Great episode David. Interestingly enough you seem to appreciate certain conductors, such as Gunther Wand for instance, whose attention to detail you find revealing and beneficial, and others, whom I shall not mention, whose attention to detail you find counterproductive. Based on what you say today I am gathering that it is attention to irrelevant details that distract from the big picture that you object to. And Wand, for instance, always had the big picture in mind. Thanks again.
Dear Maestro Hurwitz, I am inclined to place you as first and foremost among todays practicians of "How to listen to classical music" and this brilliant entry proves it (again). Keep on the good work and we'll listen even more! So one fundemental question: Is the adoration and endorsement of micro managers like Claudio Abbado (I sang under his baton in 1985 in Mahler's Second where he didn't micromanage at all) a "sign of the times" in the sense that many listeners who have repeatedly heard the same "standard interpretations" on record and CD by grand conductors, simply wants interpretations that differ - even if it means sacrificing the overall (and by the composer envisaged) concept? In effect meaning that endorsement of micro management conductors is an inevitable consequence of "Too many good recordings out there" ? Which also, alas, will also cast the effords of a.e. Bruno Walter in Brahms symphonies in the shadow, in favour of some upcoming "hailed by the media" shooting star micro manager conductor whose fame rests on a.e. "he highlights the details in the middle voices" (and similar BS Light?). In short: Is the success of micro management conductors a consequence of commercialism?
For sure, effortless flowing music is not commercially a good choice. Abbado to me doesn't feel like a guy who wants to be recognized from the others, his approach seems genuine to me, at least because I would do the same as he did :) Honeck might be a more fitting example, even if I respect him a lot.
Dave, Thank you for this terrific video! I think micromanagement is an epidemic among many famous conductors and management today. I hear it most in concert, making truly inspired performances all the more valuable. I recently heard a performance of the Eroica where the conductor reduced the string section to the principal players for the first two variations or something?? It made mediocre at best performance instantly sour for no good reason!!!! Thanks again for your work on this channel. It is absolutely fantastic
I greatly enjoyed the insights and perspectives you shared in this video, Dave. But it whetted my appetite to learn more about how you view conductors who don't tend to micro-manage, so I hope you'll consider doing a video -- or perhaps two or three of them -- on the art of conducting. I'd be especially interested in your take on what makes for a 'genius' conductor. And on this last day of 2022, I'd like to wish you a wonderful 2023!
Thank you. I think that your question is answered in the many videos about conductors whose work I enjoy--although perhaps not in quite so concentrated a fashion!
Very nice video. I am actually a micromanaging fan, but all of your considerations are absolutely true. As always, it's a matter of balance and it depends on the piece too. As an Italian folk, I like to compare things to food, and to me the good "micromanaging" is like trying to bring out all the flavours and richness of a dish (e.g. putting a raspberry on a greasy food to let it's acidity stick out), and not letting it be just a salty or sweet mess. To me, the "big picture" it's often an excuse for conductors to be sloppy and dull. As said, it depends on the music. It makes no sense to me to be a micromanager in Bruckner, whilst it is crucial in Mahler where the pointillistic element of the orchestration to me is vital (maybe not the cymbal crash that you mention, but I think about the Scherzo of 2nd symphony where there are a lot of hidden gems that often are overlooked, which Abbado does wonderfully). Of course, when things get perverse and eccentric, it's time to take a step back, but I feel that Abbado rarely crosses that line. Conversely, Maazel fits your example percectly. To me he is maybe the dullest conductor ever, because his polishness sucks out all the soul of his performances. He brings out all the flavours, but his ingredients taste like crap. With that being said, I personally like a more quirky and polished approach in general. But as you said, it's a matter of taste ;)
A real Lesson for Life in this 20 minutes. Wow! Peter Brook, the British stage director, in his advice to designers was “Select the significant detail. Avoid the unimportant comment”. The devil is in the details: but so is God. As you say, Dave, it’s those who are there to “serve and preserve” the piece - and its composer - who are best equipped to avoid the ego’s little temptations, and discern the difference. Thanks for fighting the good fight, putting the right words to what we all feel!
Any classical work of sufficient richness and complexity will have lots of different elements which a conductor could focus in on. And of course the balance between these elements isn’t always the same in every piece of music. Rhythm should be much more in the foreground in a performance of The Rite of Spring than it should in the Tristan Prelude, for instance. But most of the time, you want the conductor to keep all the various elements in the score in an approximate balance, allowing you the listener to make your own personal journey through the music. As a Bach fan, I’ve noticed how fashions periodically sweep through Bach performance. For instance, there used to be an obsession with discovering a dance element in Bach. I’m not just thinking of Bach’s “official” dance music, such as the Four Orchestral Suites. The conductor decides that a particular chorus in one of the Passions is a minuet - and yes, maybe there’s a minuet element to it which should be brought out. But they exaggerate it to the point where all the other interesting aspects of the chorus are being sacrificed for the sake of loudly telling the listeners that it’s a minuet.
I originally thought that you might have been under the influence of the previous video of Zimerman's Szymanowski, but since your critique was positive and there wasn't any mention to micromanaging, the question now arises if this term is not just a simple synonyme of mannerism. (Another example would be the Schubert cycle by Mitsuko Uchida. I remember in particular the Moments Musicaux, which under her fingers could be also called Moments Analytiques.)
Great break-down - I was curious about the term "micromanager as well". Has any conductor attempted to record a symphonic work by recording each orchestral section independently, then replicating the sound of an organic work in the engineering room? The concept sounds grotesque when applied to Classical Music, but has anyone dared to try it?
I think it's happened on the margins. I think some performances of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra have had the organ part overdubbed, because there wasn't a suitable organ available in the recording studio or concert hall. I'm guessing the military cannons in recordings of the 1812 Overture might include a bit of studio trickery...
Hi Dave, I watched the movie Tár, where Cate Blanchett plays a conductor, couldn't help but wondering what would be your thoughts on it... Also a humble suggestion: what about a series of how the world of classical music is depicted in cinema?
I attended a Maazel rehearsal in which his perfect hearing made him do nothing but intonation checks for what seemed to be ... hours. possibly he suffered when something wasn't perfectly in tune, but I felt that was a waste of a rehearsal, musically speaking. does that count?
Micromanaging bothers me much more in live performances than in recordings. To me, most recordings are just resources for study, not ends in themselves. I can accept or reject whatever I find. But I admit my attitude about listening to recordings is atypical. And I am not consistent about it - there are a fair number of recordings I listen to often for pleasure. The sad state of affairs is that while in the past, recordings tended to reveal technical problems that lacked adequate solutions, today's recordings tend to serve as examples of what NOT TO DO when you can literally do anything at all. But actual music-making is pretty much a negative process of elimination. You can't really tell anyone how to play in positive terms. In real life, rehearsing is all about "too soon, too late, too loud, too slow, too fast, too sharp, too flat - AHA!" And when it's AHA!, nobody needs to tell you. Everybody senses it.
Jurowski does the flutes at the end of the Bruckner 5th too. I love to hear them however and the lowering of volume adds contrast that makes the last notes even more emphatic. Thielleman is one of the worst meddlers- unlistenable.
To my ears, Giuseppe Sinopoli was an inveterate micromanager, often futzing around with textures, balances, little luftpausen, tempo exaggerations. Not always. His Nabucco recording is stimulating. But his recording of Puccini's Butterfly has yard after yard of that kind of stuff and when I was listening to it I wanted to yell, "Hey, Giuseppe, there's supposed to be a drama going on here, could you get your face out of the damn score and pay some attention to it?!" Especially in the last act he just kills the thing dead and the singers can't do much about it. Bad day in the studio. I once heard half of a Don Giovanni in Seattle with Gerard Schwarz, who (whom?) I liked so much in the concert repertory he was sympathetic with. But in the Mozart he was so fussy and simply would not let the orchestra (never mind the singers) just PLAY that I had to leave at the half. But then he'd turn around and do a pellucid, lovely Pelleas.
Watching your definition of micromanager, it seems one of the archetype of micro-manager conductor is Harnoncourt. Are you agree? But it seems like you rank highly Harnoncourt in Mozart/Haydn at least more than Abbado in the same repertoire (I frankly can't seem to grab Abbado's Mozart is micro managed). Why (since they are bad)?
That was very informative, especially since you made clear that not only conductors but also individual performers can have this habit. Your “micromanager” is hypercontrolling specifically in respect to nuances that are intrusive for the listener or just clutter the sound. (Or should we say “strew litter in the music”?) Judging by some of the other comments people have made, I must not be the only one who had mistakenly thought that what you meant by “micromanager” was simply a control freak, a sort of dictator who insists on rigid conformity to many, many detailed instructions. But, logically, provided that these detailed instructions address seemingly small matters, but ones that are musically important, a dictator like that could create great music (also assuming, of course, that the musician‑slaves are not so cowed that performances become nothing but coldly mechanical exercises in obedience). I don’t know if George Szell, for example, would fit into this genius-dictator category, or many other famous Autocrats of Our Art. So this brings me to the following question: are inflexible dictator-conductors often micromanagers as well? Or at least sometimes? (The inverse is probably not true, I would assume, if Abbado was both “nice guy” and yet often a micromanager.) - Your ever devoted fan.
Honestly, no generalization is possible. Szell was unquestionably a micromanager, but he was also a genius at the podium and he knew what mattered and what didn't, so his obsessions never (or seldom) got in the way of the big picture. I once saw a concert with Abbado and Berlin doing Mahler 9th where he literally spent the entire concert conducting the violas, ignoring everyone and everything else. It was awful. Maybe it was the most detailed performance of the viola part ever. The other parts counted for nothing. That too was micromanaging.
I think being a control freak and being a micromanager are two very different things. A control freak is some guy with inferiority complex who thinks that the conductor is the only guy om the stage who's playing an instrument called orchestra and thinks that to his will and gesture should come whatever he wants. If it doesn't, then the instrument is broken. Control freaks are usually detrimental and perverse. Micromanagers are conductors who won't let any detail unrehearsed, but once they address it and hear it done well, they consider it fixed.
Very much agree. I was almost waiting for your Simon Rattle/Berlin Symphony comment, Dave! Do you think this is endemic with his recordings and performances, or are some far more problematic than others? Maybe it's just pot luck, but I think I've only heard you make critical comments about SR. I must say that I find his encounters with Tippett fruitful (I'm thinking of glorious performances of The Rose Lake in recent years). But maybe that's because Tippett was in certain respects a micromanaging composer - one I absolutely love, but can understand others finding frustrating. In SR's case I think the issue is that he genuinely loves the music in every detail, has an opinion about every detail, and wants every detail to shine. But in fairness he also has a sense of the whole, too. When the balance works its magical, but when it doesn't...
David, you cracked me up micromanaging “Row, row, row your boat”!
Great episode David. Interestingly enough you seem to appreciate certain conductors, such as Gunther Wand for instance, whose attention to detail you find revealing and beneficial, and others, whom I shall not mention, whose attention to detail you find counterproductive. Based on what you say today I am gathering that it is attention to irrelevant details that distract from the big picture that you object to. And Wand, for instance, always had the big picture in mind. Thanks again.
Yes, exactly.
Dear Maestro Hurwitz,
I am inclined to place you as first and foremost among todays practicians of "How to listen to classical music" and this brilliant entry proves it (again).
Keep on the good work and we'll listen even more!
So one fundemental question:
Is the adoration and endorsement of micro managers like Claudio Abbado (I sang under his baton in 1985 in Mahler's Second where he didn't micromanage at all) a "sign of the times" in the sense that many listeners who have repeatedly heard the same "standard interpretations" on record and CD by grand conductors, simply wants interpretations that differ - even if it means sacrificing the overall (and by the composer envisaged) concept?
In effect meaning that endorsement of micro management conductors is an inevitable consequence of "Too many good recordings out there" ?
Which also, alas, will also cast the effords of a.e. Bruno Walter in Brahms symphonies in the shadow, in favour of some upcoming "hailed by the media" shooting star micro manager conductor whose fame rests on a.e. "he highlights the details in the middle voices" (and similar BS Light?).
In short: Is the success of micro management conductors a consequence of commercialism?
Commercialism, no, competition to be recognized, I would say partially.
For sure, effortless flowing music is not commercially a good choice. Abbado to me doesn't feel like a guy who wants to be recognized from the others, his approach seems genuine to me, at least because I would do the same as he did :) Honeck might be a more fitting example, even if I respect him a lot.
Dave,
Thank you for this terrific video! I think micromanagement is an epidemic among many famous conductors and management today. I hear it most in concert, making truly inspired performances all the more valuable.
I recently heard a performance of the Eroica where the conductor reduced the string section to the principal players for the first two variations or something?? It made mediocre at best performance instantly sour for no good reason!!!!
Thanks again for your work on this channel. It is absolutely fantastic
I greatly enjoyed the insights and perspectives you shared in this video, Dave. But it whetted my appetite to learn more about how you view conductors who don't tend to micro-manage, so I hope you'll consider doing a video -- or perhaps two or three of them -- on the art of conducting. I'd be especially interested in your take on what makes for a 'genius' conductor.
And on this last day of 2022, I'd like to wish you a wonderful 2023!
Thank you. I think that your question is answered in the many videos about conductors whose work I enjoy--although perhaps not in quite so concentrated a fashion!
That was a wonderful helpful and insightful explanation. Thank you.
Very nice video. I am actually a micromanaging fan, but all of your considerations are absolutely true. As always, it's a matter of balance and it depends on the piece too. As an Italian folk, I like to compare things to food, and to me the good "micromanaging" is like trying to bring out all the flavours and richness of a dish (e.g. putting a raspberry on a greasy food to let it's acidity stick out), and not letting it be just a salty or sweet mess. To me, the "big picture" it's often an excuse for conductors to be sloppy and dull. As said, it depends on the music. It makes no sense to me to be a micromanager in Bruckner, whilst it is crucial in Mahler where the pointillistic element of the orchestration to me is vital (maybe not the cymbal crash that you mention, but I think about the Scherzo of 2nd symphony where there are a lot of hidden gems that often are overlooked, which Abbado does wonderfully). Of course, when things get perverse and eccentric, it's time to take a step back, but I feel that Abbado rarely crosses that line. Conversely, Maazel fits your example percectly. To me he is maybe the dullest conductor ever, because his polishness sucks out all the soul of his performances. He brings out all the flavours, but his ingredients taste like crap. With that being said, I personally like a more quirky and polished approach in general. But as you said, it's a matter of taste ;)
A real Lesson for Life in this 20 minutes. Wow! Peter Brook, the British stage director, in his advice to designers was “Select the significant detail. Avoid the unimportant comment”. The devil is in the details: but so is God. As you say, Dave, it’s those who are there to “serve and preserve” the piece - and its composer - who are best equipped to avoid the ego’s little temptations, and discern the difference. Thanks for fighting the good fight, putting the right words to what we all feel!
Any classical work of sufficient richness and complexity will have lots of different elements which a conductor could focus in on. And of course the balance between these elements isn’t always the same in every piece of music. Rhythm should be much more in the foreground in a performance of The Rite of Spring than it should in the Tristan Prelude, for instance. But most of the time, you want the conductor to keep all the various elements in the score in an approximate balance, allowing you the listener to make your own personal journey through the music.
As a Bach fan, I’ve noticed how fashions periodically sweep through Bach performance. For instance, there used to be an obsession with discovering a dance element in Bach. I’m not just thinking of Bach’s “official” dance music, such as the Four Orchestral Suites. The conductor decides that a particular chorus in one of the Passions is a minuet - and yes, maybe there’s a minuet element to it which should be brought out. But they exaggerate it to the point where all the other interesting aspects of the chorus are being sacrificed for the sake of loudly telling the listeners that it’s a minuet.
I originally thought that you might have been under the influence of the previous video of Zimerman's Szymanowski, but since your critique was positive and there wasn't any mention to micromanaging, the question now arises if this term is not just a simple synonyme of mannerism.
(Another example would be the Schubert cycle by Mitsuko Uchida. I remember in particular the Moments Musicaux, which under her fingers could be also called Moments Analytiques.)
Great break-down - I was curious about the term "micromanager as well". Has any conductor attempted to record a symphonic work by recording each orchestral section independently, then replicating the sound of an organic work in the engineering room? The concept sounds grotesque when applied to Classical Music, but has anyone dared to try it?
Not that I'm aware of, but I wouldn't be surprised.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Hope there isn't a "first" - thanks!
I think it's happened on the margins. I think some performances of Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra have had the organ part overdubbed, because there wasn't a suitable organ available in the recording studio or concert hall. I'm guessing the military cannons in recordings of the 1812 Overture might include a bit of studio trickery...
Hi, David. Could you give me an example of a recording where Abbado does that?
Try his late Mozart and Haydn symphonies: www.classicstoday.com/review/review-15030/?search=1
Dave, maybe you can review the new cd box of Walter Gieseking, a famous micromanager. It is interesting to hear your opinion about him. Thank you!
Dave, your videos are fantastic, my ONLY criticism is that the audio level is too high, distorting your mellifluous vocal tones.
When I started, it was way too low. Maybe I overcompensated...
ah, i get now my answer from a question I posed in a previous video. thanks
Hi Dave, I watched the movie Tár, where Cate Blanchett plays a conductor, couldn't help but wondering what would be your thoughts on it... Also a humble suggestion: what about a series of how the world of classical music is depicted in cinema?
Honestly, I have no interest in it whatsoever.
its not about conductors/ conducting. sorry to interject.
I attended a Maazel rehearsal in which his perfect hearing made him do nothing but intonation checks for what seemed to be ... hours. possibly he suffered when something wasn't perfectly in tune, but I felt that was a waste of a rehearsal, musically speaking. does that count?
Yes.
Micromanaging bothers me much more in live performances than in recordings. To me, most recordings are just resources for study, not ends in themselves. I can accept or reject whatever I find. But I admit my attitude about listening to recordings is atypical. And I am not consistent about it - there are a fair number of recordings I listen to often for pleasure.
The sad state of affairs is that while in the past, recordings tended to reveal technical problems that lacked adequate solutions, today's recordings tend to serve as examples of what NOT TO DO when you can literally do anything at all. But actual music-making is pretty much a negative process of elimination. You can't really tell anyone how to play in positive terms. In real life, rehearsing is all about "too soon, too late, too loud, too slow, too fast, too sharp, too flat - AHA!" And when it's AHA!, nobody needs to tell you. Everybody senses it.
Um, yeah. You are atypical!
Jurowski does the flutes at the end of the Bruckner 5th too. I love to hear them however and the lowering of volume adds contrast that makes the last notes even more emphatic. Thielleman is one of the worst meddlers- unlistenable.
To my ears, Giuseppe Sinopoli was an inveterate micromanager, often futzing around with textures, balances, little luftpausen, tempo exaggerations. Not always. His Nabucco recording is stimulating. But his recording of Puccini's Butterfly has yard after yard of that kind of stuff and when I was listening to it I wanted to yell, "Hey, Giuseppe, there's supposed to be a drama going on here, could you get your face out of the damn score and pay some attention to it?!" Especially in the last act he just kills the thing dead and the singers can't do much about it. Bad day in the studio.
I once heard half of a Don Giovanni in Seattle with Gerard Schwarz, who (whom?) I liked so much in the concert repertory he was sympathetic with. But in the Mozart he was so fussy and simply would not let the orchestra (never mind the singers) just PLAY that I had to leave at the half. But then he'd turn around and do a pellucid, lovely Pelleas.
Watching your definition of micromanager, it seems one of the archetype of micro-manager conductor is Harnoncourt. Are you agree? But it seems like you rank highly Harnoncourt in Mozart/Haydn at least more than Abbado in the same repertoire (I frankly can't seem to grab Abbado's Mozart is micro managed). Why (since they are bad)?
It's like anything else--it can be good or bad depending on the music and on what aspects get micromanaged.
Yeah, Maazel was a major micromanager. It’s funny how he could get some great performances when he toned it down.
That was very informative, especially since you made clear that not only conductors but also individual performers can have this habit. Your “micromanager” is hypercontrolling specifically in respect to nuances that are intrusive for the listener or just clutter the sound. (Or should we say “strew litter in the music”?) Judging by some of the other comments people have made, I must not be the only one who had mistakenly thought that what you meant by “micromanager” was simply a control freak, a sort of dictator who insists on rigid conformity to many, many detailed instructions. But, logically, provided that these detailed instructions address seemingly small matters, but ones that are musically important, a dictator like that could create great music (also assuming, of course, that the musician‑slaves are not so cowed that performances become nothing but coldly mechanical exercises in obedience). I don’t know if George Szell, for example, would fit into this genius-dictator category, or many other famous Autocrats of Our Art. So this brings me to the following question: are inflexible dictator-conductors often micromanagers as well? Or at least sometimes? (The inverse is probably not true, I would assume, if Abbado was both “nice guy” and yet often a micromanager.) - Your ever devoted fan.
Honestly, no generalization is possible. Szell was unquestionably a micromanager, but he was also a genius at the podium and he knew what mattered and what didn't, so his obsessions never (or seldom) got in the way of the big picture. I once saw a concert with Abbado and Berlin doing Mahler 9th where he literally spent the entire concert conducting the violas, ignoring everyone and everything else. It was awful. Maybe it was the most detailed performance of the viola part ever. The other parts counted for nothing. That too was micromanaging.
I think being a control freak and being a micromanager are two very different things. A control freak is some guy with inferiority complex who thinks that the conductor is the only guy om the stage who's playing an instrument called orchestra and thinks that to his will and gesture should come whatever he wants. If it doesn't, then the instrument is broken. Control freaks are usually detrimental and perverse. Micromanagers are conductors who won't let any detail unrehearsed, but once they address it and hear it done well, they consider it fixed.
Very much agree. I was almost waiting for your Simon Rattle/Berlin Symphony comment, Dave! Do you think this is endemic with his recordings and performances, or are some far more problematic than others? Maybe it's just pot luck, but I think I've only heard you make critical comments about SR. I must say that I find his encounters with Tippett fruitful (I'm thinking of glorious performances of The Rose Lake in recent years). But maybe that's because Tippett was in certain respects a micromanaging composer - one I absolutely love, but can understand others finding frustrating. In SR's case I think the issue is that he genuinely loves the music in every detail, has an opinion about every detail, and wants every detail to shine. But in fairness he also has a sense of the whole, too. When the balance works its magical, but when it doesn't...
Yes, it's pot luck. Anyway, one Tippett recording does not a great conductor make. Everyone has a good day now and then.