Word: director
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Leonard Slatkin, 35, grew up professionally with St. Louis. Before his stint as music director of the New Orleans Philharmonic, he had moved upward, through the conducting ranks of the orchestra he will now head. He is an inventive programmer who likes little-known American works and singles out the less popular symphonies of the major composers. Slatkin's weakness, musicians feel, is his tendency to skim the surface of music and his awkwardness on the podium. Still, he and St. Louis know each other intimately and should grow together...
...reputations in a relatively brief time. Marriner, conductor of London's Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields chamber orchestra, has "charm and wit and intellect," says one London observer. His 200 recordings, many of Baroque music, have pleasingly brisk tempi and a gay, intimate sound. As music director, Marriner will bring his favorite Haydn and Mozart to Minnesota; his weakness may well be that specialized repertoire. But, says he, "if you want to have any impact as musical director, then you must take along the repertoire for which you were hired...
Tennstedt will offer a complementary repertoire as principal guest conductor, favoring Bruckner, Strauss and Mahler. The former director of the State Orchestra in Schwerin, Tennstedt has a fluid line, springy beat and a confident technical mastery. He has never formally studied conducting. "Oh, you can learn tricks," he observes. "But the contact with an orchestra? You must have...
...Medea and also in a TV film about her preparation for the role. As a publicity stunt she arranges to visit, in jail, an American woman (Ellen Burstyn) who, like Medea, has committed infanticide. What with a demanding rehearsal schedule and the raging and pouting she inflicts on her director and her entourage, you would think the Mercouri character would have no time left to feel guilty about exploiting the half-mad murderess, but she does. Repeatedly she goes back into the prison to see Burstyn, allowing Dassin some cheap, melodramatic psychologizing about Medea...
...woman driven crazy by her husband's philandering is the movie's single redeeming feature. Otherwise there is nothing emotionally or intellectually involving here. Unless, of course, one is interested in some "personal statements" about the state of the movie business, contemporary issues and the star and director themselves that they manage to tuck in along the way. It perhaps need not be added that these are of a piece with the rest of A Dream of Passion-awkward, pretentious and empty...