Word: chen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wasn't until three years later that Chen really learned how to conduct, and then the knowledge came almost by accident. "I always felt wrong even though they might be singing right, and then one day, by mistake, I did something that was right...
Since that time, Chen has developed into a conductor of remarkable technical control. His cues are precise and his musical directions clear and comprehensible. But Chen doesn't concern himself with technique because it is now so deeply a part of him as to be forgotten. "I don't think of gestures anymore. I look at a phrase. I immediately hear what it should be and the hand is that...
...that work under him, including amateur groups like the Summer School Chorus, which he is conducting this year. Most choral conductors spend a lot of time going over the music slowly until each section has learned its notes. Only then do they begin to work on musical values. But Chen takes the music up to tempo from the very first. "If I let everyone carefully study their notes, when I want to go fast, they won't be able to go fast any more." He fears that his singers will get lost in minutae and obscure the larger shapes that...
...Part of Chen's lack of concern with technique stems from his never having studied an instrument. He has picked up enough piano to get around the keys, but he has never confronted problems of producing sounds on particular instruments. So when he wants a certain musical effect, he he won't take technical limitations as an excuse. "If you have a battle to fight and you need your reinforcements at such and such a date and such place, you can't say 'Well, because we don't have the trucks necessary we can't be there.' You plan...
...professional conductor for only ten years. Chen has risen very fast in stature. He is an charge of musical activities at the University of Geneva and, in recent years, has performed and recorded with the Suisse-Romande Orchestra, one of the better symphonies in the world. Yet he has remarkable little ambition. A contented fatalism informs his attitude toward his own career. He seems sincerely unconcerned with struggling upward in the profession or competing for the prestigious jobs. "I have never worried how I look. When I make a record, the first condition is you don't put my picture...