Something for the weekend? The conductor who goes with the flow

Something for the weekend? The conductor who goes with the flow

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norman lebrecht

March 28, 2015

Definitely one for the New York Philharmonic shortlist.

conductor

Comments

  • Milka says:

    Reminds one of Dudamel

  • James of Thames says:

    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.

    • William Safford says:

      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.

  • David Murphy says:

    Just brilliant!

  • Nick says:

    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.!

  • William Stribling says:

    The dude would liven up The New York Philharmonic, hire him. Any thoughts
    from anybody on the current conductor?

  • William Stribling says:

    This conductor dude would liven up The New York Philharmonic, hire him!

    Any thoughts from anyone on the tenure of the current one?

  • Novagerio says:

    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!

  • Kiki says:

    must have watched this now at least ten times…. and I’m still laughing! Shall send it to all the conductors I know 🙂

  • Artie Kane says:

    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”

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