Those black and white movies celebrating conductors who randomly found themselves famous are just so toxic. I absolutely despise them. That was a mediocre time for music. These conductors were abusive, male, not effective and... well... mediorce. the results were mostly average. Can we please erase those movies about those conductors forever as well? I'll take my average young female conductor from my city over that asshole Klemperer-Toscanini-Bernstein's sort.
1:04 is actually just the conductor being ahead of the symphony for some reason. Some famous conductors do this for whatever reason but it helps the players anticipate events in the song
No it’s not. That conductor looks like he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s literally 2 seconds ahead of the orchestra, it’s impossible to play off that.
Hell, that’s nothing! As a first violinist with the Iceland S.O. My bow hand got so sweaty I lost my bow, made a grab for it in the air which made it summersault right into the first row of the audience. Fortunately the bow survived. The kind man passed it back to me and I carried on as if nothing happened. Weirdest thing ever.
A fun historic fact: Beethoven often conducted his own music. Later in his life when he was deaf, he still sometimes insisted on doing so, which went terribly. And then there were a few concerts where organizers humoured him by letting him conduct, but placed another conductor somewhere behind him out of his field of view that the orchestra was actually playing on.
So Bernstein drops his baton (an everyday occurrence) and WITHOUT BREAKING THE PHRASE OR LOSS OF GESTURE, seamlessly continues conducting while simultaneously retrieving a backup baton and continuing. How is that possibly considered a fail? Mediocrity, I do not absolve you.
Once during rehearsal, my conductor made a gesture so violent he threw his sheet music out of his music stand and onto the viola section. It was hilarious, specially considering that the viola section was made up of 3 violas.
