St Petersburg celebrates Gergiev’s teacher
OrchestrasThe cult of personality has reached new heights with a celebration of the 120th birth anniversary of Ilya Musin, a remarkable teacher of conducting at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire. Musin’s star pupil was Valery Gergiev, master and commander of all music in Putin’s Russia.
On Saturday there will be an all-Rimsky concert conducted by Gergiev, followed by other events.
As much as it honours Musin, it is an act of homage to the all-conquering Gergiev.
He can’t have learned much. By all accounts from members of various orchestras, Gergiev is a dreadful conductor. He’s only got where he is by being one of Putin’s principal sycophants.
Wrong. He was once an outstanding conductor.
No Norman!
Gergiev was always PR and hype.
Gergiev was never even close to the level of the greats of the past.
The acid test.
If you can’t rehearse an orchestra – you are immediately relegated to the ranks of the 2nd rate mediocres.
Watch the now 90 yr old Michel Plasson for a really nice guy – and real good opera conductor.
(btw have you seen French music any good in Russia, when they can’t even pronounce French properly!).
Where was Musin when it came to doing non Russian stuff??
Where was Musin when Celibidache and Kleiber were making music?
Nowhere.
Bruckner?
Nothing quite comes close to Celibidache – and as for rehearsing….no need to say more.
If you can’t do better than a certain miserable vision of what makes music, then it just reverts to standardisation of what makes people (you included) manipulated by all the sound and fury signifying nothing.
Watch Solti conduct, (I did at a marvellous parsifal at ROH) or yet again Fricsay rehearsing Smetana.
These are light years away from a guy who claimed to form conductors (pseudo conductors) and has time to write books about it (HUH)!
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Whatever your views on Gergiev, I don’t think you can blame Musin. The man who taught Jansons, Bychkov, Temirkanov, Sinaisky, Brabbins and Temirkanov is not nobody.
“Outstanding?” I think not. He could be very good in certain repertoire that’s true. It’s also true of many conductors who are really excellent in some pieces. Gergiev was very good in Russian music, otherwise I don’t think he was anything special and was sometimes sloppy and underrehearsed. Thinking of outstanding Russian conductors I don’t think he even makes the top 5 – Mravinsky, Svetlanov, Rozhdestvensky, all had more to say about the music they conducted and they conducted a wide repertoire (especially Rozhdestvensky -Vaughan Williams anyone?). Doing a lot of performances doesn’t make you an outstanding performer…..
wrong
he IS an outstanding conductor
Sorry, Tim you’re totally wrong on this. Whatever else he may be, when in the mood Valery is a fabulous conductor. And for the assertion that he was Musin’s ‘star’ pupil, well Musin himself didn’t think this – as he told me a number of times.
“Fabulous” conductors are always “in the mood.”…………
While he was with the LSO, the orchestra played at Symphony Hall (with another conductor). After the concert, while I was waiting at the stage door with others, to see the conductor, we got talking to some of the players. It soon became obvious that they hated VG, They said he regularly turned up late for rehearsals and often stopped the rehearsal to take calls from his best friend, Putin. They said they would accept anyone to replace him as anyone would be better. They got Rattle. A vast improvement.
When VG conducted the combined CBSO and St Petersburg orchestras, which I attended, the CBSO players said he was dreadful and members of the chorus who were singing with the St Petersburg chorus, they said the Russian chorus gadn’t a clue how to pronounce Latin properly (They were singing Berlioz Requiem). Gergiev should be treated with the contempt he deserves as should any of Putin’s supporters.
“while I was waiting at the stage door…”
Expert opinions always welcome here.
Rattle… haha what a joke. Gergiev recorded the entire Mahler cycle with them. Rattle spt at them once he got the offer in Munich.
I despise Gergiev for his Putin puppetry, but I saw him conduct about a dozen times with several different orchestras around the world over two decades. Concerts and operas. They were all very memorable experiences. Would I rank him up there with Temirkanov, Rozhdestvensky (loved him!), Mravinsky, Kondrashin, or others? Probably not. But he has often delivered.
In that case why did the LSO appoint him as chief conductor? They’re no fools..
Musin would be appalled at the war
“Gergiev was very good in Russian music, otherwise I don’t think he was anything special and was sometimes sloppy and underrehearsed.”
Gergiev uses being late and not rehearsing as a personal signature.
It’s endemic to him and I rememeber Currentzis presenting an open rehearsal for public which was so scatter brained as to be laughable.
The Fidelio he did in a Gulag was an obscenity, and the end result was the Gulag (museum) Perm 36 ending being so unprotected, they brought in the Kremlin Mafia and had all the Stalin persecution memories removed, kicked out the manamgement /replaced it and replaced with – “he was a good leader and sacrifices had to be made…dialogues”.
All this crap happened in Currentzis time there….
(By contrast I remember us doing this Eroica matinee for schools with Casadesus, in France, and by contrast there, kids could actually learn something!)
I am always interested in watching rehearsals not only, but partly because it enables us to set the mix for the recording.
I watched horror struck as I realised this Gergiev is no musician, really not.
I recorded the sibelius symphony which was a nightmare of total lack of ensemble playing – basically a train wreck.
It was followed by another train wreck Petrushka so bad I played it back to an excellent baritone I met on a ferry one day. and his eyes nearly popped out – it was so bad!
But Mariinski orchestra are supposed to be able to play this stuff in their sleep n’est pas??
I also had the opportunity to meet the leader on another occasion when he and the principal cello went to rehearse a piano trio in the local concert hall (which btw had a diabolically bad acoustic, like most halls in Russia – inc and especially the shitty (much hyped) New Mariinski.
It was shocking to see the (what In could easily see) the cellist – who is a good musician. giving a lesson in musical interpretation to the orchestra leader and his equally numpty wife. (the pianist).
WHY? Is the leader that useless?
We had a conversation about this sorry mess in Estonia just 2 days ago.
Conclusion. Russia is getting worse by the day, and it can’t be fixed.
Another conversation with probably one of the best bow maker’s in the world right now, gave the same conclusions more than a year ago. (Russian but won’t name him).
Leave Russia now, leave it’s train wrecks , hype and suicidal trends, including the Musin list of supposed elite artists and you won’t be sorry. Those that choose to stay or can’t leave DO BY CHOICE.
It’s really pointless to comment much more.
There is nothing to lose there….no decent sound engineers, no decent microphones, (lomo is dead), and the good guys from Melodia (one of whom I met in SPB) are gone now.
The once great film industry is on its knees, the talented producers are leaving or gone, and all the rest are being classed foreign agents like the famous history teacher Tamara Eidelmann.
The tourist industry is dead even in SPB.
I always said you can judge a coutry by its toilets.
Well go for a bus trip between SPB and some other distant place and see how it looks.
You will wake up fast.
The train toilets directed the crap and wee direct onto the railway lines below until very recently.
The planes are flying using spare parts from other dismantled aircraft, cos there’s no spare parts and the banking system means you can’t go to Russia with anything other than piles of CASH.
You need a good therapist
I’ve heard Gergiev conduct the LSO many times. I do not think of him as one of our great conductors. He is known to not speak to the orchestra during rehearsals. He looks like a miserable person, and what else would one expect from a Putin lover.
Why did you go then? ))) spent money and time. Just acknowledge you are fascinated by his mastery
Gergiev is a marvelous conductor.
Stop being hateful
I enjoyed some 2 hours long concerts where he would give 2 symphonies and a concerto..so quantity was there…. but about quality I was always disappointed he seemed unable to shape the sound of an orchestra… especially he could never get a sharp sound…Kirov, Lso or Munich were like a dull knife between his hands. Good tempos, good programs… but not a lot of thinking or lots of work about it…
That’s correct. He doesn’t get precision because of his baton (toothpick) “technique.” Watch the video on YT of Szell explaining to Levine how to get precise together playing in Don Juan. It’s a complete explanation of the phenomenon you describe. 3 minutes in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2OSXvWtZm0
Musin was not only Gergiev teacher
Temirkanov , Bychkov , Sinaiski, Sokhiev, Kurentzis were all his students
That Lohengrin in 1997 at the ROH… was outstanding. With Gwyneth Jones, Karita Mattila, Gotta Winbergh…
It’s ok to leave your politics outside every once in a while. I performed in orchestra several times with Gergiev, and each concert was a truly special experience. There’s a certain conductor magic that happens with the best conductors, where the communication between players and conductor just clicks. When they make their musical interpretation seem obvious and you can’t argue with it, then you get on board and it becomes something special. Gergiev has it. I think most if not all of the trashing of his conducting comes from the questionable politics, because 15 years ago the reviews and opinions seemed to be quite different.
Gergiev is not a good conductor- just shaking his hands in the air- no beat- no legato- no musicality- no sensitivity- no nothing. But he’s immensely powerful & rich. Life & the music business goes on.