Word: conductors
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
Johann Sebastian Bach: Violin Concertos in E and A-minor; Concerto for Two Violins in D-minor; Air from Suite No. 3 in D (Henryk Szeryng and Maurice Hasson, Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner conductor, Philips). Bach was the field marshal of the concerto form, regimenting the fluid lines of such Italian masters as Vivaldi and Corelli into complex string masterpieces. Szeryng, the Polish-born virtuoso, and Second Fiddle Hasson demonstrate great authority within Bach's polyphonic ranks. Their counterpoint in the double concerto is superb, as is the accompaniment led throughout by Neville Marriner...
Puccini: Tosca (Soprano Montserrat Caballé, Tenor José Carreras, Baritone Ingvar Wixell, orchestra and chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Colin Davis conductor, Philips; 2 LPs). This interpretation of Tosca is nothing if not eccentric. Davis' reading of the florid score is rich and clear but systematically undramatic. As the idealistic painter Cavaradossi, Carreras gives a properly ardent performance, but it seems lost on this particular Tosca. The elegant Caballé can no more be made into the hot-blooded actress than the eyes of Cavaradossi's Mary Magdalen can be changed from blue...