Recent comments in /f/IAmA

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Pardcore_horn t1_j72tz5f wrote

Reply to comment by frozenbobo in I'm Yves Abel, Principal Conductor of the San Diego Opera. I’ve conducted all over the globe, and even got to work with the great Leonard Bernstein while in training. AMA! by sandiegoopera

I'd never seen that happen before. That's really cool. It would definitely take a lot of practice to be able to just pick up where you should be in the piece after a gap like that... Just goes to show the true talent of the musicians who do that

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vissidamore t1_j721gvb wrote

Reply to comment by redditsonodddays in I'm Yves Abel, Principal Conductor of the San Diego Opera. I’ve conducted all over the globe, and even got to work with the great Leonard Bernstein while in training. AMA! by sandiegoopera

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Wozzeck and I think for the right person it would be a really interesting introduction to the art form. Heck I wish it was performed more, but smaller theaters don’t usually put it on where I’m located. They stick to the standard crowd pleasing rep to make sure they can sell enough tickets. But there’s only so many times one can see Carmen or Merry Widow, good lord.

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redditsonodddays t1_j71y28m wrote

Reply to comment by vissidamore in I'm Yves Abel, Principal Conductor of the San Diego Opera. I’ve conducted all over the globe, and even got to work with the great Leonard Bernstein while in training. AMA! by sandiegoopera

Lol I guess so, I just think it’s easy to grasp the story and could be engaging for a newbie who like everyone else is already aware of the romantic opera tropes and was never moved to listen to them. Wozzeck is very cerebral and reminds me of some of the thriller shows that have been popular in television.

The score is also a marvel. A beautifully orchestrated diatonic piece can be unnoticed in our world of music production, but there’s no avoiding the great amount of work that goes into a constantly churning and unsettled orchestra like Berg’s.

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cosifantuttelebelle t1_j71tf5p wrote

Reply to comment by ponkyball in I'm Yves Abel, Principal Conductor of the San Diego Opera. I’ve conducted all over the globe, and even got to work with the great Leonard Bernstein while in training. AMA! by sandiegoopera

Oh cool! Yes, in Nilsson’s biography she explains Toscanini doing this for this reason and then claims it set off a trend for people to do it who didn’t really need to. Thanks for sharing the Toscanini book, I love classical music biographies!

In case anyone’s interested, here’s the excerpt from “La Nilsson - My Life in Opera” in which she discusses it — 10/10 recommend this book, shes very funny and as you can see, doesn’t hold back!:

“It is a kind of status symbol for conductors to conduct without a score. It is said that Toscanini started this fad, but the reason he conducted without score is that his vision was so poor he had to conduct from memory. A concert conducted without a score is admirable but after all, the musicians have their notes right in front of them. In the worst case the conductor can always, as someone put it, follow the orchestra. But when the conductor of an opera has the soloists, chorus (and, in Karajan’s case, telephone and lighting) to control, it is totally irresponsible to conduct from memory. Just being aware that the conductor has no score before him makes the singers nervous and insecure. Singers have a lot to memorize and a Wagner opera is generally four to five hours long. I have lived through several totally unnecessary catastrophes with these “scoreless” exhibitionists. It is extremely difficult artistically to be subjected to this. Just such an incident happened in a Tristan performance with Karajan. After singing in act 1 continually for seventy-eight minutes, and with the intermission not providing sufficient rest, I found myself completely disoriented in act 2. Indeed, I drew a blank and lost any sense of where I was in the music. Karajan noticed my situation immediately, but as he was conducting from memory he was of no help to me. He turned to the first violins and pretended to be very busy with them. The half-asleep prompter was not to be brought around and it seemed to me an eternity until I was back on track, at which point Karajan resumed his normal stance and his usual transcendental air. When the renowned conductor Knappertsbusch was asked why he did not conduct from memory, he answered, “Because I can read music.””

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