Klarinet Archive - Posting 000781.txt from 2000/06

From: Kenneth Wolman <kwolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Re: klarinet Digest 20 Jun 2000 08:15:00 -0000 Issue
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 11:53:21 -0400

At 10:47 AM 6/20/00 -0400, you wrote:

> >Do you have a trick to keep the tempo in Shostakovich 6. I usually look at
> >the violins when they play pizzicato since all conductors I have played it
> >with always wave ahead of the strings.
>
>My trick is to play with the conductor. If he's so lousy that he can't keep
>the orchestra together, than he deserves a mess, as do string players who
>can't keep time with the wind solo. I'm sorry if this sounds jaded, but
>I've worked with too many bad conductors who made playing music miserable
>through their incompetance to want to save their asses any more.
>
>Sean-two-weeks-from-a-conductorless-life-Osborn

Well, this is one of those comments I swore I'd never make and/or questions
I would not ask. So sue me, I lied:-). No, I don't think any of us who've
been to the Met in the last few years would ASK you to name names, but
there is undoubtedly a qualitative difference between following a Gergiev,
Levine, Dutoit, or Slatkin and following some of the (I can say this, you
can't?) outright turkeys I've heard over the years, people who could turn a
score into something with the consistency of Elmer's Glue. You would not
think it was the same orchestra from night to night. You'd get a night
when the late Kurt Adler, the then-Chorus Master, would get up on a "second
cast night" and absolutely massacre the dynamics, orchestration, and tempi
of a "tub thumper" like La Gioconda or Il Trovatore ("You mean there are
French horns THERE?"); but the next night Georg Solti would be in the pit
to conduct Otello, and you'd think you were listening to the Chicago
Symphony. In other words, those people could PLAY: they just seemed to
become disspirited at having to play for some of the hacks (at least one of
whom is still very much in evidence) who were on the roster.

And as singers came and went: funny...Aida sounded way different when the
tenor was Dimitr Uzunov (WHO????) as opposed to Carlo Bergonzi or Jon Vickers.

Ken

--------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth Wolman kwolman@-----.com
11 Broadway, New York, NY 10004 212-425-4200, x. 363

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