Word: conductor
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Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) (Igor Stravinsky conducting the New York Philharmonic-Symphony; Columbia: 8 sides). The spine-tingling bumps & bleats, grumps & groans of Stravinsky's ballet of pagan Russian rituals caused a near-riot in Paris in 1913. Stravinsky, ordinarily an indifferent conductor of his own works, had an off-night in Manhattan last spring, went to town with the Philharmonic and Le Sacre. Here he repeats the performance, with well-recorded results...
...Fifth Symphony, and a new work by Vaughan-Williams called A London Symphony. Unless I miss my guess, half his audience will snore through the first half of the program; the other half will go to sleep in the second. This suggests at once the obstacles against which a conductor must labor in planning his programs...
...obligations, equally important, to the public, to the composer, and to himself, each of which must be fulfilled without infringing on the others. First of all, a conductor is bound to play a number of works from the standard repertoire, but he must not, certainly, subject his audience to a steady diet of Beethoven's Fifth, Tchaikowski's Pathetique, and the New World Symphony. Of course, there are always younger listeners for whom a playing of these favorites is a new and exciting experience. On the other hand, conductors do not take enough for granted, such as the fact that...
This leads in reasonably logical fashion to the conductor's next duty, the job of educating audiences to new music, which is a direct responsibility to the composer, and an ultimate one to the public. If he takes this obligation seriously, and at the same time has the genius of being able to recognize genius, he may become, as Koussevitzky has become, a very profound influence on the course of contemporary music. Koussevitzky has, for example, introduced to this country all the works of Strawinsky, Prokofieff, and Shostakowitch; it was at his suggestion, in fact, that Strawinsky's Symphonie...
Lastly, the conductor owes it to himself, in his programs, to take cognizance of the world around him, and yet maintain a strict artistic integrity. Koussevitzky's inclusion of the London Symphony on a concert program may be reckoned as his tribute to the events which are taking place today. On the other hand, while Mr. Woodworth pays a similar tribute in basing this year's Glee Club program on English and elegaic music, there is something debasing in the fact that German music, which has always figured prominently in Glee Club repertoires, is totally omitted...