Hokayyyyyyy......er, I surer n'heck would have a problem figuring out a lot of things starting with the first note and going on from there.  Can we assume that everyone MAY, just may now, have been watching the concertmaster/mistress (can't quite tell from the video) and when he/she was ready to bow the first note?  It may also be the quality of the video and my itty-bitty computer speakers, but it sounds like the horns are pretty raw and ragged (sidebar commentary here).  I have to admit I get a kick from Maestro Usuki's windup to the beginnings of major phrases - looks like he's practicing his golf swing or tennis forehand.  The timpanist is a serious hoot - there's a point at about 6:45 where he finishes off a phrase and he looks like a refugee from a British or French military marching band (one of those cavalry units with the big drums on either side of the horse, accompanied by a great deal of the drummer flailing and whacking away on the drumheads....!).  On the positive side, though, the strings are wonderfully discipliined and have to be given a great deal of credit for being anywhere NEAR the beat - and together, at that.  This is a very instructive video....all fellow directors should pause and look at this and think about whether we quite as opaque as the Maestro.....

 

Ron Duquette

Ft. Belvoir, VA

 Ah, but you can't --- follow this, that is.  There is a very old story about two members of the Boston Symphony who decided that they would both come in (bringing everyone with them) when the notoriously unclear Serge Koussevitsky's hand reach the third button on his waistcoat.  (Conductors generally have more egotism than clarity of beat.)

 

The greatest compliment one can get from a performer is, "You're clear."

 

And a final comment ... a late colleague of mine (a wonderful violist) once said to another horrifically unclear colleague of mine (as he was waving emotively in front of the players), "Look, Russell,  just tell me where to put it."  [ I always assume, of course, he was referring to his note. ]

 

Even after my twenty-six years of trying to teach students that elusive quality of clarity,  this is still a funny video!

 

Yours,  Tim

 

Every once in a while I turn a page and see a pencilled  "DLU" at the top. It brings back memories of singing with some conductors where "Don't Look Up!" was a very helpful score marking. Hopefully none of my singers would find it helpful to mark their scores the same way!

If you ignore his right hand and the baton and concentrate on his left hand, it's not that bad. You can actually see a few clear cues there. That opening does remind me of Paul Christiansen. A great man, certainly, but sometimes to start a piece his hands could come forcefully down, stop there for a while, then come up. Sometimes we would come in at that time, sometimes we'd wait until they went down and came up again. But amazingly we always came in together. There was something in the collective unconscious that told us not to come in, and then when to come in.

 

Steven Russell

Matawan, NJ

Just goes to show, I guess, that with enough rehearsal an orchestra can learn to follow anything!  Follow the bouncing ictus!!!

 

And just a footnote for Ron:  All concertmasters are concertmasters, regardless of gender.  "Concertmistress" is considered a highly sexist and denigrating term, like theater people calling the orchestra "the pit,"  and went out of fashion over 50 years ago.  (In fact there were very few women concertmasters until World War 2 took so many men out of the general population that the European male chauvenists were forced to recognize not only Rosie the Riveter but also Vivian the Violinist!)

 

As choral conductors we have both the oppourtunity to be more expressive with our choirs (mostly thanks to longer rehearsal schedules) and the responsibility to remember the basics of clean, clear patterns when they are needed, especially when we step in front of an orchestra with a limited number of rehearsals.

 

The opening of the 5th, of course, is a special problem for ALL conductors, and often presented as a challenge in conducting classes for fermatas, downbeats, and upbeats.  Our Community Orchestra played it last spring, and our conductor--far from the most expressive but usually perfectly clear--handled both the 1st movement and the opening Scherzo in exemplary clean and clear fashion.  Yes, we had to get used to what he did, but once we did there was no ambiguity at all.

 

John

 

 

Oh my goodness - at first I thought this was a joke - that someone deliberately put the soundtrack out of synch with the video. Then I watched the opening with the sound off - and I STILL couldn't follow his entrances. Heaven spare me from singing under his baton!

 John reminds us that the orchestra isn't seeing this person for the first time during the concert...somehow, he has communicated what he wanted in the rehearsal.  There are conductors from whom I get everything I need by watching their hands or baton, and others from whom I learn what is wanted by what they say in the rehearsal, even though their beat communicates something altogether different.  He did get a lovely performance from the group, somehow!

 

Nan