Asking a musician to name a favorite conductor is like asking a mouse to name its favorite cat. Personally, I have no animosity for maestros per se, and I’ve even had a genuine affection for several whose batons I fiddled under during my 46 years at the Met Opera. I recall tyrants whose philosophy was that musicians play better when terrified, comedians who told jokes and believed musicians play better when relaxed and happy, poseurs who cared only about impressing the audience with a handsome profile and histrionics on the podium, and memory artists who conducted everything without a score.
Conductors come in many sizes and shapes, with varying degrees of competence, and so I have concocted some criteria for judging conductors (while withholding their names to avoid being sued for slander or having a baton rammed up my nose).
1. A maestro must not talk too much.
A rehearsal should be a preparation for a performance, not a hot-air session. Corrections should be concise and specific. “Second bassoon, you’re a bit sharp,” or “Third horn, that’s an E-flat!” are valid corrections and inoffensive if spoken in a moderate tone, rather than shouted at the top of your lungs. On the other hand, a seemingly polite conductor who softly asks a wind or brass section to adjust the intonation of a false chord, without identifying which player or which note is wrong, is a faker with a tin ear.
2. A maestro should never be sarcastic.
I recall a Viennese maestro who, while we struggled with a murderous passage in a Wagnerian opera, shouted: “My dears—approximately in the key of A-flat, if you please!”
Then there was the distinguished guest conductor who, at the first rehearsal, mounted the podium and whipped down his baton before anyone could play. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, wagging his head. “This is a wonderful orchestra. Now if only you could play!” We were not amused, and plotted revenge. At the next rehearsal we began to play before he could even raise his baton.
3. A downbeat should be recognizable as a downbeat, not a sideways or upward motion that could be mistaken for an upbeat.
Conductors who make fluttering and meaningless gesticulations with their hands are charlatans. I recall a certain conductor who, when having a memory lapse, would shut his eyes, extend both arms like Dracula, and dangle both hands violently while following the orchestra. The audience might have imagined that he was overcome with the emotion of the moment, instead of realizing that the poor faker was hopelessly lost.
4. A maestro who buries his head in the score and neglects giving entrance cues is insecure.
Opera singers are fortunate—they have a prompter feeding them cues—but an orchestra principal player, after counting many bars of rests, may have a heart attack if the conductor is not at least looking at him expectantly for an exposed entrance. A favorite trick of insecure conductors, whose eyes are glued to the score, is to glance at solo players a split second after they have made their entrance. Another bit of fakery occurs when the maestro, with his peripheral vision, senses a principal player raising an instrument to make an entrance. The maestro then nods at the musician, as if cuing him. This impresses the audience, but not the orchestra members.
5. A maestro should set a reasonable tempo, as close to the composer’s indications as possible.
It is worse for a maestro to conduct a tempo too slowly rather than too fast. Excessive subdividing of beats guarantees boredom for audience and orchestra alike. Yet when a maestro conducts a tempo so fast that difficult passages become unplayable, there is a consolation: it gives the musicians a justification to fake and skip notes. As long as everyone reaches the final note of a blurred passage at the same time, the audience, the maestro, music critics, and even the composer can be deceived.
I hope my criteria won’t disenchant music lovers who worship conductors as the epitome of musical interpreters. Oscar Levant once described the attitude of orchestra members toward a conductor as “a hundred men and a louse.” My own attitude is that since 100 musicians have 100 varying opinions about tempo and balance, conductors are a necessary evil and should be accepted with equanimity.
Despite the handful of charlatans and poseurs I’ve played under, I recall maestros who could sing every instrumental part and vocal score in solfeggio, had infallible photographic memories and radar-like hearing, displayed impeccable baton technique, gave cues to players and singers, and had great respect for the musicians under them. As I retire from the Met Opera orchestra, with memories of maestros past and present, some magnificent and some horrific, I sincerely wish the newcomers all the best. May they fit my criteria to a “T,” as in “Toscanini.”
