Word: conductor
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Striding onstage, shoulders hunched forward, elbows flapping at the side, Prince Charles hair sliding forward over one eye, Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas looks like a big bird impersonating an adolescent. Mounting the podium, this shambling creature bows low-to the audience, to the orchestra-then, in some sort of mystical transformation, comes up a man. With a snap, the backbone locks firmly into place. The right hand is suddenly holding the baton high over the head. Slowly, powerfully, the left hand rises like a warning semaphore. Quickly, precisely, the right hand gives the downbeat...
That was the way Thomas began Mozart's Requiem at the "Mostly Mozart Festival" in Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall last week. A remarkably mature performance, it confirmed an opinion that has been growing since late last fall: at 25, Thomas is perhaps the most naturally gifted young conductor to come along since Leonard Bernstein more than a generation...
Mozart's Requiem, written as the 35-year-old composer lay dying, is one of those unearthly, suprahuman creations that are virtually impossible for conductors to turn into personal statements. Thomas' performance lacked a certain reflective delicacy that might have made the work more of a requiem and less of a showpiece, but he clearly demonstrated that as a conductor he is thoroughly capable of reaching his performers in the grand style defined long ago by Hector Berlioz: "His inward fire warms them, his electric glow animates them, his form of impulse excites them...
Divorced. By Andre Previn, 41, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, Broadway (Coco) composer, and father of Mia Farrow's twin sons: Dory Previn, 44, lyricist who recently recorded Beware of Young Girls in lament of Andre's departure: after ten years of marriage, no children; in Los Angeles. Previn and Mia are presently in the wilds of Scotland, where, he says, they will be married, presumably as soon as he has signed the divorce papers and returned them to Los Angeles...
Imaginary Piano. Most conductors stand up while they work. Fleisher sat on a tall rehearsal stool. This was because, after sitting down professionally for most of his life, he admits laughingly that "I don't know what to do with my behind." More important, Fleisher feels that he can establish contact with his players better if he is able to be "among them, rather than above." Most conductors give the beat with the right hand and use the left for expression. Not Fleisher. He sometimes swung both arms up, fists closed. He often seemed to be playing an imaginary...