Lenox — Boston Symphony music director Andris Nelsons gave an open conducting workshop on Thursday, July 28, in Tanglewood’s Studio E, along with two conducting fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, Rita Castro Blanco and Nicolò Umberto Foron. While the fellows practiced their technique on excerpts from Brahms’ third symphony, the crowd sat rapt as Nelsons explained with his hands what cannot be expressed in words.
It has never been a secret that members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra love working with Andris Nelsons, the orchestra’s 15th music director. And it’s not only because of his advanced musicianship. It’s also because the players thrive in an atmosphere of mutual respect—an atmosphere they have enjoyed with Nelsons from the time he made his debut with the orchestra in 2011 at the age of 33.
A conductor must have an awareness of and sympathy for the musicians in every section of the orchestra. Playing trumpet for the Latvian National Opera gave Nelsons first-hand knowledge of the demands placed on orchestral musicians. “Being in an orchestra myself helped me to understand the psychology of players,” he told The Times music critic Richard Morrison in 2009. “You realize how much teamwork matters.”
BSO trumpeter Michael Martin told Boston.com critic Benjamin Pesetsky in 2014 that he was “enamored with Andris from the beginning…He infuses a really genuine atmosphere in the way he communicates with the orchestra.”
“You have to have a family feeling,” Nelsons said in a 2014 interview at Symphony Hall. “You have to have a real human chemistry. You have to have trust and respect.”
So there’s our first lesson in orchestral conducting. In Studio E, the lesson is more physical. Nelsons gesticulates in the manner of a ballet dancer as he explains how to negotiate a certain Brahms passage. He wants Rita and Nicolò to relax more, make eye contact with the players, find their own way of presenting contrast, and, above all, breathe with the players.
But, as it turns out, even such a conductor as Andris Nelsons can no more explain the art of conducting than a sparrow can explain the miracle of avian flight. Both creatures simply do it.
So, is teaching the most advanced conducting precepts an impossible task? No, because even though explanations won’t suffice, demonstration might. Also, we are sure it is possible, because Nelsons himself had a mentor, the late Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons, whom Nelsons counts as his prime influence. From this master, Nelsons learned how a conductor must “bring out the inspiration in a piece and to inspire the musicians. He has to bring out what lies in between the notes.” Also, Nelsons as a student participated in conducting workshops with Neeme Järvi and Jorma Panula. How fortunate that Nelsons then fell in with Jansons and not one of the old-school, autocratic types.
Everyone knows that many great conductors of the past were control freaks. Not Andris Nelsons. “As conductors,” he advises, “we must be 100 percent involved in the music. It’s not a matter of control.” Former BSO head Mark Volpe once put it this way: “This guy is more of a partner…He wants to work with the musicians and collaborate. He has an understanding that, at 35, you haven’t done it all.”
Nelsons is adamant: “These are people who breathe!” he insists, arms raised, as everyone in the hall breaks out in chuckles. He moves his left arm to indicate a trombone’s crescendo. “Make it smooth and majestic,” he tells Rita and Nicolò.
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The ensemble playing the Brahms excerpts was stellar: David Bernat, violin; Sage Park, violin; Elizabeth Doubrawa, viola; Ben Fryxell, cello; Kebra-Seyoun Charles, bass; Eric Sedgwick, piano; Vytas Baksys, piano.
