Word: conductor
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Audiences can let a conductor know, any night in the week, what they think of him and his music. Last week, in separate essays, two great conductors told what they think of audience tastes, and of composers whose works they have performed...
...Boris Goldovsky's opera school at Tanglewood. After a student production of the Fountain Scene from Pelléas and Mélisande there, he landed a chance to sing Pélleas in the New York City Opera's closing performance last year. Ace French Repertory Conductor Jean Morel liked Rounseville's big, wide-ranging tenor voice, taught him to sing Hoffmann this season in the City Opera's first production of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann...
...when Conductor Serge Koussevitzky got it under way, the audience found No. 2 not at all hard to like. It opened with a quiet conversation between two clarinets-"the loneliest music I know" -symbolizing Auden's characters in the Third Avenue bar. Nearly 30 minutes later, it got to a huge, orgiastic orchestral climax, then resolved into a thoughtful epilogue. Overall, listeners heard more melody and less dissonance than they had come prepared to hear. Standout movement: a rhythmically terrific apotheosis of jazz, with Lennie himself at the piano, backed by bass fiddler and percussion...
...unexpectedly to play the piano solo in the Martinu Concerto Grosso. During the rehearsal, Fine, who was reading the work for the first time, made a mistake. Koussevitzky mistook his grimace for a smile and stopped the Orchestra. In the thick Russian accents which defy reproduction, the Conductor announced, "When we make a mistake in this Orchestra, we don't laugh; we weep!" Koussevitzky was so impressed with the epigram that after the rehearsal he called Fine to his room and repeated...
...acting conductor of the Glee Club several years ago and conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Chamber Orchestra and Chorus, Fine has been encouraging the performance of rarely heard contemporary and older music, a responsibility he feels strongly. Under his guidance, the Music Club has been revived since the war for the best years in its history...