Ambitious conductors start here. There are some excellent tips in Tim Ashley's Guardian profile of Vasily Petrenko on what it takes today to become principal conductor of an orchestra. Here are some of the buzzwords from the lavish double-page spread - "big, blond, handsome ... age of 30 ... youngish fashionable crowd ... easy on the eye and a balletic mover on the podium ... wowing everyone ... Russian bombshell ... striking determination". And yes, contemporary music is mentioned. In the penultimate paragraph.
But, unlike On An Overgrown Path, the anti-Iraq war Guardian doesn't mention that ambitious young conductors also need to strut their stuff for Condoleezza Rice as well as on Second Life.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
