Daniel Barenboim: Conducting

Conducting is as much a profession as playing an instrument. But a great part of the audience simply does not know what a conductor is doing. When an audience hears a really great orchestra like that of Chicago, Berlin or Vienna playing a repertoire piece, they often cannot tell what the conductor's contribution amounts to. ..........

When an audience hears a violinist, they see his fingers and his bow moving. But when a conductor stands in front of the orchestra, all sorts of extra-musical considerations come to the fore: personality, charisma, often blatant sex appeal, things that have nothing to do with music.

What is so difficult about conducting and what is so difficult about becoming a conductor? An instrumentalist must be able to play his instrument and to have the physical power and manual skill to manage and control his instrument. But how do you control an orchestra? An instrumentalist can always practise. Where should a conductor practise? He cannot learn the music or the notes in an abstract way. Imagine a pianist who has no piano, and who has to learn a Beethoven Sonata merely in his head. It is impossible.

The manipulation of sound is very hard to learn and particularly difficult ofr a conductor, who has no physical contact with the sound. The conductor should really know the orchestra, and what the instruments can do, how the music moves from one group to another and practically walks around the orchestra. If the first violins are the main instruments in the first eight bars, and the oboe comes later, the music moving from one to the other, you must work with the strings. A wind instrument can play alone, whereas there are sixteen first violins, each with its own individuality and this has to be organised. By organisation, I mean that each player not only plays his part as best he can, but also listens to his neighbours, trying to match their way of playing. That means, first of all, clear intonation and a similarity of attack, sound and articulation. It is the homogeneity of the group that facilitates the overall expression. This principle applies to the whole orchestra. The conductor should be able to listen to the sounds that are produced by the orchestra, as well as contribute to their precision and expression.

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One of the most important qualities required of an interpreter or of the conductor is the capacity to balance the different voices or instruments. The creation of true equilibrium means that the different voices are audible in such a way that they appear in proper perspective - all present, but some nearer than others. Each voice or instrument must be clearly articulated in itself - only then will it be in a position to relate to the others.

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A string player's bow can go in two directions- up or down. Whether one starts a certain passage up bow or down bow is important. More important still is the way the bow is distributed and the speed at which it moves. The bow has a much greater weight at the frog than at the point, where it becomes thinner and lighter, and a good string player must be able to control this difference in weight. Each part of the bow has advantages over other parts for certain types of articulation. A natural weight is produced by an attack down-bow, starting at the frog, but one can also very easily start a note at the point, up-bow because this is where it is easier to control the beginning of the sound. It is important to know how to divide this: one, two or five notes in one bow, but when does the bow change, and in what way? One must not forget that in a symphony orchestra there are usually sixteen, sometimes 14, sometimes 18 first violins. This means there are 14, 16, 18 people playing exactly the same notes at the same time. Imagine if those 16 people sitting at a table were expected , at a sign from the waiter, to lift a fork at exactly the same time, with the same speed and the same enthusiasm. This problem does not apply to the wind instruments, where each player only plays his part, the second oboe part being different from that of the first oboe. There must therefore be an element of musical organisation in order to produce the string section sound.

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I was very fortunate too in being able to consult Jacqueline, about some of these features which interestedme enormously, and I indicate the bowings in the string parts myself to this day. If tehre are 16 first violins, that means there are eight copies of the music to be made. I usde to do them all myself, thereby learning each part in an individual way. When you think of the complexities and the amount of time spent on bowing a Mozart symphony, you can imagine how much time I spent putting together complete new bowings for the Ring cycle in Bayreuth! I have found that even very fine string players in orchestras or in chamber orchestras, or even soloists, do not think enough about bow distribution and bow speed.

If a conductor does not udnerstand the importance of the string sound, he is simply accepting a standardized way of playing. Some orchestras and conductors take the easy way out , in the sense that, if something is marked 'piano' for one of the string sections, the leader plays mezzo forte, and the rest of the section plays pianissimo. The sum of the 15 pianissimos and one or two mezzo fortes is equal to a general piano. It has the advantage that it is easier to play together, and if the leader has a particularly attractive sound, the other instruments simply provide a kind of aura round it. But I have always been against this principle. I consider it musically wrong. I think that 16 people playing expressive piano, have a completely different sound from one or two playing mezzo forte or forte and the rest playing pianissimo, just providing a cushion as it were. The latter has less quality and less intensity.

It is hard to find the right balance between the individuality of phrasing, which is necessary when an oboe or a clarinet has a solo phrase in a symphony. The individuality of phrasing a major solo, as the oboe or the clarinet have in Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, must, a few bars later, be disciplined into chord playing, where one should not be able to distinguish the individual colours of the instruments. This problem is very obvious to a pianist playing a Mozart concerto. When they piano has the main theme, it requires a very personal phrasing and articulation, with a maximum amount of imagination and fantasy. Later, when the main subject is in the orchestra, and the piano only has an ornamental, less important part, it is quite difficult to subjugate yourself. You often hear performances by people who have great individuality, and who project every note, even where their part is secondary.

Then of course there is the problem of intonation. The piano is either in tune or out of tune and it is the job of the piano tuner not the pianist to see that it is perfectly in tune. Each not the wind player plays, however, may be either too flat, perfectly in tune or too sharp. There are notes that are slightly exaggerated, sharp or flat, when one instrument is played by itself, and this can be very disturbing to the ear, but in a chord with several instruments it is simply excrutiating to the sensitve listener to hear a faulty intonation. It is essential for a conductor to detect faults of intonation, as well as faults of balance in wind playing. Certain notes may sound slightly out of tune if they are not properly balanced in the chord. The same problem arises with the brass.

The difficulty is increased when you put everything together and add timpani and percussion. In other words, you have timpani and percussion, brass, woodwind and strings, and you have to unite all these different sounds.

The main problem with the brass is, of course, the power of their instruments. A conductor must have profound knowledge of the necessary volume and 'dosage'. In other words, if the word 'crescendo' is written all over the score, it should NOT be played by the entire orchestra at the same time, since the weaker instruments will not be heard distinctly - the brass and timpani should start the crescendo later. This balancing, organising or even manipulating of the sound is essential for clarity in the orchestra. An equilibrium has to be found by the conductor between clarity and fullness of sound which can only come about when everybody is allowed to play with full intensity and volume.

There is something about the brass players which is almost frightening to a young conductor. Because of the instruments they play, these musicians are usually big, strong people who have the ability to kill any other sound by sheer volume. They can kill the woodwind and the strings - and also the conductor and the music! Lesser brass players often tend to play loudly; they lack sensitivity to what goes on within the rest of the orchestra and are therefore insensitive to the music. With classical music - Mozart and Beethoven or Schubert - they usually have a harmonic role, playing tonic and dominant whenever the melody is to be played loudly.

Before Berlioz, composers did not consciously consider the colours of the different instruments in the orchestra. Within the general framework of the orchestra, colour was never considered as an independent element per se. It was Berlioz who started thinking about it in a new way. Before Berlioz and his fellow Romantics, the timpani and trumpets, especially are often reduced to the less interesting role of playing the tonic and dominant. Owing however to the volume they produce they are inevitably in the foreground. In classical works they do not usually have much to do, and therefore their level of concentration is inevitably lower than that of the musicians who play constantly and without interruption. However, when you have good, sensitive brass players, they can through one or two notes or a difference in attack, influence the colours of the whole orchestra. For example Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, the crescendo of the trumpets makes you feel as if the entire orchestra were suddenly set on fire by just two or three notes from the trumpets. When the sound is properly balanced, and the attack is pure and not too hard, the brightness of the instrument can communicate itself to the rest of the orchestra

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In classical music, you find the timpani in many ways having the same problem as the brass, always playing tonic and dominant, with the added danger that the classical composers did not write for chromatic timpani. They were therefore limited to two or three notes. The problem of timpani si that, played properly, they are capable of much more than simply acting as an element of emphasis and rhythm. Really good players have a certain imagination for sound - and for creating the illusion of more sustained sound - as on the piano.