The Short End of the Stick

Nov 26 2007
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Neal Gittleman
Neal Gittleman

The 2011-2012 season is Neal Gittleman's 17th year as Music Director of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. Gittleman has led the orchestra to new levels of artistic achievement and increasing acclaim throughout the country. American Record Guide magazine has praised the orchestra's performance as has the Cincinnati Enquirer, which called the DPO "a precise, glowing machine." When the Orchestra christened the Mead Theatre in the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center in March of 2003, the Enquirer reported that "Gittleman has brought the DPO to a new level." During his tenure, the orchestra has received nine ASCAP awards from the American Symphony Orchestra League for adventurous programming.

Prior to his arrival in Dayton, Gittleman served as Music Director of the Marion (IN) Philharmonic, Associate Conductor of the Syracuse Symphony, and Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, a post he held under the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program. He also served ten seasons as Associate Conductor and Resident Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Neal Gittleman has appeared as guest conductor with many of the country's leading orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago, San Francisco, Minnesota, Phoenix, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Omaha, San Jose and Jacksonville symphony orchestras and the Buffalo Philharmonic. He has also conducted orchestras in Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Neal graduated from Yale University in 1975. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Annette Dieudonné in Paris, with Hugh Ross at the Manhattan School of Music and with Charles Bruck at both the Pierre Monteux School and the Hartt School of Music, where he was a Karl Böhm Fellow. It was at the Hartt School that he earned his Arts Diploma in Orchestral Conducting. He won the Second Prize at the 1984 Ernest Ansermet International Conducting Competition in Geneva and Third Prize in the 1986 Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition in New York.

At home in the pit as well as on stage, Neal has led productions for Dayton Opera, the Human Race Theatre Company, Syracuse Opera Company, Hartt Opera Theater, and for Milwaukee's renowned Skylight Opera Theatre. He has also conducted for the Milwaukee Ballet, Hartford Ballet, Chicago City Ballet, Ballet Arizona, and Theater Ballet of Canada.

Neal is nationally known for his Classical Connections programs, which provide a "behind the scenes” look at the great works of the orchestral repertoire. These innovative programs, which began in Milwaukee 22 years ago, have become a vital part of the Dayton Philharmonic's concert season.

His discography includes a recording of the Dayton Philharmonic in performances of Tomas Svoboda's two piano concertos with Norman Krieger and the composer as featured soloists. Gittleman has also recorded a CD of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F with Krieger and the Czech National Symphony. Both recordings are available on the Artisie 4 label. The DPO's second CD, A Celebration of Flight was released in 2003 as part of the celebration of the centennial of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight. The orchestra’s most recent CD, of live archival performances from four eras, released in 2008 in conjunction with the DPO’s 75th anniversary.

When not on the podium, Neal is an avid player of golf, squash and t'ai chi ch'uan and has added yoga to his regimen. He and his wife, Lisa Fry, have been Dayton residents since 1997.

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Good news: My late entry to the discussion has allowed me to read everyone else’s posts before composing my own.

Bad news: My late entry has allowed me to have already mastered Andrew’s #1 tip for achieving grandeur!

What’s it like to conduct? There are two things that I find endlessly fascinating in our mutual endeavor: the music we play and the oh-so-subtle dynamic between players and conductor. Everyone’s already spoken eloquently about the former, so I’ll chime in a bit on the latter.

What strikes me the most is not the effect of technical matters (e.g., clear/unclear beat), temperament (e.g., calm/tantrum-prone), or rehearsal style (show-it/jabber-about-it), but the emotional effect: How the orchestra’s collective mood as they make music seems to perfectly mirror the conductor’s mood. I try to be calm and easygoing on the podium, but if I’ve had a bad day and lack the inner fortitude, self-awareness, or thespian skill to successfully act “normal,” the orchestra will sound as if they had a day that was just as bad — if not worse!

This works both ways. A couple of years ago I was rehearsing a guest gig in Mexico. Everything was going fine. The orchestra was sounding good, working hard, seeming to enjoy the music-making. But they were in a long, ongoing, messy struggle with management and (even more so) with the government entity that funded them. So at the end of each break a musician rep would get up to tell folks the latest news. My Spanish is feeble at best, but you didn’t need the language to comprehend the gist of things. And when the discussion finally ended and we could get back to music it was SO hard to change their mood back even though they were mad at neither me nor Schumann. I had to work very hard not to let their pissed-off vibe affect me. Fortunately, I found that just a few minutes of don’t-talk-just-play rehearsing would be like the system re-boot that magically restores your computer to proper operation.

As musicians, we pursue a mysterious art, one which plays on our emotions in ways we both understand and can’t begin to fathom. How can it be that even if we think the orchestra isn’t following what we do with our stick or what we ask for with our voice, they’re actually following us so intimately that they mirror our feelings in the way they play and they way they sound?

The only answer I’ve come up with is that while we as conductors might imagine that our most important relationship is between us and the composer, the relationship that’s REALLY the most important is between us and the players. And while the metaphor is over-used, it’s so like a marriage (or any other deep, intimate, personal relationship) that it’s uncanny.

It’s easy, in our workplace, to fall into stereotyped roles, where conductors forget that the orchestra is people and the orchestra forgets that conductors are, too.

And now I feel like Charlton Heston at the end of “Soylent Green”!

About the author

Neal Gittleman
Neal Gittleman

The 2011-2012 season is Neal Gittleman's 17th year as Music Director of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. Gittleman has led the orchestra to new levels of artistic achievement and increasing acclaim throughout the country. American Record Guide magazine has praised the orchestra's performance as has the Cincinnati Enquirer, which called the DPO "a precise, glowing machine." When the Orchestra christened the Mead Theatre in the Benjamin and Marian Schuster Performing Arts Center in March of 2003, the Enquirer reported that "Gittleman has brought the DPO to a new level." During his tenure, the orchestra has received nine ASCAP awards from the American Symphony Orchestra League for adventurous programming.

Prior to his arrival in Dayton, Gittleman served as Music Director of the Marion (IN) Philharmonic, Associate Conductor of the Syracuse Symphony, and Assistant Conductor of the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, a post he held under the Exxon/Arts Endowment Conductors Program. He also served ten seasons as Associate Conductor and Resident Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Neal Gittleman has appeared as guest conductor with many of the country's leading orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago, San Francisco, Minnesota, Phoenix, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Omaha, San Jose and Jacksonville symphony orchestras and the Buffalo Philharmonic. He has also conducted orchestras in Germany, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Neal graduated from Yale University in 1975. He studied with Nadia Boulanger and Annette Dieudonné in Paris, with Hugh Ross at the Manhattan School of Music and with Charles Bruck at both the Pierre Monteux School and the Hartt School of Music, where he was a Karl Böhm Fellow. It was at the Hartt School that he earned his Arts Diploma in Orchestral Conducting. He won the Second Prize at the 1984 Ernest Ansermet International Conducting Competition in Geneva and Third Prize in the 1986 Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition in New York.

At home in the pit as well as on stage, Neal has led productions for Dayton Opera, the Human Race Theatre Company, Syracuse Opera Company, Hartt Opera Theater, and for Milwaukee's renowned Skylight Opera Theatre. He has also conducted for the Milwaukee Ballet, Hartford Ballet, Chicago City Ballet, Ballet Arizona, and Theater Ballet of Canada.

Neal is nationally known for his Classical Connections programs, which provide a "behind the scenes” look at the great works of the orchestral repertoire. These innovative programs, which began in Milwaukee 22 years ago, have become a vital part of the Dayton Philharmonic's concert season.

His discography includes a recording of the Dayton Philharmonic in performances of Tomas Svoboda's two piano concertos with Norman Krieger and the composer as featured soloists. Gittleman has also recorded a CD of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F with Krieger and the Czech National Symphony. Both recordings are available on the Artisie 4 label. The DPO's second CD, A Celebration of Flight was released in 2003 as part of the celebration of the centennial of the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight. The orchestra’s most recent CD, of live archival performances from four eras, released in 2008 in conjunction with the DPO’s 75th anniversary.

When not on the podium, Neal is an avid player of golf, squash and t'ai chi ch'uan and has added yoga to his regimen. He and his wife, Lisa Fry, have been Dayton residents since 1997.

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