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Posted: |
Sep 10, 2019 - 5:27 AM
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By: |
Nils
(Member)
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This may be slightly off-center of the topic, but...
The (non-professional) wind orchestra I play in is sometimes used as a rehearsal orchestra for conductor students, which is a fun and fascinating experience. During a few hours we are conducted by maybe 6-8 students, and even though they've all had the same basic training, it’s remarkable how differently they do things - both physically with arms, hands and body language, in how and what kind of instructions they give, and in how they interact with us musicians. Their very personality and where they are on the introvert-extrovert scale is quite crucial for what kind of energy and engagement they can elicit from the orchestra.
Most of them are quite good, but I do remember this one guy from a few years back. He was more or less like a zombie - completely stiff, and basically unable to give us any hints about how he wanted things like phrasings, dynamics, transitions and accents. He looked like he had more than enough just counting to four with his arms. And our performance was just like him - lifeless and dull. This went on for a couple of minutes, before the instructor - a professional conductor - stopped him and said, “Here, let me show you something”, took over the baton, and did what good conductors do: communicated his intentions in an expressive way. And we sounded like a totally different orchestra.
Of course, the difference wouldn't be as great with a professional orchestra, who would probably more or less ignore the zombie and do their own thing anyway.
But yes, conductors definitely can have a big impact on a performance. Then again, would I have noticed if ALIEN had been conducted by Goldsmith instead of Lionel Newman? No, probably not. 
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Posted: |
Sep 10, 2019 - 8:27 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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Good stuff all - thanks for keeping this going. We're moving into unexpected territory now, but that's what "the man down the pub" does, and that's how I like to see this Board.
I feel that Nono's correct in that a conductor should probably avoid trying to make a piece sound as though he himself had actually composed it, but it's an extreme example and I'm not sure it's ever been done.
Indeed, Eccles is Famous enough to know that Leonard Rosenman didn't use the click-track when conducting, even when conducting music by RR Bennett. I'll bet the esteemed member an Eccles Cake that even he would never detect Rosenman holding the baton on that score, just as I can't detect Marcus Dods at the podium on James Bernard's THE GORGON (this was just after Hollingsworth's death, and before Hammer had found a replacement in Philip Martell). It's interesting to read the Rózsa-Mathieson stuff posted by Rozsaphile, but I'm a mere mortal and the only thing I can be sure of is that I'd recognize a score conducted by me. That's all.
Zardoz swung things out further. Yes, we've had some threads about a "British" sound, a wider "European" sound, and the sound of scores recorded in the USA. Not much talk of Japan or Australia yet, but I think that's enough to be going on with for the moment. Were all the Jerry Fielding-scored films directed by Michael Winner recorded in England? Whatever, not even the experts are entirely sure if it was Fielding or David Whitaker conducting LAWMAN. But even I, in my ignorance, can "imagine" that I hear a typically English recording tecnique behind those scores. A certain ambience, more spacious.
Now that I've opened myself up to nincompoopery, I may as well nutmeg on. I think we spoke about this on another thread, but I recently bought the 5-CD set from Network of Albert Elms' scores for MAN IN A SUITCASE. Knowing THE PRISONER, THE BARON, RANDALL AND HOPKIRK, plus the Gerry Anderson shows, I kind of group the likes of Elms, Ron Grainer, Edwin Astley, Barry Gray et al as occupying the same aural universe. I'd never confuse that "sound" with the USA-made spy shows of those times. I suppose that we'd have to think about how light music, pop (popular) music, jazz, and orchestral/symphonic music first appeared and was developed over time in different parts of the world. It's a complex issue.
It's so complex in fact that even though I boldly said that I'd never confuse the '60s Brit spy/ action TV scores with their American counterparts, I'd still never be able to tell if it was Jerry Goldsmith or Samuel Matlovsky conducting them.
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Posted: |
Sep 14, 2019 - 8:04 AM
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By: |
Graham Watt
(Member)
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This update might not be of much interest, but I think I might have evolved musically since last week. I'm proud to be at plankton level now.
I'd always been familiar with David Raksin's 25-minute suite from FOREVER AMBER, which he did for the RCAVictor series of recordings. I love that suite so much. It's glorious. But it had been a while since I'd played the Varese edition, which is of course much longer (though still incomplete), and conducted by Alfred Newman. Well, because I'd been so used to the suite, it was really noticeable how different the original soundtrack is. It may be a simple case of the "Newman-Fox Orchestra", but right there during the Main Titles there's an upward-sweeping string moment - it is just a moment - which made me forget that it was a Raksin score. It was just so Alfred Newman! Other themes which don't appear on the Raksin-conducted suite also have that (almost "too") sweet string sound, which I've never idendified with Raksin. I always hear a harder edge in Raksin's scores.
So there you go. I may not have been able to identify the conductors on both recordings if I didn't know who they were beforehand. But if I were blindfolded and told to identify the one conducted by Newman, I think I'd have got that right. So praise the Lord, I'm plankton.
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The general question "do conductors have a recognizable style?" is easily answered with "yes". Easy to answer because there are certain conductors whose style can easily be recognized. I can easily spot if Karajan conducts Beethoven's sixth symphony or Bernstein Mahler's 5th or Boulez' Ravel's Ma mere l'Oye or Abbado Brahms 4th symphony. That is not to say conductors force "their style" on anything, but I think it is very natural to just "have" a certain "style", a "vision", so to speak, if you are a performing artist, and that is what a conductor is, a performing artist.
In film music, it is more difficult to determine if conductors such as Jerry Goldsmith or John Williams do have a recognizable style, as they tend to conduct repertoire that few other conductors tackle (mostly their own), but I would just presume that they do, it's just not as obvious as in classical music. Jerry Goldsmith has a very recognizable style as a composer, but I would not be able to distinguish whether a score like ALIEN was conducted by him or Lionel Newman, so I just take their word for it. If it said on the Album cover "composed and conducted by Jerry Goldsmith" (though it was actually Lionel Newman) I would not have noticed that it was not him.
However, if Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams would all decide to record independently from each other the complete works of Miklós Rózsa and one would compare these recordings, presumably one would find certain individual characteristics to their interpretations, so that one could distinguish between their approaches to the music, something that is then referred to as a "recognizable style".
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