Look At Me!

Question: What's everybody looking at, anyway?

Answer: a more important orchestral figure than even a generation ago. Historically, the conductor as we know the role emerged during the nineteenth century, as musicians grew beyond their role as mere servants and tradesmen. This is the icon that many of us have honored since those first, thrilling childhood concerts, the musical hero who leads performances and sometimes runs the orchestral organization itself. They are the glamorous star of a matinee or evening, the grappler with great symphonic powers as summoned by a Beethoven or a Brahms, the quite literal stand-in, in fact, for the titans of musical history.

Who hasn't felt a thrill of being in the presence of enduring greatness, when watching a renowned conductor commandingly cue the brass in a Mahler symphony? Or lovingly coax poetry from the strings in a Debussy tone poem?

They may indeed be keeping time, as their Baroque predecessors did by beating a big stick on the floor or gesturing from the keyboard. They may be cuing entrances, modulating dynamics, reminding players wordlessly of what they may

 have discussed or at least stopped to repeat during rehearsal.  But they are also quite literally putting on a show - one of the greatest shows on earth, in fact, in terms of sheer, live artistry-per-minute.

Not too shabby. Yet today many conductors are doing even more than this. Many contemporary orchestral performances are an almost defiant celebration of refined pleasure. The conductor doesn't simply interpret a score but viscerally (even seductively) personifies a kind of faith in it, and by extension in the sublime joys of the greatest Western music.

In an era that privileges Kelly Clarkson and Flo Rida and Justin Timberlake and Lady GaGa - to name just four of the best-selling musical artists in the world, at the moment - the classical orchestral conductor functions as a real kind of priest, guiding his congregation toward the answers to such questions as "What's so great about the sonata form?"  "How can non-narrative art touch our emotions?" and "Why should ladies and gentlemen bother to get dressed for an evening?" 

Conductors today are, yes, scholars and curators, showmen and teachers. They're also spiritual leaders, reminding us all, in a time of great cultural evolution, of the grandest achievements possible for human beings. And if that role can be helped along by a return to the stick - whether to thump the floor in an effort to regain attention, or to clunk gently on the heads of those who don't realize that Wagner is at least as interesting at Britney Spears - then a stick it shall be.

Florestan

WATCH THE MAESTROS AT WORK:

Herbert von Karajan

A visually gorgeous and inspiring documentary on the life and work of the conducting colossus, including his extraordinarily sensitive conducting of Beethoven's Ninth.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

An extraordinarily educative profile in which the world-famous conductor gives a fascinating exposition of orchestras' contrasting styles, with revealing rehearsal and recording footage as well as his impassioned conducting style in concert.

And also Harnoncourt conducting Bach choral works.

Pierre Boulez

Known for his absolute precision, and (perhaps as a composer himself) for his faithfulness to a composer's directions, he's seen here conducting Varese's Amerique with his characteristically baton-less conducting style.

And as a former pupil of Messiaen, giving a fascinating insight into complex modernist works such as Oiseaux Exotiques, which he conducts here.

Kurt Masur

The admired (and controversial) conductor of the New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, and Orchestre National de France conducting Strauss's tone poem Till Eulenspiegel, widely regarded as a "conductor's piece.

Krysztof Penderecki

Our documentary in which he talks frankly (and amusingly) about modern music, and conducting his own works.