David Robertson: preference

Transcript context

…What would be another skill a conductor needs to have that a great musician might not have? I think you need to feel comfortable with sometimes looking slightly foolish. I had a wonderful mentor and colleague named Janos Fürst, who started out as a violinist, grew up in Hungary. In ’56, he crossed the sea from Hungary into Austria, and then was a wandering person until he managed to find a spot in Ireland and then London. He taught conducting, and I was fortunate enough to be his assistant in a summer course in Ireland. Janos would often say to people, “Imagine the moon view that there’s some extraterrestrial who’s come to observe the Earth and thinks that a safe distance to do this is from the moon because you don’t want to get too close. You don’t know how these people are going to behave. He sets up a telescope, and the telescope is trained, purely by chance, on an orchestra room where there are all of these people looking like they’re trying to saw through something with a bow, and people who are going red in the face with these yellow instruments that they’re playing. There’s this one person who’s just holding a little stick and waving their arms like crazy. All of a sudden, the moon view makes you realize that being the one person not making sound in the room is a little ridiculous. I think that’s something that sometimes, not taking ourselves too seriously is something that is hard for some musicians. Having been a music director, you’re also a manager of sorts. What is it managers can learn from conductors?…

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