Conductors, language performance quality

This may be naive, but is there any correlation between the ability of a conductor to fluently speak the native language of the orchestra and the quality of the performance?

Most of the rehearsals I've heard have been conducted in the orchestra's language. One recent exception was a video of Norrington rehearsing his German orchestra which was about 75% in English. His German didn't seem too eloquent and the orchestra seemed to understand English, (laughing at his jokes was the surest sign that they understood him somewhat idiomatically.) The performance which was emerging was boring, but Norrington seemed to be going for nuance over drive anyway.

Before I ramble too much, how important is this issue in orchestral recordings? Is there a standard language that orchestra players speak in order to communicate about performance? Are conductors so seriously polyglot that they can communicate very subtle linguistic points in a variety of different languages? Has this changed with 'globalization'? What about provincial orchestras which are likely to hire local musicians? Finally, can anyone offer some recordings where a linguistic mismatch might have sunk the performance?

Just wondering.

says...

For what it's worth, Norrington's recordings of Haydn 104 with his English HIP orchestra and his German non-HIP orchestra sound much the same, and he gets the Salzburg Mozarteum Orch to play as dully in Bach as he gets the COE to in Haydn, so I suspect his talent transcends any language barrier.

Major orchestras seem to understand English, French and German (one or all of the three) well enough for most conductors to get through a rehearsal. One of the 'Great Conductors' videos shows Munch alternating between German and French when conducting the Czech Phil. According to an article somewhere about Charles Mackerras, the CPO loves him because he's about the only non-Czech conductor who's taken the trouble to learn the Czech language. Everybody else speaks German to them.

Andrew schrieb:

Quite a few conductors apparently are/were amazingly polyglot (I believe most of them can communicate fairly well in German, English, French, Italian (and Hungarian, of course ), even if they may have strong accents), but I think the quality of communication is not so heavily dependent on the command of language, often a conductor will sing a particular phrasing to a musician, for instance, or have something repeated until he is pleased.

Even Ashkenazy?

Andrew wrote > 'Is there a standard language that orchestra players speak

Yes certainly - the commonly used musical terms are universal - arco, staccato, forte, pianissimo, etc - the meanings are quite clear.

of course, many of the best conductors 'say it with the stick' - the signals sent via physical communication, stick texhnique, etc are so clear that alot of verbiage is not necessary. That was Reiner's theory - that one of his students should be able to get in front of any orchestra, regardless of language barriers, and clearly communicate his ideas to the orchestra. Theoretically possible, but not too many can do it.

As a rule - orchestra musicians hate 'talkers' - when the podium blabbering starts, the orchestral attention level decreases proportionately. With a real stick master - you MUST pay attention - if you pay attention, it all works......

Lots of famous stories in this subject - I believe Klemperer, who in his early days was exceedingly verbose - was telling the solo horn player how to play the big solo in mvt IV of Brahms Sym #1 - he was going on about the sunrise, and the rays of light, and the blooming forth, the dawn of the coming day etc. etc and so forth...

one of the WW principals finally turned around and said, loudly, to the horn player:

'I think he wants it LOUDER!!'

[it was probably the NYPO!!]

According to Mencken, the language used to curse the orchestra was of little consequence.

Reiner's 'tiny beat' story is one of my favorites. Which orchestra did that occur with?

The story I heard is that he was going on and on about a Beethoven symphony and its 'meaning', and one of the wind players said, 'Hey, Klemps, you talk-a too much.'

I think that when he was questioned on this by Levant, he is said to have replied, 'Let them look'.

Traditionally, it the conductor's responsibility to know the language of his orchestra well enough to give them all the necessary instructions. There have been exceptions