Word: conductors
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Teaching a group of musical-minded students Wednesday, Bowie exhibited all the color of a spirited orchestra conductor. "Loud!" he shouted, waving his cane in the air. "Play that stuff as loud as you were never allowed...
...Ravenna and Rimini, but Director Piero Faggioni compensates for the music's static quality by moving the cast around a bit too hectically. The second act, however, is spectacular. It depicts a ferocious battle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, replete with whizzing crossbow arrows and hurtling fireballs. Conductor James Levine goes straight for the jugular, giving Francesco's high quotient of lust and mayhem its full...
Second movement: Adagio. Berlin, 1945. The capital of the Third Reich lies in rubble. So does the Berlin Philharmonic; the orchestra's conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler, has been banned from performing until he can prove himself innocent of being a Nazi sympathizer. Onto his podium steps a 33-year-old music, mathematics and philosophy student from Rumania named Sergiu Celibidache. Despite his lack of professional experience, Celibidache more than restores the orchestra's prewar luster. "A baton genius, beyond any doubt," declares one Berlin critic. Only his former teacher at Berlin's Hochschule...
Third movement: Scherzo. Philadelphia, 1984; the Curtis Institute. Director John de Lancie has worked hard to persuade Celibidache, now 71, to come to the U.S. The elusive conductor still leads an eclectic existence: he lives in Paris, lectures on musical phenomenology at Mainz University and conducts the Munich Philharmonic. The Philharmonic, which he will bring to the U.S. next year, grants him between ten and 18 rehearsals for each program; U.S. orchestras generally allow four. He is no easier on the young American students than he is on professional musicians. Through 17 rehearsals he painstakingly explores every bar without...
Celibidache explains his approach to conducting: "You cannot impose your will on an orchestra. If you do, they will imitate you, not create on their own. They will not be able to see your reasons. Toscanini was a very great conductor, but he was not a great musician." Despite the work load and the stream of mysterious utterances, many Curtis students love him. Says Concertmaster Susan Synnestvedt, a third-year violinist: "He feels there is a truth in music, and it should be discovered...