Tomorrow my old teacher from St Petersburg Conservatory, Leonid Korchmar will arrive to Finland to teach on a master class organized by me. I have been toying with this idea ever since I moved back to Finland from St Petersburg, but only now I had enough contacts, enough free time and enough willpover to push through with this project.
I have gathered a group of open-minded conductors and conducting students who are curious enough to take a look at the Russian school of conducting. Or "one Russian school of conducting" would probably be a better description, since many schools coexist in Russia, most of them good or at least highly interesting.
What is so special about the so-called "Russian school of conducting"? I think the remarkable characteristic of Russian musicians is their scientific approach towards mastering their instrument. For example, Russians took the violin, an Italian instrument, and looked very carefully at how to perfect the technique of playing this instrument. And see - they have generally the very best school of string playing in the whole world (and yes, the teachers of the great violin players these days coming from Korea and China either are Russian or studied in Soviet Union)! The same thing they succeeded in doing with piano playing!
Now, conducting is totally a different matter, since there is no physical instrument to play on. But nevertheless several Russian teachers tried to codify the technique of influencing this human instrument. And they paid great attention to the fact that this instrument is very sensitive to subtle emotional and psychological impulses.
There are other "conducting systems" too, of course, but somehow they all fail to give the whole picture of conducting. So many times the conducting books are either traffic policing manuals or simply consist of a bag of tricks without underlying basis for technique. I have studied conducting in three countries and done several master classes in different parts of the world, and met so many conductors from all over the world during competitions that I can say with confidence: The Russian schools of conducting produce the most even output of professional and technically solid conductors. Why can't the West compete in this field? I have my opinions on that, but let's discuss it some other time!
