THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505240053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
IT IS FITTING that the signal moment in the documentary ``Legendary Maestros: The Art of Conducting'' is silent.
Seminal German conductor Arthur Nikisch is captured in rare archival footage, waving his baton precisely in tight close-up. Which means that someone back in 1913 believed that Nikisch's gestures, the spells he worked with his hands and eyes, had to be preserved even though they would forever be seen without an orchestra responding to them.
Nikisch may have been one of the first conductors to appear on camera. He wasn't the last. It is the rise of the multimedia superstar that this documentary, airing tonight at 10 on WHRO-TV, essays in a breezy 90 minutes.
This film, produced in England with predominantly English commentators, covers the period from the turn of the century to the rise of Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan to international multimedia stardom. Fascinating clips are juxtaposed with anecdotal testimony. Because there is little historical background or critical appraisal, the serious viewer may feel shortchanged.
The subject begs for analysis. Conducting is perhaps the most mysterious and dictatorial of professions. Once, the leader of an ensemble served just to keep things together; today, he or she may barely do that and still get paid six figures. Audiences are mesmerized by a relationship they only dimly understand, that of the elaborately waving and spotlighted hands; the attentive, subservient musicians; themselves; and the piece of music.
``Legendary Maestros'' gives a general explanation of the conductor's job while essaying a chronological parade of famous conductors. After showing a few luminaries in Beethoven's Fifth - Arturo Toscanini stern and blank, von Karajan mechanical, Otto Klemperer dreamy, George Szell precise - director Sue Knussen cuts to where it really happens: rehearsal.
In a revealing clip, Sir John Barbirolli takes not one, not two, but five stabs at getting an orchestra to play the scherzo of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony the way he wants. It is a poignant scene. Barbirolli sings the passage in a distinct way, but the ensemble doesn't obey. The conductor reveals his frustration by murmuring, ``Now do try.''
The opposite approach is espoused by Sir Thomas Beecham, who insists on no more than two rehearsals and chides any young conductor obsessed with getting extra time.
``Fancy educating a body of people like the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,'' he says. ``They already know the piece better than he does.'' Under Beecham's baton, that very ensemble plays the ballet music from Gounod's ``Faust'' with exceptional grace.
Beecham provides a vivid example of the force of personality. So does the gangly, unconventional and mystical Wilhelm Furtwaengler, who tears through the finale of Brahms' Fourth and make Beethoven's Ninth seem to rise up from the primordial ooze. The timpanist of the Berlin Philharmonic describes how another conductor's rehearsal would be brightened by Furtwaengler's merely walking in the back door of the hall.
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, one of the film's smarter talking heads, says of Furtwaengler, ``It takes greater precision to be precise about a fluid shape that it does about a solid shape.''
Solid shapes were the specialty of Arturo Toscanini, who is heard yelling at an orchestra and leading Verdi and Beethoven. He maintains virtually the same vacant expression through some vacant music, the end of Respighi's ``Pines of Rome.'' Though Knussen gives Toscanini a lot of time, she makes one of her few editorial comments by cutting to him when Szell makes a comment about precision being an end in itself.
This is one of the film's few uncharitable moments. Another is conductor John Eliot Gardiner's take on Karajan, who is seen leading Beethoven's Fifth in a studio film that looks like ``Shindig'' directed by Lina Wertmuller.
``I got the impression in the concerts that I attended of Karajan toward the end of his life, that there was something almost evil in the way that he exerted the power, and that that was to the detriment of the music,'' says Gardiner, an extraordinary musician. ``There were no surprises. There were no moments of joy. One felt that it was to a formula. Everything was self-regarding. Everything came back to himself.''
A similar self-possession is demonstrated by frizzy-haired Leopold Stokowski, who, conducting Tchaikovsky badly under a precisely aimed spotlight, looks like an atomic Q-Tip. One of the longer musical clips is Stokowski's unremarkable transcription of ``Dido's Lament'' from Purcell's ``Dido and Aeneas.''
Much is missing here. There is little discussion of the music conductors championed. There is no talk of jockeying for podiums. Little is heard of operatic repertoire, though Felix Weingartner leads a gripping account of Weber's ``Der Freischuetz'' Overture. The narration includes such empty phrases as, ``The mixture of elements from the old and new worlds proved potent.'' And the documentary plays it safe by sticking to dead people instead of identifying greatness in today's post-Bernstein generation.
One interview has a curious resonance with Hampton Roads. The conductor Mariss Janssons says, ``Karajan was something like a bird which is flying over the, I don't know, the city or the world.''
This is virtually the same language Virginia Beach Mayor Meyera Oberndorf used after seeing Virginia Symphony music director JoAnn Falletta conduct. For audiences, players and even fellow conductors, there is something about the orchestra's only silent member that confounds description. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Leonard Bernstein is one of the conductors featured.
by CNB