Budapest picks youngest conductor since… Gustav Mahler
NewsAt the close of the Hungarian State Opera season, general director Szilveszter Ókovács presented Martin Rajna as the company’s next principal conductor.
Rajna is 27, the same age as Mahler was when he became music director of the Royal Hungarian Opera in 1887.
A graduate of the Liszt Academy, Rajna has been chief conductor of the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra for the past two years.
This is a salutary reminder that it is not necessary to win one of the many fancy conducting competitions we now have (most of whose prizewinners quickly disappear without trace anyway). Hungarian State Opera will have good reason to make such a prime appointment. True talent will naturally emerge, and there’s nothing better than doing it through the old-fashioned route of learning to breathe with and accompany singers in an opera-house. All the greats of the past learned their craft that way.
“All the greats of the past learned their craft that way.” And most of them can’t conduct The Rite of Spring. How interesting it is that many of the most famous conductors right now are far better in an opera (where there are lots of other factors at play to distract the audience) than in a symphonic concert: Thielemann, Barenboim, Welser-Möst, and yes K.Petrenko. On their own they just aren’t that compelling. Blomstedt on the other hand did not conduct many operas at all. This myth that only conductors who have learnt to conduct in provincial opera houses are good conductors needs to die.
Dear Guest, this is not a myth but a fact supported by reality – especially when it comes to opera. Working daily for hours at the piano with singers, teaching them a role, accompanying staging rehearsal, and doing the many different “services” in an opera house (prompting, giving cues, conducting the stage orchestra or the chorus offstage) is a training no school can provide. This teaches you breathing with singers (and, of course, through breathing, teaching you how to shape phrases), understanding what an opera production needs from a conductor (and it is not just conducting the orchestra), training ears and reaction, so that you can know that an accident is about to happen before it happens (it’s not magic, it’s the experience – and good ears), and giving you time to mature. Besides this, your examples are not well chosen: conducting a Bruckner or a Mahler (or a Brahms or a Beethoven) symphony is more complex than conducting The Rite of the Spring, maybe not in terms of conducting patterns (which anybody can learn), but in terms of understanding what is hidden behind the notes – again, sound, phrases, pace, character. Distract the audiences? So they don’t pay much attention to the conductor, is that what you mean? Well, I think you don’t know what you are talking about. And of the names you bring, in my knowledge (I might be wrong), only Thielemann and Petrenko have an excellent and extended experience as a vocal coach (it’s called “Korrepetitor” in German); they have gone through the “old fashioned” route of becoming a conductor.
Thank you for chiming in. Perhaps you felt defensive because you fall into the same category of opera conductors that are boring symphony conductors. I would go to an opera where you are conducting, but not because of you. I would never buy tickets for symphonic concerts conducted by you. That is what I meant by “distracting the audience”. There are fine singers and sometimes interesting stagings on which I can focus, so that what the orchestra is playing is not as crucial as in a concert. If singers are good, and conductors competently follow the singers’ artistic decisions, as I’m sure you do, then an opera performance would be tend to be successful even if the conductor is faceless if left on their own. Your implication that there is no “sound, phrases, pace, character” in The Rite of Spring betrays your weakness and ignorance in this repertoire. Yes it might be easy, and yet you can’t do it.
As long as we are dispelling myths why not throw the Rite out as well.
Did a masterclass together with him a couple of years ago. Rare real talent!
Not too difficult to be a better conductor (or composer) than Gustav Mahler.
You saw and heard him conduct then?
I wouldn’t know about Mahler’s conducting; but what’s wrong with his music?
The correct word is “too”. Please learn correct English grammar!