Edwin Outwater<\/a>. With a smile on his face, he asked if either or both of us would like to conduct a movement of Bruckner Four that morning. Edwin, predictably, was first to leap in- \u201cI\u2019ll do the first!\u201d<\/p>\n\u201dFine\u201d answered Stefan, \u201cKen- what do you want to do?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201dWell, I\u2019ll do the last movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stefan looked at me and gently reminded me that the Finale is orders of magnitude harder to conduct than all the rest of the piece. I looked him in the eye and said I was up for it.<\/p>\n
After this brief chat we launched ourselves into the first part of the rehearsal, which was the Beethoven 4th<\/sup> Piano Concerto. At the break, Stefan pulled me aside and went through the entire last movement of the Bruckner in 5 minutes, just reminding me what was in 2, in 3 and in 4. Then he said something funny<\/p>\n\u201dWhen you get to the coda, you\u2019re really going to suffer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyway, Edwin ran the first movement, Stefan the 2nd<\/sup> and 3rd<\/sup> then I did the last. Considering I\u2019d conducted full orchestras for about 2 hours in my life, doing an entire movement of Bruckner was with a killin’ band, to say the least, a LOT of fun.<\/p>\nAfterwards, Stefan was pleased. \u201cDid you suffer in the coda?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201dNot really- it’s so wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Well, it was good, but if it had been slow<\/em><\/strong> enough, you would have really been in pain by the end. The tension of that coda should make you hurt to your core.\u201d<\/p>\nAnyway, we had worked very hard to find the right groove, the right degree of weight, resistance and friction in the last movement of the Shostakovich all week, and, as I wrote earlier, I never felt like we quite got there. The orchestra kept getting to the front of the beat. Tonight I wasn\u2019t going to let that happen, and somehow, I think we held it in place with the kind of slow-burn intensity it needs.<\/p>\n
And I did suffer. In the years since that Bruckner, I’ve learned that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do with your\u00a0hands, you just\u00a0have to sort of stand there and pay the price<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0About twenty bars into the march, I remembered Stefan’s smiled when he told me about the power of suffering, and would have smiled had the music not been ripping a small hole in my soul. It was sufferin’ time….<\/p>\nBut in a good way. Sometimes, there\u2019s no other way.<\/p>\n