Baton down the hatches

I think I’d like to address the question of what can we musicians do to improve the relations between conductors and orchestras.

What I have to say, though, deals with talented conductors. There are those who really are jerks on the podium. Fortunately, in my orchestra, we have had pretty much only conductors with at least some talent.

Also, what I say may be contrary to what my colleagues feel. I may be in a minority here, but I feel forgiveness begins at home.

Some years ago a colleague told me about how she felt being a violist in her orchestra. Her seat was right in front of the wind section, in the center of the orchestra. She had the string section to her sides and in front; the winds right behind her; the brass and percussion always present. She said that she felt that she was in the center of creation.

But someone is directing this creation, and that someone is the conductor. We feel, I think, that the conductors think of themselves as gods; but we just see their feet of clay.

We recorded one of the Mendelssohn symphonies, the Italian, I think. The conductor managed to find a tempo that he liked that made the spiccato very difficult. It was too slow for one kind of spiccato, and too fast for the other; it was right in the middle, meaning we had to struggle to play it well. But, we’re pros, and we did it. Back stage, though, my colleagues all complained about how bad it sounded. My take, especially after listening to it, was that it sounded wonderful, sparkling, but that it felt bad.

This same conductor really liked to play Beethoven’s Eroica. For many years, he did it in a very slow tempo, trying, I guess, to drag out of it all the emotion he could get. Then one year he returned to the Eroica. My colleagues again knew that they would be bored by the slow tempos, so in fact they were bored. But I heard that he had begun to pick up the tempos.

One way to improve conductor/musician relations is to make a real attempt to know what is actually happening on stage, and not what we think is happening or what we want to be happening. That Eroica wasn’t boring, I thought; but the pre-set of my colleagues was that it would be, so to them it was. Likewise, the Italian Symphony sounded great no matter how it felt. We need to pay attention, even if what we find contradicts what we want to think.

Likewise, it would be helpful if we realized that conductors are people, too. I feel we need to treat them as we would like to be treated. When we make a mistake, well, it’s one mistake, no one is perfect. When a conductor makes a mistake it’s the end of the world. How bad a conductor he is. To me this doesn’t wash.

It would also be helpful if the conductor would treat us as he would like to be treated. This includes, please, not blaming us for his errors.