04-11-2007, 09:32 AM
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unband
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Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: At the Birkebeiner
Posts: 3,890
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From Time magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,882995,00.html
Note the date of the article. It could be today's front page for all that matters.
Quote:
U. S. Conductors
No U. S.-born conductor has ever been conceded a place at the top of his profession ; and few have ever rated a job as chief of even a second-rate U. S. symphony orchestra. A rare exception is the Kansas City Philharmonic's Karl Krueger, who last week completed a tour of Italy as guest maestro with the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra. Fuzzy-headed, cigar-puffing Krueger, who during the past four years has put Kansas City, Mo., on the symphonic map, was born in Atchison, Kans.
Principal reasons for the dearth of famous U. S.-born maestros have been: 1) a lack of places where the young U. S. conductor can cut his teeth; 2) snobbishness. In Germany, where conducting is as specialized a profession as brain surgery, conductors are systematically trained and systematically advanced in their careers. The neophyte, having mastered several musical instruments and taken a complete course in musical composition, enters a conductors' class at the konservatorium, where he studies the symphonic and operatic classics and learns how to shake a stick at an orchestra. Then he graduates. But that is only the beginning. Assigned to the staff of an opera house, he spends years rehearsing choruses, teaching singers how to sing their parts, helping conductors whip scenes into shape. Eventually, if he shows talent, he is allowed to conduct an opera or two. Only after a long term as a full-fledged opera conductor does he attempt the exacting business of conducting a symphony orchestra. Conducting opera is like driving a 20-mule team, gives an ideal training for conductors. A Brahms symphony holds no technical terrors for a man who is able to keep a badly-rehearsed chorus, five or six erratic singers and an orchestra in the same place at the same time.
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