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I just conducted the best Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony in all of my years performing that work. It happened at the New Hampshire Music Festival where I just concluded my second tenure as Music Director. My first tenure was from 1993-2009. And then I was asked to come back in 2016 and it has been a labor of love for all these years. The revelation was that for the first time the Tchaikovsky 4th was completely my own. There were no ghosts of past great conductors and their ideas hanging around influencing what I was doing, not even my own past ideas. It was purely me, creating totally in the present and it felt so good. And everyone on stage was caught up, making it the best performance of a major warhorse at the Festival ever. Although I remain intensely interested in the ideas of my professional colleagues, any power that I have as artistic resides in me.

Haydn                      Symphony #95, last movement

William Kraft         Vintage Renaissance

Tchaikovsky           Symphony #5, finale

Carnegie Mellon University Philharmonic

Paul Polivnick, guest conductor

October 18, 2015

Link: Youtu.be/-icy6HEgkiQ

Today I saw a post on Facebook about Music Directors leaving their posts after a few years and “nobody seems to care.” The days when Ormandy spent 40 years in Philadelphia,  Szell’s long tenure in Cleveland, Karajan’s in Berlin, etc.  appear to be over.  While these are amazing accomplishments, Ormandy and Szell were part of an autocratic era where their “rule”  could not be questioned. If their players got upset with them, they had to suppress their reactions or face termination. And in the case of Karajan, he insisted from his 1st contract that it be “for life” in order to make him completely immune to what ANYONE thought of him.

In today’s more humane conductor/orchestra era, if a Music Director wants to remain in good communication with his players and see the affinity grow over time, all concerned have to handle the “little” upsets and harmful acts that occur regularly as they happen, whether intentionally committed or not. If they are not addressed and the upsets regularly blown off, they will grow until affinity and communication seriously deteriorates. The 1st “solution” is for the MD to get out of town for a long enough period to let the upsets die down (one factor in why MDs like to guest conduct other orchestras!). Eventually it gets so bad that they simply “have to move on.”

Just like in any long term interpersonal relationship, if it began with high affinity, interest and communication–why does it degenerate over time? The answer is that it doesn’t have to. And the best guarantee that it won’t is to clean up the little upsets and harmful acts as they occur. Of course, for this to work there has to be a high level of trust between all concerned. There can be no fear of negative repercussion as a result of honesty.

The ideal scene is a for a Music Director and orchestra to start with a fine relationship and see that it grows from there on out.