The Maestro Myth

"It’s simply the best book on conductors you have: I don’t know any other that so honestly pricks the pomposity of the whole thing, and contextualises it, and introduces gossip (in the best possible way), as well as anecdotal evidence that sheds a huge amount of light on these characters we think of as mythical beings. The book’s premise, I guess, is that the conductor is a 20th-century invention, partly sustained by commercial necessity and the recording industry. The proliferation of orchestras means that you have to sustain the idea of the orchestral conductor as a full profession. Before, you had composer-conductors, and conductors who did various other things, but they were never exclusively conductors until the very late 19th century. Mainly it’s about how this monster was born, because for many orchestral players conductors are monsters, and to many ordinary punters they’re figures of complete bafflement. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . What Lebrecht does is to show how some conductors did very little and just reaped a huge amount of money, and how some did a lot, but that much of that was down to charisma, psychology, and management – it’s a management role. These conductors were highly-strung individuals who had to navigate this incredibly precarious position. They were paid so much more than the average orchestral member so you have to, as a necessity, build this idea of yourself as some titan in order to sustain the sums and the wages you get. Lebrecht is one of the first to expose Mazel as being the first million-dollar conductor, and he has a table of the biggest-paid conductors of the last century. There’s a lot of reverence shown to conductors, and this book really goes in between the cracks and uncovers all sorts of brilliant stories you’d never find anywhere else. Lebrecht has spoken to members of the New York Philharmonic, which was famously intemperate and got rid of its conductors every two years, and each one had a nervous breakdown or fled or had massive issues. Rodzinski, when he was there, conducted with a gun in his pocket. These stories are fun, but they have pertinence, because a good performance comes down to these personal relationships: a flautist won’t play well for the maestro if he’s been treated badly, and that often happens. I think the reaction has been a lockdown on anyone leaking this sort of information, actually. At the time it was published there were quite a few exposés – classical music was a quite naive art form in many ways, they’d built this myth and hadn’t covered their tracks, and if you spoke to any orchestral members they’d just tell you the truth of it all. But I think now we’re back in this realm of mystification, partly because that’s what people want classical music to be. They don’t actually want to know anything, other than that this is a holy great art form beyond any other, that creates these über-geniuses who have no flaws and can do no wrong. This book I think is a very good antidote to that. On the back the reviews all say ‘masterpiece’ etc, but one says, ‘This may be the most disgusting book I’ve ever read,’ and I think I know what he means."