Sir Neville Marriner is with us this week. Yesterday we had the full orchestra and played through the entire concert, encore included with no comments. Just, "It will be a pleasure to work with you all," and a few other cheerful jokes and mumblings. Today we had sectionals; strings in the morning, winds in the afternoon. We worked a little more on details. And again we worked on the encore. The Andante of the Reformation Symphony. I think he really loves this movement.
It's a pleasure to be working with him. I don't know what makes him an incredible conductor, though I have an idea for myself, in my own eyes and perception, what strikes me. But I wonder what made him an incredible conductor in the past. Was it the same thing as what I see this week?
I'm really looking forward to working with this cheerful, healthy 89-year-old British gentlemen whose "dynamics" sounds to me like "dinner mix." This man who asks us if we'd like to rehearse from a certain spot, or if we would like a suggestion from his score, a relic likely worthy of a place in a British museum. So many experiences in him, so many lessons that he will likely share with us simply in his manner of being.
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