I love the musings of Michael Hovnanian, who is a double bass player with a Major Midwestern Orchestra (in Oprahtown). He has written yet another gem of a post, which has one of those paragraphs that I simply had to share:
Dutoit stayed for another week to lead us in Petrushka, along with the Grieg piano concerto and the aforementioned Suite from Karelia, bringing some elan to the Stravinsky, reminiscent of nail-biters from the Solti era, with ‘excitement’ as the byproduct of a spasmodic modal expressivity, and the hyperbolic extraneosity of gestural vectors emanating from the vicinity of the podium. Anyone scratching their head trying to follow that last sentence has taken the first small step on the road to empathizing with the occasional plight of an orchestral musician.