Taking the Fifth
There’s no such thing as “air conducting.” We’re all familiar with “air guitar,” where someone imitates a guitar soloist without having any real guitar ability. But there’s really no such thing as imitating a conductor, because the conductor himself is the instrument. His movements are exactly what the orchestra is responding to in their performance. Sometimes it can be extreme like standing still and letting the orchestra play. Sometimes it can be the other extreme with arms flailing, head banging, jumping, and even singing along.
I am fascinated by conducting. It requires a dancer’s agility and expressiveness as well as charisma and presence like an actor. It also requires an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the music that is being performed.
It is also one of the most misunderstood arts. You remember Bugs Bunny imitating Leopold Stokowski in that cartoon? Well, I think that pretty much remains what people think, it’s more about being pretentious, and conductors like Leonard Bernstein made that image expected.
But it’s different now. Gustavo Dudamel features Bernstein’s spirit in the way of using his body to really sculpt the music, but yet you always sense that his spirit is working for the music instead of his own grandiosity. This is reflected in his recording of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth, where he basically uses the same tempo as Herbert von Karajan, which is about a minute shorter than Bernstein’s versions (I checked two of them).
Conductors today more or less get out of the music’s way, giving enough for the performance without scenery chewing. It’s much more practical, and it tones down the pretentiousness that actually I think scares some audiences away. But there’s something powerful about showmanship that has to work its way in or the audience is left with no front man to focus their attention on…unless you count the music of course.
There are about a dozen good performances on YOUTUBE of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony and each conductor does it differently. Some don’t seem to be trying all that hard…any orchestra has probably played that piece dozens if not hundreds of times before. More importantly, each has a personality and style. Here’s five of them.
As a kind of mentor for Dudamel (Barenboim is also from South America), it’s instructive to see him and his possible influence. I really love the very last moments of the clip where he just stands there calm in the center of the orchestral storm, waiting for the final chord to come.
The man doesn’t open his eyes, which is one of the most important ways a conductor can communicate with an orchestra. But in his face, you can see the workings of a detailed musical mind. He has an amazingly expressive wrist that gets lots of mileage. There’s also a video of him conducting this as an older man, but I prefer the younger one.
He kind of looks like the conductor dictator that he was said to be. Standing there with those imposing eyes, stiff posture, and his hand pushing notes out of the way it seems.
Giulini was music director of the LA Phil for a couple of years. He’s conducting this relatively fast compared to the von Karajan or Bernstein model. But it’s still slower than the “period” aspirations of Roger Norrington or John Eliot Gardner. But as a commenter on the video noted, he looks like he’s crying, which again is the acting inherent in conducting. He’s basically setting the emotional space, and not just beating out the time.
More facial expressions in Rattle…which you can’t see as much because the editor decided to show more of the orchestra and audience I’m afraid. When you do see him, he seems to be singing along, and his eyes go wide and crazy. Not the pathos of Giulini, but still he’s got something of the passionate energy required.
August 5th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
hm. funny. i thought all conducting was air conducting.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Six of one…half a dozen of the other.