[78-L] Lorin Maazel

[David Lennick]

I've run across Solomon's name on records, but nothing in recent decades. Some 
accompaniments for Jascha Heifetz with the RCA Victor Symphony come to mind.

And what ever became of Joey Alfidi? I have half an album by him (one of two 
discs on Jubilee).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Alfidi

dl

On 1/21/2011 11:44 PM, DAVID BURNHAM wrote:
> Those of us into classical music should appreciate this.  I recently read a book
> by David Ewen called "Dictators of the Baton".  This book was written in 1943
> and covers the careers of the significant living conductors of the day;  the
> only exception is the chapter on Frederick Stock who, as it is pointed out, died
> while the book was being written.  In a chapter towards the end he discusses
> child prodigies and points out that conducting is the one area in music where
> there are no child prodigies and that no child prodigy has ever developed into a
> successful adult conductor.
>
> Here is a quote:
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> "Only recently a child conductor excited admiration and publicity in New York
> with guest performances with the NBC Orchestra.  Lorin Maazel, aged 11, was the
> first child ever to direct a major American Orchestra, and he directed it in
> programs which would have taxed the experience and equipment of a much older
> musician.  The story goes that at the age of eight he revealed he could read a
> full orchestral score;  that on his ninth birthday, (as his gift), he was given
> the opportunity to rehearse an orchestra in Tchaikovsky's Marche Slav.  His
> career began officially with the National Youth Orchestra which he directed at
> the New York World's Fair.  A guest performance at the Hollywood Bowl, (where he
> shared the baton with Stokowski), prefaced his New York appearances with
> Toscanini's orchestra.
>
> But young Maazel, for all his apparent talent, has proved himself to be little
> more than a routined time-beater.  He seems to know the music he conducts, and
> he responds to it emotionally.  He has a good ear.  But he has no understanding
> of the artistic forces which give  the music its dramatic, emotional, or lyric
> greatness.  He plays bar by bar as if he had been taught to do so by rote;  of
> imagination, sensitive refinement, artistic planning or design there are not the
> slightest traces.
>
> Consequently, if we are to search for the conductors for tomorrow, we will not
> find them among child prodigies,....."
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> I know David Ewen lived long enough to eat his words, (d. 1985);  I wonder if he
> ever did - to Lorin Maazel personally or in print.
>
> This is a wonderful book to read - illuminating the careers of conductors who
> until now were, to me, little more than names on records, such as Walter
> Damrosch.  The conductors who, in 1943, he feels hold promise for the future are
> Izler Solomon, Dean Dixon and Sylvan Levin.  Dixon is the only one I know of who
> had a career, I've never heard of Solomon at all.  Strangely, there is no
> mention of Leonard Bernstein whatsoever;  I believe his career was underway by
> 1943.
>
> db
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