.

Monday, October 15, 2012

The Legend of Leonard Bernstein

While even now at Harvard Bernstein met Mitropoulos who invited the young man to sit in on his rehearsals on the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The 2 formed a friendship and when, right after his graduation, Bernstein was uncertain what career to undertake, it was Mitropoulos who advised that he turn out to be a conductor. On Mitropoulos' additional recommendation Bernstein was accepted into the Curtis Institute at Philadelphia where he was to discover conducting under Fritz Reiner to your next two years. Bernstein also spent the summers of 1940 and 1941 at the Berkshires Music Festival at Tanglewood studying under Koussevitzky who had accepted him at the warm recommendation of Mitropoulos and Reiner. In 1942 Bernstein returned towards center to serve as Koussevitzky's assistant. But as soon as the summer was over Bernstein was without a job. Mitropoulos had obtainable him an assistant's write-up at Minneapolis two many years earlier but the proposal had fallen through. Koussevitzky now available him a position at Boston. But the Boston Symphony was a non-union, in fact, an anti-union shop and Bernstein felt he could not participate in its activities. He was at a loss, doing jazz transcriptions for a music publisher, once Rodzinski, who had just decided to take in on an assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic, asked to determine Bernstein.

Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!

Fritz Reiner's career started out in Budapest as conductor on the Volksoper (1914-1921). From 1922 to 1931 Reiner was music director on the Cincinnati Symphony. This write-up was followed by a five-years tenure as instructor in conducting at the Curtis Institute. After leaving the Institute Reiner's task continued an unbroken upward trajectory as he conducted at the Metropolitan Opera for 5 many years after which reached the height of his accomplishment at Chicago. In nine years Reiner transformed the Chicago Symphony into an business able of "impeccably fine performances in each Classical and current music." But the kind of conducting that created Reiner a excellent accomplishment was not what he communicated to Bernstein. Bernstein said that Reiner was basically "an intellectual conductor" as well as the expressiveness that Bernstein favored was not there in Reiner's approach. Reiner was incredibly interested inside use from the baton, employing a quite large stick, and he applied it in a very understated manner. His beats, as Bernstein said, "were almost microscopic." But these modest beats had very good economy and power. Reiner, for example, did not often employ up-beats to start pieces, instead he relied on orchestras "to occur [in] with his down-beat." Bernstein provided the illustration of Strauss' Don Juan in which most conductors require a clear up-beat to start ahead of the down beat, after which the orchestra enters. Reiner, he noted, by no means provided the up-beat. Instead "the stick would just drop, tick, and also the orchestra would be there." As he stood at the podium Reiner's physical restraint forced the orchestra's attention to his that eyes peered at them "like arrows . . . nailing them, magnetizing them, so that this smaller movement in the stick" could achieve so much.

In his summers at Tanglewood Bernstein had gone so far as to adopt Koussevitzky's kind of dressing and walking as he absorbed the maestro's type of conducting. But it was Koussevitzky as an artist, with his rare

Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!

No comments:

Post a Comment