Word: conductor
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...kitchen stove in a London flat wafts the comforting aroma of classic chicken soup, enough to feed a hungry orchestra. From a small upright piano in the living room wafts a bittersweet trickle of melody, enough to feed a hungry spirit. Michael Tilson Thomas, the 45-year-old principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, is cooking on both burners...
Very nice. But invoking Rilke to demonstrate Bruckner is an impulse perhaps best confided to close friends, and certainly not to 100 or so impatient orchestra players. Besides, any conductor who was foolish enough to flog his musicians with images of leaves -- let alone leaves whimpering in denial -- would be hooted off the podium at the first fluttering whimp. Thomas learned a lesson on this point in his callow days during a rehearsal of Also Sprach Zarathustra with the Chicago Symphony. All his schoolboy nattering on the intellectual subtext of Strauss evoked only sly mockery from the musicians. At length...
That's what they all say, though everybody knows there isn't a pit bull alive that can drag a conductor off the stage. In any case, true success nowadays means more than the ability to produce a memorable performance. It means winning the directorship of a major ensemble, a substantial recording contract, the admiration of players, the acclaim of critics and audiences...
...line extended with further training under composer-conductor Pierre Boulez and at the Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood, where Thomas won the Koussevitzky Prize for conducting. By 1965 he was William Steinberg's assistant at the Boston Symphony. And then, like all understudies in show-biz song and saga, he prepared for the star to break...
...maestro walked offstage just before the intermission and told his assistant to get out there and finish the concert. Thomas proceeded to take the orchestra through a Starer concerto and Till Eulenspiegel without a slip, and the critics flipped. By 1972 he was the Boston's principal guest conductor and had his own orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic...