As S-S-Simon Rattle formally takes over the LSO, his latest media love-in reminded me of Harry and Paul’s fine departure in their Scousers series:

But Seriously Though Folks, some thoughts about conducting from memory. As both a performer and a concert-goer, I love it when conductors do this. I suppose it excites me partly because I’ve spent most of the last three decades toiling under what Norman Lebrecht calls “semi-conductors” in the early-music world, where it’s very rare—but never mind them.

WAM soloists commonly perform from memory—as do musicians in most the world (to take an entirely random instance: um, Daoist ritual specialists…). Conducting from memory now seems to me like a basic courtesy to the orchestra. Conductors don’t have to worry about strings going out of tune, or reeds misbehaving, or splitting notes—they’re earning a zillion times more than the poor people who actually play the music, and all they have to do is “wave the stick until the music stops, then turn around and bow”. And the benefits, for both players and audience, are immense.

Conductors have more nuanced views, of course. Here’s Paul Hostetter:

Conductors had the score in front of them, not because it wasn’t memorised most of the time, but rather almost as a reverent gesture to the composer’s intent.

Similarly, John Murton:

I always interpreted this as a sign of humility towards the music they were performing, perhaps even in some quasi-sacred rite of ceremonially placing the score at the centre of the act of performance.

This is revealing. But Will Crutchfield comments:

… among [conductors] it is becoming something of a point of honour to perform without a score.
And why shouldn’t they, if we’re going to say soloists ought to? There are essential differences. First and simplest, it’s harder. There are many instruments and thus far more notes to be memorised; even if you can easily recall the musical substance, the matter of who’s playing what, when, with whom is complex and constantly shifting. And the conductor does not have the benefit of motor or tactile memory of how the notes feel because he does not play any of the notes.
For the same reason, conductors are the only musicians who can fake memorisation, or perform a piece ”off book” when it is only partly learned. If it’s a matter of putting down the right keys on the piano, you either know it or you don’t. But if a conductor succeeds in memorising the score at a gross level (the basic rhythms, the major entrances), he can go ahead and conduct ”by heart” while he’s still learning the details, or perhaps without ever learning some of them. If you don’t think this happens, even in big places, have a beer with any longtime orchestral player and ask.

The practice caught on from Toscanini. Furtwängler, Celibidache, Karajan (sorry), Böhm, Bernstein, Barbirolli… Of all conductors I would expect to dispense with the score, it would be Rozhdestvensky—he was so spontaneous and direct. But apparently he always had the score in front of him, and the result was electrifying anyway.

The score can serve as a safety-net for the conductor; for the band, as a psychologically stabilising element. But it’s also as a protective layer insulating the conductor from communicating directly—we know how much more thrilling a performance is without the safety-net.

The focal position of the score reminds us all that we’re here not so much to celebrate an incandescent moment of communication between musicians, as to reinforce the hegemony of a dead composer. During the “performance” the audience may even consolidate this by occasionally resorting to the printed programme.

I just find it distracting, and a sad limitation to the potential for the direct engagement that should be intrinsic to any kind of performance.

Just a few instances. Foremost is the magical Carlos Kleiber conducting Brahms 2 in 1991, with an unrepentantly all-male Vienna Phil. With 1st and 2nd violins seated opposite, here (exceptionally) he encouraged the 1st violins to use free bowing. Alas, it’s elusive on YouTube, but you can, and must, find it here. In the words of a Classic FM presenter, “It doesn’t get much better than that—or does it? Give us a call.”

And here’s S-S-Simon with the opening of the 2nd movement of Mahler 5:

For his Mahler 10, click here; and for his Mahler 2 at the 2022 Proms, here.

Claudio Abbado also conducted free of the score. I’ve featured his performances of Mahler 1, Mahler 5,  Mahler 2, and Mahler 6; and don’t miss him accompanying Magdalena Kožená in Ich bin de Welt abhanden bekommen, and the divine Hélène Grimaud in Rachmaninoff’s 2nd piano concerto.

Chamber groups like the Chiara quartet have also found playing from memory fruitful. Even more radical is to get (and pay?!) the orchestra to play from memory too, as the Aurora orchestra often does:

Note this roundup of posts on conducting.