This is the forbidding Erich Leinsdorf, conducting the LA Phil in the 1980s.
When he wasn’t looking, someone put the sign up and oboist David Weiss snapped this shot.
Leinsdorf was not renowned for having a sense of humour.
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This is the forbidding Erich Leinsdorf, conducting the…
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a humorous photograph of a conductor with photographic memory.
His casual and rushed conducting of a 1977 Met Walküre I saw was strange. It was as if he did not want to be there.
Maybe he didn’t! His recording of Walkure is wonderful!
I grew up with Leinsdorf’s recording of Die Walkure and it’s still the best I’ve heard.
When he was music director in Boston, he doted over the musicians like a mother hen. On his first visit with them to Carnegie Hall, he warned them about all of the supposed “dangers” of New York City, ie. crossing the streets, pickpockets, etc. and he told them: “Whatever you do, don’t eat any fried foods.” Whereupon they all ordered fried chicken, fried fish, etc. From that day on, a meal of fried food was referred to as a “Leinsdorf dinner.”
Chortled audibly! Thanks.
He actually did have a sense of humor of sorts. He would memorize a joke and subject us to it in rehearsal. He never displayed any ability to react to a real time event in an amusing or amused manner, however. Granted, I only saw him at the end of his career. But I always found him to be a bully and a pedant, his performances utterly stupefying. On the evidence of earlier recordings, it wasn’t always so.
When on the only occasion that I occupied the star dressing room at Avery Fisher, he came into the room smoking a huge cigar. I said, good evening Maestro, my what a small cigar. Without smiling, he said “so young and so sarcastic” and exited.
He once gave a telling interview to Ulla Colgrass about the importance of a music director living in the community of his orchestra, and why it is an impossibility in our time.
Recording? I think his best is Korngold: Die tote Stadt.
If memory serves me correctly, we had the occasion to play the concert version of Strauss’ Rosenkavalier with Erich Leinsdorf when I was a youngster in the St. Louis Symphony in the early 1980s. At the end of our first reading rehearsal, I remember him saying to us “next time, remind me to bring a piece that you know”…
However…his interpretation of La Valse is forever etched into my memory as one of my favorite orchestral performances of my career. It was sheer magic.
As a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic during that time, I also remember giving him a T-shirt with a picture of a palm tree that said, “Non-Ritardando Club.” He wore it proudly. Never was he a “bully and a pendant” with the LA Phil.
He seems to me to have been a musician who was either “on” or “off”. I’m glad that I experienced him on some of his “on” days. In a lifetime of hearing many performances of Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet”, Leinsdorf’s performance of a lengthy suite from it still stands as the best I ever heard. The tension the orchestra and he built in “The Death of Tybalt” was actually frightening.
He did have his own kind of sense of humor. When he was not satisfied with musicians’ preparedness, at the end of the rehearsal he liked to say: “Now go home and OVERLOOK your [private] parts!”. Another of his favorite phrases was: “Playing without precision is like giving someone your APPROXIMATE telephone number!”.
In a NYT profile on his 50th anniversary as conductor, he said this was his fondest memory: in rehearsal at the old Met of Moses n Aaron, the plan was to do the Exodus scene of Jews leaving the desert, send the chorus home, then orchestra continue. So the scene ended, n Leinsdorf said “the Jews can go home now,” n half the orchestra got up n walked off stage. He ended rehearsal right there n had a good laugh.
Cleveland, early 1980s. He was guest conducting and led off the program with Webern’s Six Pieces. After somewhat perfunctory applause, a stream of latecomers took their seats for the next work, a Mozart concerto. He came out and announced that because so many of you missed the first piece, ve vill play it again. And they did.
Addendum to my previous post: I should have specified that the orchestra in the superb “R & J” performance I cited was the Los Angeles Philharmonic (greetings, Mr. Sauer, from an old fan!). The concert took place at Hollywood Bowl, and the stilled silence that followed “Tybalt” was a rarity for usually-rowdy Bowl audiences. For once, they got it.
Although not having ever had the experience of seeing Leinsdorf live, his book “The Composer’s Advocate: A Radical Orthodoxy for Musicians” was hugely influential to me as an aspiring conductor.
Leinsdorf’s autobiographical book “Cadenza” reveals a genuine sense of humor … but also an excellent memory for slights real or imagined.
His sense of humor could be wry and cutting. From the start of rehearsals for recording sessions for the Brahms First Piano Concerto with Lazar Berman and the Chicago Symphony, the pianist’s, um, strange personal hygiene was instantly apparent to all save Berman. The musicians assembled for the final rehearsal only to find Leinsdorf had attached a pine-scented Stick-em-up on the Steinway concert grand where the pianist couldn’t see it.
This is what John L Holmes said in his book, Conductors – A Record Collector’s Guide: “A man of short stature and always impeccably dressed, Leinsdorf has the reputation of being a good talker and a great wit….” Obviously, there are different views about Leinsdorf’s sense of humour.
Since were discussing the value of a maestro…..
https://slippedisc.com/2024/12/christian-thielemann-dont-call-me-maestro/#comments/1084095
Sorry, that link doesn’t really work. Here’s the joke. And it’s we’re, not were, of course
A man walks into a pet shop.
“I’d like to buy a parrot”
“Certainly sir, we have this parrot here, she costs £250”
“Can she speak?”
“Not only can she speak, she can sing “Vissi d’arte”
“I don’t like Puccini, do you have any other parrots?”
“Certainly sir, we have that parrot over there, she costs £500”
“That’s a lot, what can she do?”
“She can sing Brünnhilde’s Immolation AND Isolde’s Liebestod”
“I HATE Wagner”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry to hear that. Actually, we do have another parrot, but he costs £2,000”
“Wow, what can HE do?”
“Actually sir, we don’t know what he can do. But the other two parrots call him ‘Maestro’ “
In my experience, both terrifying and funny.
As a young music student in Vienna I had an older friend who was some kind of European assistant to Leinsdorf. So when he came to town I had the opportunity to get to know him, a little, and asked his view of young conductors who win competitions.
“You mean the Wunderkinder?” He grinned, seriously. “Other conductors give them a concert here, there. I don’t do that. I give them…” (pause) “…a whole summer season. They are…” (wicked grin) “…NEVER HEARD OF AGAIN”.