'Incompetent' Conductors

[Nick Armstrong]

That's the single worst thing anyone has ever said to me.

I find that difficult to believe, Mandy...

[Nick Armstrong]

This has given me an idea, we could have a competition called "spot the conductor" - just for the Proms.

Has anyone spotted one yet? keep looking, one must turn up soon!!

P.S.

I misread the thread title and thought it said "Incontinent Conductors" There are plenty of those about ...

I'm very glad you're back, whatever you're called!

[Ventilhorn]

This has given me an idea, we could have a competition called "spot the conductor" - just for the Proms.

Has anyone spotted one yet? keep looking, one must turn up soon!!

I can't resist publishing another little passage from my memoires. It typifies the attitude of some players:



“Conductors tend to forget that the baton is always in C major.”



It was my old friend the late Max Goldberg who said that. Max was a distinguished trumpet
player whose orchestral playing experience ranged from the Royal Albert Hall to Henry Hall
It is typical of many of the comments which have been made by players over the years:

We were rehearsing for a broadcast with Michael Krein’s “ London Light Concert Orchestra” (Part of the BBC Light Music Unit) but Michael was not conducting on this occasion. Monia Liter was the soloist in Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and the conductor was … well, I’d better not say.

Max was sitting next to me and his whispered comments had me in stitches. How I managed to play, I shall never know. Here are a few choice examples:

“ ... if the baton wasn't silent, he'd be wildly out of tune ...”


“ ... if you'd ever heard him play, you'd know why he took up conducting ...”


“ ... out of every twelve conductors in this country, there's thirteen don't know their job ...”


“ ... if all the conductors in this country were stretched out end to end on the M1, it would be a wonderful thing for British music


"... they get paid ten times as much as us, so you'd think they'd know ten times as much, but they know ten times as little."


Are they all really that bad? It is certainly true to say that there is a wider range of competence among conductors than would be found in any orchestra.

Nice sunny morning here. I'm off to watch some cricket.

VH