Word: chen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Chen has a strong belief in the vastness of his own powers. Underlying many of his remarks is a sense that he has not gotten all the recognition that is his due. He deeply resents Leon Kirchner, Walter Bigelow Rosen Professor of Music, whose Summer School Chamber Players have received substantial support and fanfare from the University. He maintains, "You give me not the same players, but one class lower [than the Chamber Players] and I'll make concerts musically better than that, I assure you." And while he expresses no desire to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic or an orchestra...
...self-confidence never becomes pompous or overbearing, but it is always present. Perhaps it is an essential attribute for a successful conductor. Chen says, "I knew Ozawa when he was walking around like a bum in the New York streets. Now you look at him with all the shining things all around him. It is illusory...
Like a political leader, a conductor must have enough confidence to sell himself--to convince other musicians of the superiority of his ideas. And while Chen is no slick political type, he has an almost evangelical belief in the aptness of his insights...
...Intriguing sense of revealed wisdom pervades Chen's conversation, partly a result of the peculiar use of language- Spoken with a heavy Chinese accent, his words usually hover on the border between the incomprehensible and the profoundly suggestive. But as with the sage-like Stein in Conrad's Lord Jim, the half finished phrases, the almost aphoristic quality of his sentences, lend a mysterious weight to all he says...
Never in Western music has there been so much concern with faithfulness to the written score as in the last twenty years. There is a feeling current in many conductors that dynamic markings and tempo indications must be as carefully observed as the notes themselves. Chen considers this kind of "honesty" the most basic part of a conductor's obligation. "You can build the most fancy skyscrapers, modern, artistic looking buildings, but you can't forget to put in the toilet. There is no illusion about all these dreamy, misty-eyed things. You put that crap-house...