How to conduct yourself


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.
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Comments

Pliable said…
Timely post about the contrast between the coverage of classical music by newspapers and blogs here -

http://collaborativepiano.blogspot.com/2008/02/classical-music-bloggers-are-macs.html
11:56 am
Garth Trinkl said…
Fascinating post and linked-profile, pliable.

Having read about, but having never seen a picture of Mr Petrenko, I thought, at first glance, that you were posting an older picture of the American conductor (and one-time Mstislav Rostropovich demi-protegee) Hugh Wolff... though I don't believe that the Anglo-American publicity machine ever called Mr Wolff an "American bombshell."

And silly me thought that the turn of phrase "bombshell" usually referred -- sexistly -- to female divas such as Anna Netrebko.
9:11 pm
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