The Orchestra

An orchestra is a living breathing organism that is ever yielding to your direction and vision as a conductor, as so, the orchestra is completely dependent on a beacon of clear direction.

Every part has a function, a particular texture, volume and sound- and yet they all work in conjunction to translate the same idea. Still, the orchestra can translate a piece through a million different sounds and textures.

Unison

In any piece of music that consists of an orchestra includes main melodies and themes that are spread all throughout the work. It is through these themes that we see the work of unison at its best. An orchestra has to come into an ever more tightly knit organism when the notation requires. It often may happen that an instrument will stand out due to missing the key- missing the idea of the theme. The orchestra not only has to well oiled and connected in the technical and functional sense of the word but also in the emotional sense. There is such a thing as understanding the feeling behind a theme and working hard to attain and maintain the originality of the theme.

The conductor's main requirement is not only a clear vision, but also the patience to carry an entire orchestra through the landscape of the orchestral work and do so in such a way that the orchestra is smoothly sailing through the musical waves without bumping into an iceberg all of a sudden. I have often witnessed conductors cracking under the pressure of the responsibility of this task. I believe, as a musician, that there is a point in which the conductor and the orchestra must meet. The conductor brings the mastermind that is familiar with all of the variables of original direction and the orchestra offers not only the technical mastery of music playing, but it also offers an open mind and a disposition to follow the conductor wherever he may want to go. The conductor doesn't have to waste a second teaching an orchestra how to play, he has the sole task of explaining the emotional background and context behind each measure.

I often joke with my friends about the doom of all arts when one day our industry will be revolutionized by artificially intelligent robots. My argument: they will take over even the arts. But then I realize that this may be impossible for a sole reason- we are as humans born, we live and then we die- within that span of time there is a particular set of hundreds of thousands of feelings and emotions that are specific to the human experience. The key in music, is that it is a medium through which we relate to others, we relate to singers, we relate to music players, their journeys, their lives. We relate to the feelings that an orchestra portrays as it plays a musical work because it is almost like a reflection of our feelings- the ones we all go through, and we do so through the most technically apt and prepared instrumentalists.