concert mania
May. 15th, 2006 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacpatioboe alluded to this, but today's paper made it explicit: a wealthy egomaniac paid $15,000 for the privilege of leading Symphony Silicon Valley in a private performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with an audience of a thousand of his closest friends (it didn't say how much he paid them to be there) looking on.
Of course, as patioboe points out, conducting stunts of this kind have been pulled before, but no rank amateur has ever paid to play the oboe part in Beethoven's Fifth. So how difficult can conducting be, anyway? Well, the vicissitudes of SSV's last season proves that it's not difficult to be a mediocre conductor, but it's still rare to be a really good one.
It's like writing. Any literate person can write, but that doesn't make great writers any more common or less valuable than great painters or great musicians or other things that relatively few people can do.
What struck me, though, was that conducting was this man's dream. I love music, but I wouldn't want to conduct. In a work I know, I can hear ahead of the music as a conductor must, but what a conductor has that I don't is the mind-hand coordination to express that physically. This is also why I'd never go on Jeopardy: I can respond to the clues well enough, but I wouldn't be able to press the buzzer at the right moment. Amateur conducting also requires a breed of egomania I don't have. I enjoy giving scholarly talks to audiences - I'd like being a professor, I'm sure - but I don't otherwise like being the center of attention. I was once randomly hauled up on stage from the audience to be the shah at a belly-dance performance. I sat on a cushion and they fed me grapes, and it was supposed to be luxurious but all I wanted was to get out of there. But if I'd walked off it would have made an even bigger fuss over me, you see?
If I had thousands of dollars free to spend on a whimsical artistic project, here's what I'd do. I'd go to SSV but I wouldn't ask to conduct. No. I'd offer to underwrite a full regular concert, their choice of conductor, they could sell tickets and keep all the extra revenue. I would just sit in the audience anonymously like everybody else. What I'd want for my money is the right to choose the works played. And what I'd choose are works I love on record but have never heard live and never expect to.
This would be my first choice, an all American music concert:
So, what artistic project would you spend thousands of dollars on, if you were given the money and instructions to use it for that purpose? Nothing virtuous now, no donating the money to schools for arts programs or anything altruistic like that. We're talking self-indulgence here.
Of course, as patioboe points out, conducting stunts of this kind have been pulled before, but no rank amateur has ever paid to play the oboe part in Beethoven's Fifth. So how difficult can conducting be, anyway? Well, the vicissitudes of SSV's last season proves that it's not difficult to be a mediocre conductor, but it's still rare to be a really good one.
It's like writing. Any literate person can write, but that doesn't make great writers any more common or less valuable than great painters or great musicians or other things that relatively few people can do.
What struck me, though, was that conducting was this man's dream. I love music, but I wouldn't want to conduct. In a work I know, I can hear ahead of the music as a conductor must, but what a conductor has that I don't is the mind-hand coordination to express that physically. This is also why I'd never go on Jeopardy: I can respond to the clues well enough, but I wouldn't be able to press the buzzer at the right moment. Amateur conducting also requires a breed of egomania I don't have. I enjoy giving scholarly talks to audiences - I'd like being a professor, I'm sure - but I don't otherwise like being the center of attention. I was once randomly hauled up on stage from the audience to be the shah at a belly-dance performance. I sat on a cushion and they fed me grapes, and it was supposed to be luxurious but all I wanted was to get out of there. But if I'd walked off it would have made an even bigger fuss over me, you see?
If I had thousands of dollars free to spend on a whimsical artistic project, here's what I'd do. I'd go to SSV but I wouldn't ask to conduct. No. I'd offer to underwrite a full regular concert, their choice of conductor, they could sell tickets and keep all the extra revenue. I would just sit in the audience anonymously like everybody else. What I'd want for my money is the right to choose the works played. And what I'd choose are works I love on record but have never heard live and never expect to.
This would be my first choice, an all American music concert:
- Michael Torke: Ash
- Henry Cowell: The Seven Rituals of Music (Symphony No. 11)
- Alan Hovhaness: Saint Vartan Symphony
So, what artistic project would you spend thousands of dollars on, if you were given the money and instructions to use it for that purpose? Nothing virtuous now, no donating the money to schools for arts programs or anything altruistic like that. We're talking self-indulgence here.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-17 01:41 pm (UTC)But ... somehow there was more to the concert than what we read in the Merc. At least we musicians were told something about his daughter and her cancer struggle. I'm not sure if it was a benefit or if it was "merely" to rejoice that she's still alive. But there really was something more than just an "I wanna conduct!" So while he may or may not be an ego maniac (most of us are in some way or another) I'm not certain this would be an all out ego thing. Could be, of course ... I didn't get to talk with the man much. I wish I had more info, but I don't. My poor brain is so muddled I can't remember any more than what I've told you.
Guess you should send your dream concert to Andrew Bales, eh? I've never played Torke. I've played Cowell and Hovhaness, but not those two works.
-p