Something for the weekend? The conductor who goes with the flow
mainDefinitely one for the New York Philharmonic shortlist.
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Reminds one of Dudamel
This scene will be familiar to any orchestral musician, particularly the very first bit when, the first chord having just sounded, the conductor stops to make some pointless remark.
To be fair, not only what you wrote, but we’ve also seen conductors handle awfully, um, strange results from the orchestra. Often it involves misprints in the parts. Sometimes it involves clueless, inattentive, or unprepared musicians. Rarely (I hope) this can include musicians purposively testing the conductor.
Just brilliant!
The cartoon is not so inappropriate. A certain large-sized tenor who played in arenas would inexplicably have a large music stand brought on at the end of each concert. The audience no doubt thought it was some score or other until he would launch into a parade of Neapolitan songs, songs he must have sung a thousand times during his career. Yet Pavarotti could not read music. Nor could he remember words. Consequently, those music stand boards had the words in large letters of such difficult items as “Torna a Sorriento”. “O Sole Mio” etc.!
“Yet Pavarotti could not read music. Nor could he remember words.”
The nonsense some people come up with – amazing.
The latter seems implausible.
However, the former appears to be documented. One example:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/573390/Pavarotti-confesses—he-cannot-read-music.html?pg=all
The dude would liven up The New York Philharmonic, hire him. Any thoughts
from anybody on the current conductor?
This conductor dude would liven up The New York Philharmonic, hire him!
Any thoughts from anyone on the tenure of the current one?
Pavarotti couldn’t in fact read music. It’s not so strange. In fact, many great italian opera singers from the past couldn’t. But they had damn good coaches!
must have watched this now at least ten times…. and I’m still laughing! Shall send it to all the conductors I know 🙂
Years ago on the Ed Sullivan television show,
the Musical Director was not very good, and was not particularly nice or grateful to the Musicians.
After one of his outbursts, a member of the orchestra said to him…….”If you’re not nice to us we’ll follow you tonight”