WHAT ARE YOU FOR?
.......a question asked of every conductor by every school party to visit us - invariably given some waffly sort of answer. I've never heard a conductor able define his role - not Karajan, not Rattle - which might partly explain the hedge of edginess that grows around conductors. I mean, if they don't know what they're doing, how are we expected to? We didn't have one last week......conductor, that is. And it was lots of fun. Sacking the conductor so that the leader can do a self-drive job won't work with a full size orchestra; but prune us down to a chamber band, give us an inspirational leader like Liz, and it all works fine. We switch into a different mode. Some things are much easier - things like hearing and playing! Which is just as well, because in a small group everything you do is in the spotlight. There's no hiding.
This is not the first time I've burdensomely blogged at you about this, and it won't be the last. It's at the heart of practical music making. There's a mystery wriggling under this stone. But, a health warning: for any single explanation of things, there'll be plenty who will angrily disagree. When arguments don't go away, it's usually because we aren't asking the right questions, we're probably making the wrong assumptions, and we don't want to be shown up wrong.....and certainly not by the likes of you.......
