CONDUCTING

“Conducting means to make decisions”

Naturalness of the conducting movements is necessary for setting impulses which are predictable for the musicians in the orchstra or choir.

Clarity comes into being by scaling down the impulses of conducting to fundamental informations which means for the musicians in the orchestra or choir at the same time the feeling of safety and also of freedom.Authenticity means the connection between conducting and the physical and mental possibilities of the personality of the cnductor. To be convincing the course of movements has to be experienced as coinciding with the persoality and the musical ideas of the conductor.

For my musical job as a conductor it is important to divide clearly three different steps of preparation for a concert.

Study of the score means to come back from a abstract reduction of music to notes in a score to a musical imagination which is connected to my feelings, ideas and experiences as well as to the feelings, ideas and experiences of the composer, which gives me the chance to create a plausible interpretation of the music.

Rehearsing means to show an interpretation of the music to the orchestra in a way as simple as possible. The rehearsal has to be very effective and needs to be in a good balance between working on details and on the big lines. It is not possible to plan a rehearsal exactly – nobody knows in advance the difficulties of these individual rehearsal. The conductor has to improvise and to find the best solutions for this rehearsal and so he has to know in advance all the potential difficulties which could appear in a rehearsal.

The performance in an ideal case is an intensive experience für musicians and the audience which comes from a perfect mixture of well rehearsed details and spirited playing of music at the moment. This is only possible if the orchestra and the conductor trust each other and trust their own skills. Only trust gives the freedom for an extraordinary experience in a concert.