A sign of life at IMG Artists
mainThe mega-agency, whose owners are said to have lost interest in classical music, has signed the German-French conductor Christoph Alstaedt, 39.
He’s a former medical student, adept at resuscitation.
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Honestly, how many conductors does the world need?
521, to be exact. Every year the ICU gets together to count available positions, future demises, the number of aspirant youngsters and the dangers they may present, and to discuss back problems. (ICU = International Conductors Union, seated in Rome, just off the Via Appassionata.)
Especially when we are very short of medical doctors!
We should only have Osmo Vänskä ?
Orchestras do need conductors.
Not really.
By the way, his family name is Altstaedt, with a t. Alt meaning old.
Altstaedt, whose career had slowed down, completed medical school. Let’s hope that his new agent can assemble sufficiently many gigs to float his boat in music !
Christoph Altstaedt is one of the most interesting and brilliant young conductors around at the moment. I have heard him draw fantastic results from many different ensembles in the UK, Germany and the USA. That he has a medical qualification surely only underlines the vivacity of his intellect. Let’s wish this extremely talented person all the very best and hope that the new agency brings him to more important venues and concert halls.
Altstaedt thinks that it is a good idea to combine the orchestra with electronics as in pop and dance, to ‘enrich the orchestral sound’, and to draw a new, young audience to the concert hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twkGM32WKnM
The usual misconceptions of ignorance: we change the orchestra, we change classical music, so that people unfamiliar with the genre will discover that it is actually ‘fun’ because they can recognize something of their other pastimes.
It is like telling youngsters that paintings in museums are nothing more that comic strips and adverts, hoping they will understand the Vermeers, Monets and Leonardos better.