Word: conductors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...think, why not send our worst enemy to the New York Philharmonic and finish him off once and for all." Conductor Zubin Mehta claimed that his remarks were distorted in 1967, but he was really only repeating the standard opinion of the Philharmonic as a band of hard-boiled musicians who, if so inclined, could walk all over any conductor. Mehta, music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, soon found himself at the headquarters of Local 802, the New York branch of the American Federation of Musicians, making a full-dress apology...
Last week the New York Philharmonic announced that, starting in 1978, Bombay-born Mehta, 39, would be sending himself willingly to New York to become the orchestra's music director. He succeeds French Composer-Conductor Pierre Boulez, who will quit in 1977 after six years to head a new musical-research institute. A onetime enfant terrible of the avantgarde, Boulez had a reign that was not so much stormy as trying-on him, the management and the subscribers. He was a supreme orchestral technician-his men called him the French Correction-and a master of 20th century music...
Mehta's appointment ended a yearlong search at the Philharmonic. Sir Georg Solti, director of the Chicago Symphony, turned down the post last year. Cleveland's Lorin Maazel and London's pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim were also mentioned. Mehta himself said no when first asked if he wanted to be among those considered. When the Philharmonic came back with a firm offer a month ago (for an amount undoubtedly in excess of $100,000), he gave in. "My decision was a hard one," he said last week. "But New York is the center of the world...
...months spent days seeking out his demigod and nights sleeping on park benches and in public toilets. Today, wherever Rostropovich plays, tickets sell out within hours. Only one week after he announced his decision to defect, the National Symphony chose Rostropovich to succeed their outgoing musical director and conductor...
When he plays the cello Rostropovich adopts the same manner he uses to captivate a master class audience--animated gesture and colorful language. But with the instrument before him he is more at home, more self-assured, more convincing. "You must be like a conductor when you play," Rostropovich insisted as Ma played in the master class. "You must not be only you." From watching the Russian rehearse with the Dvorak concerto with Boston Symphony a week ago, it was clear that he has taken his own advice to heart...