Unusual conducting styles

[teamsaint]

Not sure I can have seen him previously, but I was watching Herreweghe conduct Schumann 2 the other day on a video . A really unusual style, it can’t be that easy to follow from, say, the back of the orchestra. Or perhaps anywhere !

https://youtu.be/zpJaeSpDDus?si=wLuZQkGY27E1lQHx

Anybody care to comment, compare with others ?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Furtwängler was reputedly hard to follow, but he achieved stunning results.

[Pulcinella]

How any orchestra copes with flutterfingers Gergiev amazes me. Maybe they all play follow the leader instead.

[Mandryka]

Furtwängler was reputedly hard to follow, but he achieved stunning results.

Have you seen this (wonderful) video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leYbb5KZYDg

[Mandryka]

Presumably the orchestra at some point knows what they want and the conductor doesn’t really need to do anything. I once saw Rattle conduct a Rheingold with BPO where he just put the baton down for about two or three minutes and listened to them playing. I guess that’s what was going on with Klemperer when he got old and ill, someone I know who saw him said he’d just sit on a chair and shake his hands a bit while the Philharmonia delivered the product.

[RichardB]

Of course most of the real work is done in rehearsal. Orchestral musicians are used to following conductors whose beat looks unclear to outsiders (Herreweghe started as a choir director, of course, and conducts like one), and reserve their disdain for conductors who make mistakes or arbitrarily change tempo between rehearsals and performance.

[smittims]

I think only a professional orchestral player would give us a truly valuable answer here. From what I could see of him it didn't look too unusual; he seemed to be giving a beat they could follow. How he'd fare in an unfamiliar work where he had to give cue to, say, the percussion or harp at precisely the right moment I don't know.

Much of what I know about conducting goes back to Boult. So to me there seemed no reason why Herrewege wasn't using a baton,and why he conducted with both hands all the time when one would do, saving the other for special gestures. This is how I've seen Weingartner and other 'old school' conductors do it, e.g. Ferdy Leitner conducting the BBC SO in 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' at the Festival Hall in 1985. Sir Adrian used to say a lot of conductors wasted energy making large arm movements all the time, leaving nothing for moments when they needed special emphasis.

I think conducting is essentially the art of persuasion. To get the best performance the conductor needs to persuade the players to want to play it the way he wants. As long as he does that the actual means may vary. Werner Tharichen, timpanist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, told how , rehearsing under another conductor, the orchestra suddenly started to pay with more vitality, because Furtwangler had come into the back of the auditorium.

[vinteuil]

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... fatally, Lully

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[gradus]

Have you seen this (wonderful) video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leYbb5KZYDg

A demonic performance gripping and utterly thrilling. I've seen other Furtwangler film excerpts and they all show the same extraordinary response from his orchestras. So much for stick technique.

[Dave2002]

That Furtwängler Brahms is very good. For other comparisons of style try Mravinsky and Carlos Kleiber and see if their techniques match up with your impression of the style based on what you hear.

[Mandryka]

Furtwangler seems to have unfeasibly long arms which act totally independently of each other.

I like the bit where he tells someone to shut up at the start, and the way he stands to rigid attention at the end.

[Mandryka]

Here's an example of a rather different conducting style from Furtwangler's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVcGAQylBow&ab_channel=Trombonelus

[gradus]

I also enjoy the all-action school of conducting, a prime example is the splendid Dalia Stasevska.

[Petrushka]

I used to enjoy the 'all action' school of conducting but I now prefer the minimalist approach as exemplified by the aged Haitink or even that of Klemperer where less is more. Too much podium activity can be distracting.

[gradus]

Presumably the orchestra at some point knows what they want and the conductor doesn’t really need to do anything. I once saw Rattle conduct a Rheingold with BPO where he just put the baton down for about two or three minutes and listened to them playing. I guess that’s what was going on with Klemperer when he got old and ill, someone I know who saw him said he’d just sit on a chair and shake his hands a bit while the Philharmonia delivered the product.

That's exactly what he did but he had such a presence that the Philharmonia knew exactly what he wanted irrespective of gestures.
Another minimalist was Pierre Monteux who could produce the most wonderful performances from the LSO just by standing on the podium.