by Kenneth Woods | Dec 3, 2006 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Nuts and bolts
What then of someone like Furtwangler, who’s Beethoven tempi tend to be quite uninhibited by the metronome? Many leading modern Beethoven interpreters and commentators, including John Elliot Gardiner, Gunther Schuller and Benjamin Zander have all held up Furtwangler’s...
by Kenneth Woods | Nov 30, 2006 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Nuts and bolts
“Conductors question scores for a living. Actual conducting is something you just have to do to share the answers you’ve found to the questions you’ve asked.” Practical questions about music are important (and fun!) to answer. When a real music lover tells me he or...
by Kenneth Woods | Nov 29, 2006 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Nuts and bolts
One of my first “official” conducting teachers told us all that “conductors study scores for a living. Actual conducting is just something you get to do for fun as a reward for the studying.” It’s a point of view I took to heart and have often repeated to both...
by Kenneth Woods | Oct 19, 2006 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Music and Media
I’ve been a bit surprised to find how totally polarizing the whole electroacoustic issue has been- it’s been more controversial than anything I’ve dealt with before. I have to admit I spent much of last weekend wishing I’d never thought of posting on...
by Kenneth Woods | Oct 9, 2006 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts
Almost all composers tend to get misrepresented by history in one way or another. The great modern example is the “debate” about Shostakovich, in which many American academics continue to promote a portrait of the man at odds with descriptions of him by all his...
by Kenneth Woods | Sep 25, 2006 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts
I was almost content to let the 100th birthday of Shostakovich pass without comment. Just think, though…. Already, just a few years after his death, we’re beginning to see his body of work recognized as the single most important contribution to Russian culture and...
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