What's the 'best' instrument for a would-be conductor to study?

[salymap]

Someone remarked that Barenboim started with the piano....well, yes, how did others get a foot on the rung to the rostrum/podium?

Sargent was an organist

Colin Davis played the clarinet

Not sure but did Rattle play percussion?

We have a distinguished horn player who also conducts as well as keyboard skills

Malcolm Arnold played the trumpet and conducted as well as composing.

Barbirolli was a cellist.

It's the hot weather, I've run out of names

Did Sir Adrian, Sir Henry, et al ever play an instrument?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Stokowski was an organist also, sals (as was Andrew Davis); Toscanini was a 'cellist; von Bülow was a concert pianist (like DB). And, yes, Rattle played percs with the National (?Liverpool?) Youth Orch. (And then there's Mehta, who learnt Double Bass to play with DB, Du Pre etc in the Trout Quintet!)

[Serial_Apologist]

A tuning fork?

[Serial_Apologist]

I was going to write "a triangle", but string trios don't use conductors.

Then there's the old joke about a bad conductor, an electric chair and a banana skin...

[Ariosto]

Maybe a hearing aid?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There isn't much evidence that Boult was much of an instrumentalist, but Sir Henry Wood was a decent organist.

Furtwangler was rather a fine pianist.

[Beef Oven]

Herbert von Karajan was a very talented pianist.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Herbert von Karajan was a very talented pianist.

To go back to the thread's beginning, the piano is probably the best preparation for a conductor. In his early career, HvK used to fill in the missing parts on the harmonium in budget opera productions.

[cloughie]

Solti was a pianist.

Fischer-Dieskau was a singer!

A good ear, a love of the sound of an orchestra in full flow, the ability to read music and to manage a load of musicians with varying levels of cantankerousness are probably the best chaces of cracking the job!

What was Beecham's musical background?

[amateur51]

Szell, Levine, Pappano, Walter, Eschenbach were all pianists.

Didn't Pabs mention somewhere that Boult was a singer?

[ahinton]

I think that at least a few of us can dimly remember what Rostropovich was(!)...

Perhaps the best instrument of all for a conductor to learn is a pen, provided that he/she picks it up and composes with it; apparently, Norman del Mar did (although I know nothing of the results) and, as most of us know, Oliver Knussen did and it's hardly done any harm to his prowess as a conductor. Richard Strauss was a more than merely decent pianist and, from several reliable accounts that I have heard, so was Boulez.

[amateur51]

I think that at least a few of us can dimly remember what Rostropovich was(!)...

Perhaps the best instrument of all for a conductor to learn is a pen, provided that he/she picks it up and composes with it; apparently, Norman del Mar did (although I know nothing of the results) and, as most of us know, Oliver Knussen did and it's hardly done any harm to his prowess as a conductor. Richard Strauss was a more than merely decent pianist and, from several reliable accounts that I have heard, so was Boulez.

Weren't those conductors Menuhin, Manze and Oistrakh violinists too?

And Bashmet played the viola

[Stanfordian]

Someone remarked that Barenboim started with the piano....well, yes, how did others get a foot on the rung to the rostrum/podium?

Sargent was an organist

Colin Davis played the clarinet

Not sure but did Rattle play percussion?

We have a distinguished horn player who also conducts as well as keyboard skills

Malcolm Arnold played the trumpet and conducted as well as composing.

Barbirolli was a cellist.

It's the hot weather, I've run out of names

Did Sir Adrian, Sir Henry, et al ever play an instrument?

Sir Mark Elder was a bassoonist.

[Pabmusic]

...Did Sir Adrian, Sir Henry, et al ever play an instrument?

Boult never studied an instrument at music college level. He was a good enough pianist to appear in early concerts as an accompanist, and he was especially gifted as a singer, good enough to sing solo baritone/bass roles in standard choral works at amateur level (he gave the second performance of Butterworth's Shropshire Lad songs, for instance - though it was at a private gathering).

But he is noted for having been single-minded about conducting. His mother recorded in a diary that young Adrian's reply, when asked whether he'd like to learn an instrument, was "I want to play the orchestra". He apparently would 'conduct' from his seat at concerts, and kept a diary, analysing the interpretations - all from childhood. At both Westminster and Oxford, he caused bemusement by insisting that he wanted to be a professional conductor - no-one had ever wanted that before, it seems. When he eventually went to music college, it was to Leipzig, to study conducting under Artur Nikisch.

Sir Henry studied piano accompaniment and appeared professionally as an accompanist quite regularly (there are some recordings, too). Another pianist and professional accompanist was Hamilton Harty.

[Pabmusic]

...Perhaps the best instrument of all for a conductor to learn is a pen, provided that he/she picks it up and composes with it; apparently, Norman del Mar did (although I know nothing of the results)...

I'm afraid I don't know, either. Norman was, of course, a horn player and co-hornist with Denis Brain in at least one orchestra (RPO*?).


[*Yes. He was a founder-member, apparently.]