The Art of Conducting: Great Conductors of the Past (1993)

Conductors: Otto Klemperer, Richard Strauss, Herbert Von Karajan, Thomas Beecham, Arthur Nikisch, Arturo Toscanini, Fritz Busch, John Barbirolli, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Fritz Reiner, Leonard Bernstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Leopold Stokowski, George Szell, Felix Weingartner, Bruno Walter This film shows various conductors in action, who have left their mark on their era, through excerpts from rehearsals, concerts, interviews and through the sometimes tender, sometimes uncompromising gaze of the artists (soloists, orchestral musicians, singers) they have conducted. The aim of the film is to show how such dissimilar personalities could approach the orchestra and impose their vision through their methods of conducting, rehearsal, their gestures, their relationships and the perception and understanding that the musicians could ultimately have of it. It is moving, touching, effective and very instructive. Let us mention Richard Strauss conducting Till Eulen... stoic, motionless (the right hand alone beating time) and the anecdotes about him by Szell, the good nature of Beecham, the inflexibility and eagle eye of Reiner, the exuberant and whimsical Bernstein to be compared to a granite Klemperer, a Toscanini authoritatively punctuating a sharp reading (to be correlated with listening to some of his recordings, Brahms concerts in 52 in London for example), a devastating Furtwangler (finale of Brahms’ 4th), a tenacious Barbirolli, an admirable Walter, all in flexibility managing to make “sing“ (sing, sing, sing...) as he wished an orchestra still a little “green“. Equally remarkable are Weingartner, Busch, the complex and controversial Stokowski... and the intense concentration of Karajan. A unique, silent archive!, showing Arthur Nikisch at the podium, the tradition and elegance of the direction of another century.