Word: conductor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rehearsal was over; the guest conductor stepped down from the podium. Said Maestro Toscanini, who had been sitting quietly in a back seat scrutinizing the score: "Now! That man really knows how to play that music ... I play it like a pig!" The little knot of courtiers around Toscanini hastened to assure him that it wasn't so. The old man turned on them with one of his sudden, unpredictable thunderclaps: "Oh, so you think I don't know music?" As he marched off he sputtered: "The trouble with all of you is-you have all been poisoned...
...poison" that he spreads has only grown more potent and magical with the years. Today, the crowds that choke Manhattan's Radio City on Saturday nights for the Maestro's broadcast concerts hear the music of a man who is without question the greatest living conductor. They also look upon-and this is Toscanini's secret -an incorruptible man in a corruptible world...
...least a good laugh. This little scarecrow figure who closed the score before he started to play looked as if he might furnish some fun. But by the end of Act I, they were on their feet, cheering. At 19, Arturo Toscanini had won his first ovation as a conductor...
...answer is that there is much more to conducting than just keeping time; though even keeping time in a complicated score isn't always easy. At any given moment the flute player or the violinist is concerned only with his own note, which the conductor must blend-in time and volume-with the playing of 100 others. And while concentrating on the notes being played at any given moment, the conductor must also have one part of his mind listening to the entire piece. He must be on guard not to exhaust prematurely, in a too early climax...
...young Toscanini, Verdi found a conductor he could trust. Before a performance of Verdi's Quattro Pezzi Sacri, Toscanini once called on him, told him that he felt a retard was needed in one passage of the Te Deum. When Verdi heard him play it, he patted him on the back, said: "Splendid! That is just how I heard it in my mind." "Why didn't you write it that way?" asked Toscanini. Said Verdi: "I was afraid it would be exaggerated." Said Giacomo Puccini of Toscanini, who had conducted the world premiere of his La Boheme: "Toscanini...