Brandon Bedore

Conducting

9/23/15

The first conductor of the Pathetique I watched was Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit

Orchestra. Right from the beginning, I noticed that he set a tempo but in doing no no one came in

on his less than precise downbeat. He also gave said downbeat with his eyes closed, which only

added to the confusion for the bassoon soloist who begins the piece. From what I could interpret,

he was conducting mostly articulations and entrances more than the steady beat pattern. For

instance, he would move his hands in a way that signified how he wanted the phrase shaped, for

example, he would pull his hand upward and close his hand slowly to show he wanted a

crescendo into a fade. I think the piece was in three in the beginning but he flipped between so

many variations and movements that there was no way to tell for sure. He started the piece at a

slow tempo, around 52 bpm, and then reached a peek at around 140 later on. This becomes an

immediately contrasting characteristic of Slatkin’s conducting versus Georg Solti’s which we

will discuss later. While watching him conduct I also noticed just how broad a space he covered

with his baton. Depending on the mood of the section, his baton could hardly move at all and

simply twitch or it could be wildly bouncing from his pelvis to the full extension of his arm over

his head. He also switched off between conducting entrances with his hand and with the baton,

which for me was confusing, but it may have had to do with the position of the players he

intended to address. Dynamics were also a big part of his interpretation particularly with the

clarinet solo. He made a “shush” gesture every time the soloist was about to play and the clarinet

started with a very exposed pianissimo each time. Slatkin did this I assume to contrast the

fortissimo fanfare that immediately follows the solo and ends the first movement. As the second

movement begins and again at the start of the third movement, Slatkin does not beat out his

starting tempo but everyone comes in on his downbeat. As the piece went on Slatkin’s

conducting became more regular and more focused on tempo especially when the orchestra had

separate ideas. This was highlighted in the third movement when he started it in a four pattern

and held it steady for almost the entire rest of the movement. All of this was done with no score,

which I did not realize until the end, which helps to explain why he was not conducting the

“true” beat patterns. Overall, I felt that with what little knowledge I had of the piece that Slatkin

conducted a very solid performance with lots of dynamic and musical ideas.

The second conductor was Georg Solti and the Rudfunks Orchestra. Much like Slatkin,

he began his downbeat with his eyes closed but the bassoonist had no trouble coming in.

Throughout the entirety of the Pathetique, Solti took a slightly faster tempo during the slow

sections and a noticeably faster tempo than Slatkin during the faster sections. It was so fast at

points that the violinists looked like they were visibly struggling to keep up. It did not help that

Solti was very jerky and abrupt with his conducting. He had the music in front of him so perhaps

he was using it to indicate the beat pattern shifts. From my perspective, he did not conduct any

visibly recognizable pattern for most of the piece; it looked more as if he was sawing an invisible

log. For most of it, he conducted the feeling he wanted and the articulation of phrases much like

Slatkin. There were times when he would just stand still and observe what was happening and

other times he would be so all over the place you could hardly keep track of him. On top of his

higher tempo, he also shaped some phrases noticeably different compared to Slatkin. While

Slatkin took a brief pause after the delicate clarinet solo, Solti did not and kept it atempo all the

way through. Solti also kept a more aggressive and driving feel to the Pathetique than Slatkin

who kept it more delicate and exposed. I found Solti’s interpretation to be less dynamically fluid

as he remained forte for a majority and only dipped to mezzo piano during solos. An interesting

side note was that Solti’s orchestra retuned before the third movement while Slatkin did not.

Overall, I found that Slatkin’s interpretation and conducting style was much harsher and speedy

than that of Slatkin who was more fluid and stretched his tempos and dynamics.