Dream of Dobbs then add sugar

One of the most fascinating things about conducting is how very much of the art is not possible to translate.  There has to an element of the abstract in conducting.  It has always undone me how if you honestly feel and/or think something when conducting it can often be communicated to the audience via the orchestra.  How this happens is totally beyond my comprehension, but it has happened often enough for me to know it as a fact not a dream or a piece of fiction.

So, back to Mozart’s 39th.  The way I have found for communicating what I believe to be the spirit of the symphony as well as the actuality is that when I conduct this masterpiece I genuinely feel inside myself the shocks and revelations that Mozart gave to his public.  By so doing I am convinced that I can communicate it to the audience via the orchestra. 

There have been several occasions during my career when various members of the orchestra have come to me after a performance and commented on how moved they were by one moment or another in the symphony.  Frequently the language they have used has been related to trying to express that they had never felt that particular feeling before in that work.  This has often come from musicians who have played the symphony many times with many different conductors.

So for me it is not dreaming but is fact that one can communicate this kind of emotion and musical thought without resorting to gimmicks.  It is wonderful to feel that it is possible to honor all the gods that one must in this business without compromise and come out in the end with the musical and spiritual essence of the creator.

In essence what I am trying to convey is that I genuinely believe that if I am sufficiently saturated with what the composer intended as well as with what he wrote it should be possible for me to give the audience an experience genuinely related to that which was experienced by the original audience.

The big difference is that I always try to take into account the fact that the audience I am performing for has ears that have become accustomed to a very different soundscape from that which Mozart knew.  So, today’s audience cannot have the emotional reaction to the sounds that Mozart heard.  But I am convinced that if I am saturated with the actual feeling that Mozart got and was able to convey, I can give today’s audience the same wonderful experience using the wonderful sonic world we can now create.

It would be unfair to the composer if we didn’t try to take full advantage of the improvements we have available to us in the 21st century when trying to express the magic and genius of the musicians whose creations we are recreating.  I can only dream of the reactions that Mozart and others would have if they could experience the sounds that we can make today.

Maybe they do.