Recently I have started writing down my thoughts about conducting technique. The reason is, that even though the profession of conducting has been evolving for the past 150 years there still is much confusion among the music lovers and even musicians as to what a conductor actually does. Rehearsal techniques, podium charisma, and the actual manual technique of conducting seem to get easily mixed up in peoples minds. I hope to be able to clarify the question with my contributions at least a little bit.

Years ago I heard one famous pianist say about his conducting career that a "conducting technique" is totally insignificant - it is enough just to be understood! But as I suffered through his concert it was very clear that majority of his gestures were not understood by the players. The concert was practically led by the section leaders and the painful looks on their faces revealed that they would have preferred someone whose gesticulation they could grasp without being clairvoyant!

Today more and more instrumentalists are switching to conducting without any real education, and the popular media keeps up the myth that it is more about the personality - that the essentials of conducting can be in fact learned in "three easy lessons". Nothing could be further from the truth, though! The maestro in the video clip above (the first global conducting celebrity by the way), once stated: "Today I can still remember that I struggled for ten years to find a conducting technique." This kind of confession coming directly from the top should be enough to silence the talk about "born conductors", but alas, it is not...

My favorite writing about conducting technique is "About the Handicraft of the Conductor" by Wilhelm Furtwängler. It is an incredible eight pages describing the difference between a good conducting technique (which many times goes unrecognized by the critics), bad conducting technique (often learned in schools) and mere time-beating. In his youth Furtwängler observed for a long time the biggest conducting celebrity of the time, Arthur Nikisch, and concluded: "I learned to understand that this beauty of unified sound under Nikisch was not an accident; that this phenomenon, to put it more accurately, was caused by the way in which Nikisch "beat into" the sound. That it was, therefore, not a result of his personality, his suggestion - this term does not exist for sober professionals - but of his "technique".

I would say let's all be sober professionals and spread the word that there is such a thing as "conducting technique", and that it is something that can be learned and taught! I would love to hear your comments about this topic, whether you agree or disagree.