clarity – what’s it worth?

Today was the last concert of the 42nd season of the Oregon Bach Festival. We finished out, appropriately enough, with the great Symphony No. 9 of Ludwig van Beethoven. At the helm as OBF music director Helmuth Rilling, who has held that position for all of the festival’s 42 year history.

Whereas the Brahms German Requiem was a testament to the greatness of Rilling and his mastery of the orchestra/choral repertoire, the Beethoven Ninth was a perplexing counterpoint to that assertion. It’s not that he doesn’t know the piece, clearly, he has done it many times (but never before with the OBF), but there were these curious times where his brain was clearly in one place, and the music that was happening on stage was in another. I don’t know quite how to explain it to a layperson, but imagine that you’re watching a film. The soundtrack and the images begin in perfect sync, but as time goes by, the soundtrack gets more and more delayed compared to the action that takes place onscreen. If you imagine this in reverse, it is what it felt like to be in the orchestra at times over this past weekend.

Rilling’s podium eccentricities are well-known to the veteran members of the OBF orchestra and chorus, and given his authority and mastery of the repertoire (and advanced age), they can be forgiven when balanced against what he brings to the music. But occasionally, there are times when things just go a bit more out of whack than usual, and the leaders of the orchestra have to do a bit of corrective bobbing and weaving to get things back on track.

So, where am I going with all of this? Well, I’m not going to knock Helmuth – he’s fabulous, and a few missteps with the baton hardly tarnish his well-deserved reputation. But it got me to thinking – just how much of a premium (or not) we in orchestras place on clarity of a conductor’s beat. There are some conductors who are just absolutely unwatchable – Valery Gergiev springs immediately to mind – but they’re undeniably great leaders. People I know who played in the National Symphony under Rostropovich were similarly of a mind about his leadership qualities – he could be a disaster on the podium in new music, but was incredible with the Russian repertoire. He had the gravitas to make things happen in spite of a limited baton vocabulary.

On the other hand, there were great conductors who were very much minimalists in their use of the stick – Fritz Reiner and Arturo Toscanini being two prime examples. Reiner would often make his gestures smaller and smaller until the orchestra was absolutely glued to his baton – he demanded attention by making himself more necessary to the orchestra.

It seems that, these days, there is a lot of attention given to dramatic gestures and podium “air time” (i.e. the entire body of the conductor leaving the ground) – and those sorts of antics are very entertaining from the audience side of the house. But to me, it’s more important that the conductor indicate what he or she wants when they’re on the podium – without words, if possible. Just get the basics right first: beat time with the right hand, control dynamics and cut-offs with the right, and don’t mirror beat with both hands (and if you’ve got nothing to do with your left hand, just let it hang by your side, ok?). That being said, it’s getting increasingly rare for a conductor to be able to give an upbeat that is related to the desired tempo (!), or to indicate the over-arching phrase structure through the manner of their beating. So, in the end, I’d prefer someone like Rilling, who is able to convey the overall sense of how a piece should go (and leave the details up to the orchestra) to someone who is very clear but has not much to say, or doesn’t know how to say it (without actually saying it).

[As you might notice, I’m a bit weary of playing for stick wavers, so it’s a good thing that I have a few weeks free of orchestral gigs to recharge the artistic batteries.]