Brandon Bedore

Conducting
9/23/15
The first conductor of the Pathetique I watched was Leonard Slatkin and the Detroit
Orchestra. Right from the beginning, I noticed that he set a tempo but in doing no no one came in
on his less than precise downbeat. He also gave said downbeat with his eyes closed, which only
added to the confusion for the bassoon soloist who begins the piece. From what I could interpret,
he was conducting mostly articulations and entrances more than the steady beat pattern. For
instance, he would move his hands in a way that signified how he wanted the phrase shaped, for
example, he would pull his hand upward and close his hand slowly to show he wanted a
crescendo into a fade. I think the piece was in three in the beginning but he flipped between so
many variations and movements that there was no way to tell for sure. He started the piece at a
slow tempo, around 52 bpm, and then reached a peek at around 140 later on. This becomes an
immediately contrasting characteristic of Slatkins conducting versus Georg Soltis which we
will discuss later. While watching him conduct I also noticed just how broad a space he covered
with his baton. Depending on the mood of the section, his baton could hardly move at all and
simply twitch or it could be wildly bouncing from his pelvis to the full extension of his arm over
his head. He also switched off between conducting entrances with his hand and with the baton,
which for me was confusing, but it may have had to do with the position of the players he
intended to address. Dynamics were also a big part of his interpretation particularly with the
clarinet solo. He made a shush gesture every time the soloist was about to play and the clarinet
started with a very exposed pianissimo each time. Slatkin did this I assume to contrast the
fortissimo fanfare that immediately follows the solo and ends the first movement. As the second

movement begins and again at the start of the third movement, Slatkin does not beat out his
starting tempo but everyone comes in on his downbeat. As the piece went on Slatkins
conducting became more regular and more focused on tempo especially when the orchestra had
separate ideas. This was highlighted in the third movement when he started it in a four pattern
and held it steady for almost the entire rest of the movement. All of this was done with no score,
which I did not realize until the end, which helps to explain why he was not conducting the
true beat patterns. Overall, I felt that with what little knowledge I had of the piece that Slatkin
conducted a very solid performance with lots of dynamic and musical ideas.
The second conductor was Georg Solti and the Rudfunks Orchestra. Much like Slatkin,
he began his downbeat with his eyes closed but the bassoonist had no trouble coming in.
Throughout the entirety of the Pathetique, Solti took a slightly faster tempo during the slow
sections and a noticeably faster tempo than Slatkin during the faster sections. It was so fast at
points that the violinists looked like they were visibly struggling to keep up. It did not help that
Solti was very jerky and abrupt with his conducting. He had the music in front of him so perhaps
he was using it to indicate the beat pattern shifts. From my perspective, he did not conduct any
visibly recognizable pattern for most of the piece; it looked more as if he was sawing an invisible
log. For most of it, he conducted the feeling he wanted and the articulation of phrases much like
Slatkin. There were times when he would just stand still and observe what was happening and
other times he would be so all over the place you could hardly keep track of him. On top of his
higher tempo, he also shaped some phrases noticeably different compared to Slatkin. While
Slatkin took a brief pause after the delicate clarinet solo, Solti did not and kept it atempo all the
way through. Solti also kept a more aggressive and driving feel to the Pathetique than Slatkin
who kept it more delicate and exposed. I found Soltis interpretation to be less dynamically fluid

as he remained forte for a majority and only dipped to mezzo piano during solos. An interesting
side note was that Soltis orchestra retuned before the third movement while Slatkin did not.
Overall, I found that Slatkins interpretation and conducting style was much harsher and speedy
than that of Slatkin who was more fluid and stretched his tempos and dynamics.