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Washington Post
May 22, 2006
Promising Young
Conductors Take Center Stage
By Tim Page
Washington Post Staff Writer
One of Leonard Slatkin's greatest
achievements as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra was
the creation of the National Conducting Institute, an annual three-week
program that, according to Slatkin, "is designed to assist conductors
from leading academic, community or parttime orchestras to directing
major professional groups."
And so four musicians, three of them young
and one in mid-career, took the stage of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall
late Saturday afternoon to make their debuts with the NSO. It must have
been a thrilling occasion for all of them. The house was packed with
friends and family, and hearty cries of "Bravo!" and "Brava!" rang out
again and again.
Slatkin himself introduced the program,
which was presented free of charge and ran a little over 90 minutes,
with no intermission. He promised that "each and every one" of the
conductors would be heard from again, and the evidence of the concert
left a listener believing -- or at least hoping -- that this would be
the case.
Leanna Primiani, a Peabody-trained,
California-based conductor and composer, began the program with Richard
Wagner's Overture to "Tannhauser." She was at her best in the more
vigorous passages, which had energy and drive; it may have been a case
of nerves that rendered her leadership of slower music (particularly at
the opening) halting and inconclusive.
Tito Muñoz is the assistant conductor of
the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He led the suite from Aaron Copland's
"Billy the Kid" and did a credible job holding this amiable but somewhat
sprawling confection together. He let it unfold gradually, like a good,
digressive yarn told around a campfire, lluminating all sorts of
inventive musical detail along the way, but never quite losing the
thrust of the narrative.
Not surprisingly, the most assured of the
four conductors was John Clanton, who has served for the past 21 years
leading orchestras and choruses in the U.S. Army music program, where he
now holds the rank of lieutenant colonel. He selected Liszt's "Les
Preludes," a one-time warhorse, beloved of our grandparents, that is now
rarely performed. He made a persuasive case for the score, emphasizing
its sweetness and welling lyricism rather than its occasional bombast,
and, interestingly, considering Clanton's background, this was probably
the least martial "Les Preludes" I've ever heard.
The program closed with Tchaikovsky's
"Romeo and Juliet," led by a tall, charismatic French conductor named
Helene Bouchez (who, among her other achievements, has the longest hair
I've ever seen on any orchestral musician, a golden ponytail reaching
down to her hips). This is an episodic piece, and Bouchez led an
episodic performance -- bristling and alive when she was "on," but
somewhat disjunct as an overall musical statement, with connective
passages not quite so seamless as one might have hoped for.
The NSO musicians gave their all to their
guests, playing with polish and pride, even taking over occasionally
when directorship from the podium was vague. May these promising
conductors always be rewarded with an orchestra so welcoming.
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