Piano World Home Page Forums General Discussions Musicians Welcome! if you could conduct anything...

what would it be?

Honestly, considering I haven't heard a whole lot of symphonic music, I don't really know. But there is one thing that moves me a lot (something I dance to whenever I hear it... just can't help myself... and what a sight it is! ): Mussourgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. It's one of the most exhilarating and interesting things, in my opinion. <<sigh>> Thinking of it makes me urge to hear it.

Ben Ruppert

P.S. And how often is it that you'll find two words starting with "exh" five words apart?....

Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn.

Stravinsky - Rite of Spring

TheD's, I know exhactly what you mean. I would exhaust myself looking for other exhellent exhamples.
Bob

lol! Good one!

Ben

I think mine would be Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. When I was involved in a performance of it some years back it seemed like the conductor was really having lots of fun...but I guess it isn't as easy as it looks.

Beethoven's 3rd Symphony

Mahler's Symphony of 1000...think I might need slight hearing protection? :p

I would want to conduct all of the Mozart Symphonies, such wonderful works! His Requiem would also be of great interest. Of course, what musician does not wish to conduct the Beethoven symphonies as well!

Yes, I've always thought Beethoven's 9th would be fun... a little bit of everything musically, with a chorale and soloists at the end!

BTW, my fantasy career is to be a conductor... :p

Nina

Now that I think about it, while the Rite of Spring is a masterpiece, there are lots more of great pieces that deserve to be played more often.

I'd very much like to conduct any of Shostakovich's symphonies. While his symphonies are generally considered to belong to the most masterful symphonies ever written, they don't appear in concert programmes very often.

So I'd change my vote from the Rite of Spring to any of DSCH's symphonies.

Well, why not Mahler’s Tenth, Derek Cooke version of course? There are many common errors many conductors make with this work.

1) The first movement should be slow but not ponderous. George Szell, who did not record the full version, only the first and third movements which Mahler completed, provides perhaps the best interpretations of these movements.
2) The second movement is also occasionally played far too slowly. It needs something like a neo-classical touch to it, light and quick.

There is much deep irony in this work as in all Mahler, also one needs string power; give me thirty-two of the strongest violinists in the world for this work. Other instrumentalists who will be called upon for the usual vivid and sudden solos must be of the first caliber.

The fourth and fifth movements (Cooke’s masterpieces) require a violin soloist to lead the string ensemble through treacherous adventures. In a way the fourth movement is a “waltz of death” which is arranged around a few recurring themes of happiness, hopefulness, regret, sorrow, pain, foreboding, release.

The fifth movement is the culmination. It’s time to say goodbye to life, to the world, to everything terrestrial and to pass as it were, not through the death of laying one’s body down and one’s spirit passing away out of it, but rather of the whole being, body, mind and soul, taken out of this world into another dimension from which there is no return. The culmination of this piece, the ache of those who are left grieving their separation in impassioned string strains has to be done with a penetrating seriousness beyond what could be taken for mere enormity of sentimentality. The romanticism of an epoch culminates in this work. After this piece, the movie makers exploited similar sounds for cheap imitation sentimentality, watering down the effect until it is mostly a burden to bear listening to anymore.

There were other symphonies after this one, but this one marked an end of an epoch as well as the end of this composer’s life and work.

Of course I would be way too choked up during most of this piece to ever conduct it. It has been a burden sharer of many difficult times in my life mostly connected with the loss of people I loved. But that is what it’s about, after all, whatever else it may be about.

I’m curious whether anyone else feels anything strong for Mahler’s Tenth (Derek Cooke version, of course)?

"Anvil Chorus"

from Verdi's Il Trovatore (The Troubador)......not the most beautiful piece in the world I know, but what fun to conduct!

John Cage's 4'33" transcribed for Accordian solo and prepared string quartet with Tuba continuo.

Africa by Robert W. Smith.

In the top two most awesomest songs ever written by him for band.

Hmmmmm....

Shostakovich Symphony No. 5

OR

Tchaikovsky 1812 Overture

Mahler 2!

Brahm's 1st Symphony.
Elgar's 1st Symphony.
'' Dream of Gerontius.

For starters...
Mozart's "The Magic Flute" (the entire opera; such sublime music!)
all of Beethoven's symphonies
Elgar's "Enigma" Variations


pd