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Interview
Jamie Sommerville (principal horn, Boston Symphony Orchestra) gets the Q and A routine at James Strecker Reviews the Arts.
On conductors:
One thing that I have found to be very interesting about Music Directors is how each time one leaves a long-held position, the one who follows is so clearly different from the last. In many cases, there is a clear, diametric opposition. So the TSO went from Gunther Herbig, a very traditional, kappelmeisterisch leader, to Jukka-Pekka, who is very much a conductor ‘ in the moment’ I would say, with an extremely varied, quicksilver, expressive baton technique and then to Peter Oundjian, who again is more traditional, physically, but expressive, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
In Boston, we went from Seiji, who showed everything with his hands – probably the most fluent and musically clear technique I will ever see – and said very little about the music; then to Levine, who consciously eschews a lot of traditionally demonstrative flourishes, but rehearses very verbally, and has clear ideas of what he wants musically and how to articulate them to the ensemble.
All of these approaches, of course, can be very successful in the right hands and setting. I guess the overarching lesson I’ve learned is that you need a sophisticated and objective self-knowledge to conduct well, to know what kind of musician and communicator you actually are (as opposed, perhaps, to what you would like to be), and then exploit your strengths, and avoid your weaknesses!
(More.)
[Extracted from a “Random Monday” post by JE, 2021]
