Word: conductor
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DIED. Leopold Stokowski, 95, irreverent, in novative conductor whose career spanned 70 years and some 7,000 concerts; of a heart attack; in Nether Wallop, England (see MUSIC...
...been a great lesson to me to know that in life it is the unexpected that happens. Sometimes it's tragic and sometimes it's happy like this time." --Leopold Stokowski, reuniting as guest conductor with the Philadelphia Orchestra after an embittered 19-year interval...
MORE DISQUIETED than the man without a country, more stifled than the rebel without a cause, is the conductor without an orchestra. In the case of Leopold Stokowski, whose repeated misfortune it was to be without that sine qua non, the void had a peculiar poignancy. It didn't matter that Stokowski was perhaps the greatest innovative genius on the podium. Or that when he conducted, box office receipts soared. In the end his alleged ruthlessness would eclipse them, and prompt a dark ending to one orchestral link after another...
...nature of his craft, the conductor need be a diplomat as well as an artist. But as the non-conformist Stokowski would learn in his career that spanned nearly three-quarters of the century, it was not always so simple to keep the two from clashing. The conductor who is too diplomatic may sacrifice authority he wants to hold over his musicians. On the other hand, the conductor who gives his artistic instincts free reign is labelled a tyrant or a show-off. In the best of times and in the worst of times, the conductor operates at the mercy...
...CONDUCTOR who preferred a Bronx cheer to apathy would likewise probably prefer to be remembered as an egotist--that he wasn't--than be forgotten. For with his quirks and bitter sarcasm we inevitably associate his idiosyncratic genius and adventurous spirit--sometimes fatal to the ambitious musician's career, but always vital...