Baton cheek: Now Cate Blanchett’s conducting on DG
NewsWho’d have believed it?
The label is releasing music from the film TAR with a phoney conductor on the cover.
Cate Blanchett is credited on the strapline as a DG artist.
What were they thinking?
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As usual, all is done to raise number of mentions in press to make even possibly mediocre film interesting for viewer.
Unfortunately, when it is related to revenue, no one cares for musicians and conductors feelings.
It reminds me when in the 80’s there were video clips with famous singers with some images of a film inside. Sometimes at the end the song and the clip were more famous than the film ahahahah
Btw, could you imagine what they can do to promote Bernstein biopic with Bradley Cooper?
She conducted the recording sessions for the film.
Do your research
Blanchett no more conducted than Russell Crowe did math playing a mathematician.
Just because an actor reproduced a bunch of math formulas from memory, just because an actress aped a bunch of physical movements of conducting, doesn’t mean they understood the math they were looking at or the score they were reading.
I hope you don’t consult actors who play convincing doctors.
She did, indeed, after about few months a “learning” how to conduct. It is almost an offense to conductors who spend years to train in this complicated profession and could not even dream of such exposure, despite them actually being very good in what they do. She’s a brilliant actress, but for DG to vouch like this for her presence in front of an orchestra is like a slap in the face of all the conductors who have ever dared to record Mahler 5. In the end, it is all about the money.
I mean…better this than another musically illiterate Yannick release
Christ… classical music has no idea how to market itself anymore.
A good marketing operation for DG. I’am not impress at all. Rather than to do this kind of things I think that it would clever for them to encourage or to push their star conductors under contracts to make more records. I regret for exemple that Dudamel didn’t make any reords so far with Opera de Paris.
Well he has only just arrived there and even if there are recordings, opera usually takes a while to edit before release.
For Pete’s sakes, the Covid crises is barely over with (if it truly even is). Few labels record full length operas any more. And opera is not about Dudamel or any other stick waver; it’s more about the cast of singers
A bitch with a baton.
Mahler would probably fall in love and then puke his heart out.
As opposed to a misogynist with a computer. Enlightening as usual.
Love your irony! Thanks.
Deplore your malevolence!
“A bitch with a baton.” ????
Wow…. really, dude, WOW.
I think NL must have misdated your comment. Might it have been posted on “September 2, 1622”?
Cate Blanchet’s performance in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine is astounding and in some ways incredibly musical in its pathos and intensity.
you dare to comment on a woman’s performance of a woman character? For you to judge her acting skills one way or the other is a bit of male arrogance; she doesn’t need your applause or approval. Yet again, white cis-gender Western males feel they can evaluate a woman’s performance of a woman being a woman. Mr Osborne, of all contributors, you should know better
“you dare to comment on a woman’s performance of a woman character?”…. and the rest of this comment is a case of tribal fragmentation, and wholly ridiculous.
Gender, identified gender, trans, etc are not barriers to being able to give a fine acting performance, or to recognising one.
We are all humans, and our ability to act, observe, perform, critique…. are not bounded by the nature of our gender.
What will we have next ? How terrible if we start to think women should only play / listen to / review music by female composers, ditto gays for music by gay composers, or Germans re music by German composers etc etc. Even writing this seems ridiculous, but it is the logical extension of the Gerry Fiensteen’s comment.
simple. money…
I would not regard Deutsche Grammophon to be the yellow beacon of musical taste anymore, quite the contrary.
I would say the label is common, coarse, and dubious. Probably run by economists.
Today, the small labels may have more to give in music.
Very odd and confusing. . . as are some of some of Blanchett’s comments about the film.
Oh yeah, and just wait until they release the complete Mahler Symphonies with Bradley Cooper!!!
Maybe Warner could release old material with a real conductor, Bugs Bunny.
Oh lighten up. It’s a soundtrack album. And hey, I wouldn’t put it past Cate Blanchett to learn a small piece and actually conduct it for a recording. Can we stop fooling ourselves for a SECOND and acknowledge that many times a conductor isn’t actually needed. Maybe ever. And I love great conductors. aka, not Yannick.
To be honest, I couldn’t be happier that this film has been made. I was an extra for one of the Tanglewood shoots of Bradley Cooper’s Maestro film. I can’t tell you how disappointing it was that this movie about Bernstein really looks like it will be superficial. I was saying to myself, “if there was ever a chance to make a great film about conducting, this could have been it!” But oh well, Yannick got another chance to be a starf**ker and was onset as a conducting consultant.
And then, under the radar, comes TAR. I will put money on this: Blanchett’s acting/conducting will destroy Cooper’s! And better music too; it’s about a recording session for Mahler 5!
Blanchett did apparently conduct an excerpt from Mahler 5 for the film so I assume that’s what’s included. Not that I expect her to be Furtwängler in terms of interpretation, but how cool is it that she learned how to conduct to the point that she could lead any part of Mahler 5?
Old Willi (Furt) wouldn’t have been caught dead, or alive, conducting Mahler.
It is blasfemic to put Gudnadottir and Elgar in one row with Mahler.
Conductors are actors who mime with a stick
Some conductors just manage the air around them.
Norman, I’m sure you’re aware that you’re punning with some quite offensive, racist terminology in the title of this post. I could care less about Cate Blanchett, but I hope you’ll change the heading.
It is not the first case of phony conductor. At least, she has another and core activity as actress. It is probably a stand alone experience for her, but not a way of life as it is for others.
What ever could Cate possibly be scribbling in that big book of hers?
You’d think she was the composer herself.
They must put Blanchett’s name in the place of Mahler’s, Gudnadottir’s and Elgar’s.
The star gets the bold face top billing! It’s in her contract!
If you identify as, you are!
Maybe you all should just READ the album description before kicking off…. All might become clear.
https://store.deutschegrammophon.com/p51-i0028948634309/hildur-gu-nad-ttir-cate-blanchett-sophie-kauer/tar-music-from-and-inspired-by-the-motion-picture-/index.html
No track listing, but thanks.
Too bad 20th Century Fox didn’t release the soundtrack to the original Unfaithfully Yours from 1948. They could have put Rex Harrison on the cover and sold millions. (Ok, the film was a flop at the box office, but a record would make a neat collectible.)
The next project is K.365 with Miss Wang and LL, Kate conducting. Oh, and it will be recomposed. They are searching for a rapper to provide the booklet notes.
It’s a soundtrack album with the star of the movie on the cover. She happens to be a conductor in the film-cool cover
Wonder who the ” performer ” is registered for the royalties? There must have been a conductor?
Cool!
What were they thinking?
They were thinking what are the search terms most likely to be used on the streaming platforms by people who are wanting to find and listen to this music.
Are we getting close to peak Mahler?
What were they thinking? Profits. New audiences. Saving the business. The way forward is not by going straight backwards.
But perhaps better on a newly sub-brand deficated to film music than the “DG” mother brand?
The cheek is that she is posing like Lenny for his own symphony cycle on DG.
With a Bleistift, ja, ja.
Btw:
Those are IKEA shelves.
As a conductor makes no sound themselves, perhaps no conductor’s name should appear on record covers! But if they are to be credited, then anyone in that position while an orchestra is performing is legitimately conducting whether they are a book seller, an actor or a retired pianist.
I just watched Basil Dearden’s 1943 propaganda film “The Half-Way House,” in which blind Esmond Knight conducts an orchestra. Cate can’t top that!
I remember Geza Anda record of Mozart piano
Concerto 21 from DG. The LP cover was totally out of context. It was all about the movie “Elvira Madigan” and its lead actress. Compare the artistic value of Mozart masterpiece and a commonplace movie…
Why all the Yannick hate here? He conducted one of the greatest Parsifals I’ve ever heard ‘live’, ditto Elektra. What do you haters have on offer?