Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla's first year at CBSO: Radio 4 Tues 18 Jul 9.00am

[jean]

Or you can read it from the link in Prommer's post above, by courtesy of Norman Lebrecht:

There are areas of the repertoire where she’s trying things out. Perhaps that symphony (Mahler 1) and others like it might have a certain maleness built in to them, actually…. It’s the sheer size of those musical statements that requires perhaps a more directing personality… Maybe she’s going to have to find her inner man, as it were, just to pull off those really big, rather showy extravagantly subjective pieces… I am sure she’ll crack it. She’ll master anything she turns her hand to.

Before the inner man bit, however ironic or enclosed in quotation marks, he'd already referred to a certain maleness built into certain symphonic works.

Time perhaps to stop thinking of particular qualities as 'male' or 'female'?

(I'm quite glad they didn't ask Vasily Petrenko for his opinion.)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Why are we wasting so much time on the opinion of Ivan Hewitt???!!!

[ahinton]

Why are we wasting so much time on the opinion of Ivan Hewitt???!!!

Good question!

[Cockney Sparrow]

She was still young when the remarks were made. Once she's had a few more years of exposure to the PC police, grammar prefects and pedants endemic in the US/UK she will learn to avoid such elementary errors. As to the production staff for the programme, one wonders if they wouldn't mind some controversy - any attention is a higher profile than just an informative programme, becoming unavailable on the iPlayer after 30 days .........

Also (in the spirit of current BBC wide programme directives) - although she is a woman, aren't we re-inforcing the binary nature of the society we have to endure, by denying her the right to her inner maleness (if she wants one).

[ahinton]

Before the inner man bit, however ironic or enclosed in quotation marks, he'd already referred to a certain maleness built into certain symphonic works.

Time perhaps to stop thinking of particular qualities as 'male' or 'female'?

Surely that time passed many years ago (or at least should have done)?...

[P. G. Tipps]

She was still young when the remarks were made. Once she's had a few more years of exposure to the PC police, grammar prefects and pedants endemic in the US/UK she will learn to avoid such elementary errors. As to the production staff for the programme, one wonders if they wouldn't mind some controversy - any attention is a higher profile than just an informative programme, becoming unavailable on the iPlayer after 30 days .........

Also (in the spirit of current BBC wide programme directives) - although she is a woman, aren't we re-inforcing the binary nature of the society we have to endure, by denying her the right to her inner maleness (if she wants one).

Who wants a woman to find her 'inner man' in the first place?

What a truly frightful thought!

Anyway, Simone Young knows more about conducting Bruckner than most male conductors.

[DracoM]

Well, that's women for you.

We'll probably have to put up with it until she discovers her inner man...

OFGS...........are you seriously saying that 'gushing' is a specifically FEMALE ADJECTIVE? People apply it to either gender pretty indiscriminately, don't they?


Crikey.

[Bryn]

Who wants a woman to find her 'inner man' in the first place?

What a truly frightful thought!

Anyway, Simone Young knows more about conducting Bruckner than most male conductors.

Maybe, but is she up there with Simone Young?

[gradus]

NO, it wasn't. She had only given 3 concerts as Music Director by then. The CBSO says "Over the past year a radio documentary team has been working with Mirga as part of a series following people in their first year of a job in the arts".

I've not heard the programme yet.

I assumed that it was because some of the references contained dated it then. No matter she seems to attract very favourable notices.

[jean]

OFGS...........are you seriously saying that 'gushing' is a specifically FEMALE ADJECTIVE?
People apply it to either gender pretty indiscriminately, don't they?

No, I don't think they do.*

But it doesn't seem to me a partcularly apposite one in this case, even though we are talking about a woman.

[edit]*But I could be wrong about that.

- in person, and in his writings, T[om] S[ervice] is a very knowledgeable and personable chap... But the "gushing idiot" persona he adopts for his concert presentations...

[jean]

She was still young when the remarks were made. Once she's had a few more years of exposure to the PC police, grammar prefects and pedants endemic in the US/UK she will learn to avoid such elementary errors.

Ivan Hewitt is a woman?

[Prommer]

Ivan Hewitt is a woman?

News klaxon!

If that were so, we would be in deep waters indeed given Ivan's remarks about a fellow woman.

[P. G. Tipps]

News klaxon!

If that were so, we would be in deep waters indeed given Ivan's remarks about a fellow woman.

If she's a fellow woman surely she must have already found her 'inner man' ... ?

[Gabriel Jackson]

"Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla is the 30-year-old Latvian conductor who has taken charge at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

She's Lithuanian

[Barbirollians]

I have to say that the Ivan Hewitt comment was said with 'inverted commas' and I don't think he said she'd never be any good at Mahler and Bruckner. He was referring specifically to a passage in the the 1st Mov.t of Mahler's 1st where the 'folk song like tune' goes in to D major and which she took rather dreamily. He had been asked if there was anything he didn't like about Mirga's work, and this is what he came up with. [It's about 2mins 30 from the start, I think.] He also said that a young conductor needs to find her own voice, and whilst some may say she's very lucky to be on her journey of discovery with a major national orchestra, I for one am very happy at her appointment. It seems most of the players are too.

I was glad that the programme hammered home the shameful situation of CBSO funding from Brum City Council. It probably needs someone like Mirga to sell the orchestra to a wider audience than the middle-aged, middle class, middle-of-the-road music lover.

Yes this has been discussed on another thread, but that's no problem.

Birmingham CC is starved of cash by central govt - its cuts to the CBSO are nothing compared to its cuts to homeless services I can tell you .