Lorin Maazel to orchestra: ‘My stubbornness is greater than your incompetence’

Levi Hammer is a young conductor who worked with the late maestro at the Castleton Festival. He has sent us a third intimate memoir to complement those we have published by a cellist and a violinist.

Here’s a sample paragraph:

He wasn’t a natural teacher, and he often couldn’t explain his legendary stick technique, at least not in terms of mere mechanics.  Instead he taught “the craft,” the innumerable individual skills that go into “the profession,” (both terms he used regularly).  He lamented the decline of the profession: that modern conductors no longer know the languages of the operas they conduct, that the fundamental skill of fluently reading a score is a rarity, that the basic study of harmony and counterpoint is neglected, that the exacting standards of the giants of his youth (especially de Sabata and Toscanini, whom he always called “Arturo”) have declined.  And despite my probing for him to name names, he gentlemanly remained silent, though he didn’t hide his approval of Gustavo Dudamel. 

Now read on here.