Word: toscanini
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...conductor's profession today bears as little resemblance to what it was 50 years ago as does the life of an astronaut to a World War I pilot's. Even within the present generation, the changes in the music world would dumfound a Toscanini. Orchestras have grown up, spawned offshoots and multiplied; there are 1,400 in the U.S. today, from small-town groups of amateur noodlers to massive metropolitan institutions. Festivals have flowered in tropical profusion. Recordings and TV have created vast new outlets. The jet airplane has catapulted careers into global orbit. Musicians who used...
...short, conducting is increasingly becoming a field for younger, more vibrant men-all the more so because of the overriding example of Leonard Bernstein. His projection and box-office appeal have made him as much the model for conductors in his era as Toscanini was in his, although, as Bernstein nears 50, even he is slackening his frenetic pace somewhat. In this image-conscious culture, every orchestra wants its conductor to have some of Bernstein's incalculable personality force-what Conductor Charles Munch calls the "magic emanation" that can lift a conductor's performances above the mere exercise...
...Scala Opera; of heart disease; in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy. Conducting, he once growled, "is a beastly profession." But no one approached the podium with more single-mindedness than this long-armed maestro who treated orchestras to operatic rages and audiences to athletic conducting, ever disdaining-like his predecessor, Toscanini -the use of a score...
...orchestras (Lamoureux, Colonne and Pasdeloup) slog through their Sunday afternoon old-hat concerts with all the esprit de corpse of Napoleon's army after Moscow. Parisian conservatories turn out some of the best instrumentalists in the world, but they have very little incentive to remain at home. Arturo Toscanini once remarked that France could have the best orchestra in the world if it were willing to spend the money...
Last June, France finally decided to spend the money, and last week a major step was taken to prove Toscanini's theory. Financed jointly by the French and Parisian governments, a new orchestra made its debut-not on Sunday afternoon but on Tuesday night. It was obvious before Conductor Charles Munch's first downbeat at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees that the Orchestre de Paris was a striking departure from the Parisian norm. Its 110 members were predominantly young (average age: 35). They were dressed alike in midnight blue Pierre Cardin tails with shawl collars and burgundy sashes...