Daniel Barenboim: Orchestras and Conductors

If you were to ask a first-class orchestral player, he would say that few conductors have any influence on the orchestra. They play the tempi indicated by the conductor, adding the nuances or the balance he wants, and that is the end of it. But with a good conductor, musical contact can be so strong that the musicians react to the slightest movement of his hand, his finger, his eye or his body. I f the orchestra is at one with the conductor, they play differently if he stands up straight, or bends forward, or sideways or backwards. They are influenced by every movement. The conductor’s up-beat, moreover, has an influence on the first sound. If his up-beat has no authority, the sound is dead, unless the musicians ignore him completely. If they cannot or do not want to play for him, feeling that he has nothing to impart, they will just play the Beethoven symphony the way they have played it a thousand times before. But if they respect him, they will be with him from the up-beat, which as a direct influence on the first note, whether it should sound hard or soft, on the way it is sustained and to what extent it should vibrate.

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When Sergiu Celibidache said that none, or very few of his colleagues could read scores, a lot of people got cross. But they were taking what he said at face value. What he meant was that many conductors cannot hear the sound, the dynamic or balance of the orchestra during their reading. When you look at a score and at a certain point it says crescendo, then the whole orchestra plays crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo. Now if the second flute, which is not unimportant and the kettle drum, the trumpets and the trombones all start the crescendo at the same time, as is pointed out in the score, you can hear this. But for that you need knowledge and the ability to read, in order to realise a crescendo in an orchestra, the instruments cannot all start at the same time. The crescendo must be organised in such a way that everything can be heard, the full capabilities of every instrument have to come through. A conductor must be able to think acoustically, and that is very difficult.
For instance, in the beginning of Wagner’s Die Walkure. The cellos and double basses play five semiquavers and a crotchet all marked forte, and after that the second beat is subito piano. You cannot just lay forte and then the subito piano. The forte must rise so that you get the effect of a precipice before the subito piano. This is all part of the reading: the first two crotchets are forte, and the third piano. Everything can be learned in detail except the intensity. The intensity of a forte or a piano, the strength with which you play a forte before getting through to the subito piano is something that cannot be learned.

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Absolute pitch is a help in correcting false intonation. Intonation does not exist in a vacuum, since it is often influenced by correct or incorrect balance. A note may be too high or too low, or a chord may sound unclean because it is wrong from the point of view of balance. Or the overtones may suddenly be too weak or too loud in the chord, or the sound is not homogeneous. In a woodwind chord and instrument like the oboe can sometimes be very penetrating and harder than the others, and that automatically sounds wrong and unclean. You may then get the impression that the oboe is too high, but in fact it is only too hard. With orchestras you know really well, you can correct these things during the normal rehearsal time. They present no problems to me in Chicago and Berlin.