Word: conductor
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...didn't become a conductor in the usual way, with school orchestras and competitions. In fact he didn't begin to study music until he was 19, an age when most musicians are ready to launch their careers...
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...
...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...
...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...