bing "Maestro Reiner is his own worst enemy." Bing replied
"Not as long as I'm alive."

Amazingly(?), some conductors turned that orchestra around, even in its
bad periods. Leopold Stokowski made his Met debut in 1961 conducting
Puccini's Turandot, and the difference between the sounds was
mindboggling. The same thing happened when Georg Solti came in 1963 to
conduct Verdi's Otello: pure magic. When Levine took over the orchestra
in the early 1970s, he raised the standard so on MOST evenings now the
orchestra can be counted on to play at least well for anyone holding the
baton (except Simone Young) and, for conductors like Gergiev, Kleiber,
and Mackerras, brilliantly.

> Today, by contrast, conductors tend to have a much more tenuous
> relationship with their home cities. Rather than live in some
> backwater, they jet in and out for rehearsals and conduct 30
> performances a year there instead of 100. For nine months at a
> stretch, they are somewhere else.

Is the professional sports analogy appropriate? How many players in any
major sport end their careers nowadays in the same place it began?

> As the income of top performers of all kinds has risen
> exponentially, the old patterns of indenture have fallen away. The
> ability of a Zubin Mehta ($6 million plus per year) or a Charles
> Barkley ($4.6 million) to make really big money has led to a
> system of free agency.

And there we are.

ken
--
Ken Wolman dbtrader Deutsche Bank, N.A.
1251 Sixth Avenue New York, NY 10019 212-469-6494

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
--Jane Kenyon

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