Are Most Conductors Fakes?

 So a conductor acquaintance of mine just released a big rant on facebook about how it's particularly the frauds who rise to the top of the profession. Given the timing, it's fairly clear he was particularly talking about Gergiev.

With artists like Gergiev who clearly have a dark side, there is a temptation to rewrite history and say that we never thought these guys were 'that great.' The truth is, until fifteen years ago, almost all of us were entranced with him, and if he was not 'traditional' in his technique, we all attributed it to a fault of the profession, not him. His approach was so different and so exciting, the music literally seemed on fire. Levine was similarly idolized until about twenty years ago, and now thousands of music lovers are saying 'we never loved James Levine.' Bull. In the 90s it was taken for granted by every music lover that short of Carlos Kleiber, he was his generation's best of the best. If you don't believe it, look up internet music message boards from that time. And unlike Gergiev, Levine's skill was unimpeachable.

The problem is that it's precisely the vagueness of the conducting profession that makes it so fascinating. Are there really that many 'frauds' in conducting? No, but like any profession at all, there are many, many practitioners whose approach is deeply flawed, and unlike among singers and instrumentalists, when the approach is flawed, few people know because the music is never made by the conductor.

The best equivalent to conducting is, believe it or not, being the front man of a rock group, and being a rock group front man is extremely challenging in itself. Even if the musicianship is lacking, yes, the personality of the musician matters, it matters more than nearly anything. It makes all the difference between making the musicians behind you giving their all and an empty musical experience.

I doubt that Otto Klemperer had the physical coordination or even stamina to truly lead performances for the last twenty years of his life, and yet he inspired his musicians to give so much more than a perfect technician like Leinsdorf. Why? Because musicians were inspired by him. They were inspired by the hardships of his life story, they were inspired by his sense of humor, they were inspired by his knowledge of the score, they were inspired by his expressive insights, they were inspired by his memories of the bygone era of Mahler and Strauss, and yes, they were a little afraid of him too. Klemperer is one of the greatest conductors not because of his technique, but because he inspired musicians to give of themselves, and created a spiritual space in which each of their contributions were heard and valued.

Is Gergiev a fraud? Absolutely not. He is a deeply flawed musician and still much more, a deeply flawed man. He has given more bad performances in the international arena than any conductor since... probably Leonard Bernstein. And yet Bernstein has left so many great performances that his greatness is not legitimately open to question. Is Gergiev on Lenny's level, absolutely not. But in the music he really knows, he was truly great, and still likely will be again. We will remember him the way we remember Willem Mengelberg. Mengelberg was a much, much more skilled conductor than Gergiev, but his aesthetic could be just as repellent. He too was an unsubtle artist who led performances of the most overwhelming excitement that put himself at the center of people's focus. Mengelberg still inspires cultish devotion in people whose personalities seem vaguely authoritarian, but the greatness in repertoire that suited him isn't open to question, including a lot of Beethoven.

If so many conductors rise to the top of the profession whose approach can be viewed as fraudulence, then it is the fault of the profession, not that particular conductor. When there's a Norrington or a Sinopoli up there who's just making non-sensical motions and gives no indication that they hear what's going on onstage, they don't rise to the top because they're frauds. They rise to the top because they provide a different approach that proper training does not allow for, and that means that conservatories need to be much more inclusive and flexible in what they teach. If conducting is just textbook motions, harmonic analysis and bowings, it's stupid. It's nothing an orchestra can't coordinate on its own. So conductors like Norrington and Sinopoli aren't even really frauds, they're just outsiders, and if properly trained musicians had similar ideas, those would be the celebrated conductors, and the ideas would be executed better.

So the bigger problem is the same problem that much of the classical music world has. Conductors are, generally speaking, not the most intellectually engaged people. They're the same 'do things by rote' people that exist in all sub-departments of conservatories except perhaps composition, and one graduate is pretty much just like the next. So they can't be surprised when musicians with a different approach rise to the top who lack all the skills they learned in conservatory for a decade.