How to be a woke conductor
mainEdward Gardner rehearsing ‘pourquoi me reveiller’ this morning with Juan Diego Florez.
These days, does it get better?
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Edward Gardner is from the time-honoured tradition of repetiteur, choir director, accompanist and ultimately, conductor. Nothing beats moving up the ranks.
In an ideal world, all conductors should have moved through the ranks, either as instrumentalist, repetiteur or, as some have done, singer. You have to earn the right to remain silent while making music.
Gardner is the real deal. Doubters best reconsider.
Agree totally.
Can’t imagine Muti having a discussion with one of his singers.
There is a youtube video of Solti rehearsing with Te Kanawa and Terfel, and Solti ever the strict count beater, wanted Terfel to sing a passage the way Solti wanted it, so he took out a metronome and played it to Terfel like he was some 5 year old child. The look on Terfel’s face said: If the camera weren’t filming this, I’d shoved this metronome so far down your throat…
Muti? He’s a fine pianist and has worked quite a lot with singers throughout his career.
Right. Muti is well-known for playing his own coaching sessions.
There seems to be no video linked…this is not the first time here with that issue.
yes, there is.
No, there isn’t…it is blank where the video should be. Please post the link because clearly the imbedded files do not seem to always work on every browser.
Brilliant. I notice he starts all his
criticismssuggestions from a basis of Florez’s strength: “I love the way you…” and then convinces Florez to want what he wants, instead of just asking him to “do it like this.” It’s almost as if he — gasp! — sees value in what Florez is already doing, and wants to help him get even more of what he (Florez) wants out of the music, so that he (Gardner) can get more of what he wants out of the music.I see two advantages to this approach: singers will love working with you and want to do so again, and they will be likely to take your ideas and incorporate them into their interpretation for the future. Gardner might hear Florez sing Werther in the future somewhere and be able to say (if he’s not too humble): “ah, I taught him that…”
— In contrast with the Muti/Solti/ et al. approach, where the singer’s memory of working with the conductor is more likely to be “he insisted I do this, he wouldn’t let me do that… a genius interpretation overall, but I felt like a cog in the machine and not an artist making a contribution.”
This is obviously a “staged” rehearsal…or staged “rehearsal”…
Yes, clearly. But if Gardner was an idiot, he would have sounded like one regardless.
Yes, thank you everyone for your insightful comments – very kind. I have only one – Florez is a wonderful singer in many roles , but he is wrong for this part and does not have the right voice , by a mile. Everything sounds painful and contrived. The rest is pretentious cocktail conversation.
I agree he doesn’t naturally have the voice for it, but inwardly I’m rooting for him to be able to push himself successfully in this direction. I don’t expect him to succeed, in the sense of becoming the next Beczala or whoever, but it would be nice to hear him move a little bit beyond his “songbird” roles if he can. I think the answer is more tone colors & expression within the voice he has, not in trying to increase the size of his instrument.
(IMHO the soprano Barbara Hendricks was able to do this to some degree and expand beyond her natural Sophie/ Pamina/ Zerlina jewel box into roles normally taken by bigger — not big, but bigger —- voices. She has a lovely recording of the Strauss 4 Last Songs with Sawallisch/ Philadelphia, for instance: not sure how audible it would have been in the concert hall, but artistically she’s very much up to the job, and I find it very satisfying to listen to — more so than some singers with big voices who just pour sound all over it.)
How’s that for pretentious cocktail conversation? 😉
What about the French diction? Anyone? Really? No comment???
It’s pretty shaky in parts but EG was never going to mention either that or anything approaching vocal suitability in what is clearly a staged rehearsal advertising creative talents working at the ROH. Nonetheless, Gardner is clearly an accomplished coach and it was nice to see him playing from a full score.
Not really bad, not really good. Beside that, JDD is adding his name to a long list of tenors singing a wrong C#-D#-C#-F# instead of the written C#-D(natural)-C#-F# in the last climactic phrase, both times. Nobody seems to care anymore about that nowadays, while back in the past, those gentlemen had it right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l710gz_HEwg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkE4j2BugM0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhS8KbR5w8o
and even (despite some rhythmical approximations) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIna_XqQpyw
(…the three last being remembered as “the three corsicans tenors”).
Serious pitch problem that JDF did not have just a few years ago: here he sings mostly flat in all of the softer passages which robs his voice of its natural beauty.
Lovely. Brought memories of Alain Vanzo and Richard Crooks.
Musician is right about Muti, whose practse was to accompany his own rehearsals. Once when all four tenors of Muti’s quad-cast “Forza” were away or ill, Muti sang the part himself at rehearsal. Albert Innaurato in “Opera News” wrote, “… and it was the best singing heard in La Scala that day.” Jose Cura was one of the absentees. Tebaldi and Gencer sat out front with Innaurato.
Marco Armiliato does it, too. Another one who knows his scores inside out.
Be still, my beating heart!!
This days, does it get better?
Yes, it does, when you have a tenor suitable for the part.
I love JDF in belcanto roles, but even that is wearing thin with the nasal sound and rather bland tone. Here he is straining with the piano and probably will have difficulty being heard over the orchestra as he was in la Traviata at the Met. Gardner’s coaching is excellent and spot on.
To compare:
https://youtu.be/zTWAKCfalZE
Thanks for sharing. Maybe the title could be reconsidered?