Trust

Today is a day of rest after a very long and arduous two weeks of playing. Two weeks ago, "Annie Get Your Gun" with Leopold the Magnificent, and this last week a concert filled with waltzes led by Slava (my chosen pseudonym for him means "glory").
By the end of "Annie", I could barely bend over for the tense muscles everywhere. The prospect of attempting to do justice to the Blue Danube, Die Fledermaus and Der Rosenkavalier with three cracked fingertips, a swollen ganglion in one knuckle and a blister sitting on top of my bow stick in addition to the knots was, well...I wasn't too excited about it.
My favorite orchestra has, to be honest, never been able to play waltzes with any sort of style and grace. Even without trying to sound Viennese, our waltzes have always felt like riding a three-legged horse. It is as if no one in the group had ever danced before.
Enter Slava.......
I have a sneaking suspicion that he programmed the repertoire for this concert knowing full well that he would be teaching this new orchestra of his a thing or two about mutual trust. The notes in Danube and Fledermaus are not difficult, but giving them life is a challenge in a group of people who don't trust their leader, and who, more importantly, don't trust themselves.
Early on, some musicians grumbled that he never takes the same tempo twice, and the degree of stretch in the rubatos even less consistently. Personally, I began to enjoy this aspect of his rehearsal technique, as it kept these "simple" pieces from getting boring and tedious. It was, as it turned out, the key to learning how to trust the conductor. 
By the end of the week, we had become willing to waltz to the edge of the precipice, lean out over the 1,000 foot drop and gently swing right back to solid ground without a second thought. Slava never let us fall. He even managed to give the violas and cellos a pizzicato cue OVER HIS SHOULDER while turned away completely, facing the first violins for their own entrance. That was some fancy shootin'........Oh, and did I mention that he always conducts from memory?
The trust also went in the other direction. Our guest violin soloist performed two Mozart pieces with us, and from the first rehearsal Slava had decided that we would play it without a conductor at all. Good, old-fashioned chamber music. None of our previous conductors would have had faith enough in us to allow that, but it went without a hitch.
At this point, I have to contrast this relaxed, trusting relationship with the frenetic micromanaging that goes on in my less-favorite orchestra.
During "Annie" Leopold would constantly remind us of what number we were headed into, and what beat pattern he would be conducting, even through the last of three performances (Okay, now we're in number 14, and it's in two....Number 14, and in TWO!!). Mind you, there was absolutely no reason for this, as we had successfully run through the show without incident since the second rehearsal.
Slava talks relatively little in rehearsals, and relies on his body movements to tell us how to play something.
Leopold will talk us through every single piece, telling us where he will beat in two, where he is in four, and what the metronome marking is for each section, as the expansive waving of his hands isn't enough to clue us in.
Slava will sometimes put his arms down completely in the middle of a piece and just listen to us play until he is needed again.
Leopold will keep beating energetically no matter what, even when the orchestra has twenty measures of rest during the cadenza of a guest soloist's concerto, and will hold his arms all the way up over his head waiting for the soloist to end a fermata (either because he got there too quick or because the team just made a touchdown). Picture the Hollywood Bowl, Bugs Bunny and the Tenor, only Bugs isn't the one in control..........
Slava uses our first rehearsal of the week to run through everything, warts and all, before worrying about refining anything.
Leopold will inevitably stop us after the very first downbeat of the week because it wasn't together.

The performances this past weekend were absolutely wonderful. Both of them (and we usually refer to the first performance as our dress rehearsal) went smoothly, with the utmost in grace and sensitivity on every piece. It has been some number of years since I have felt such a sense of elation at the end of a concert, and what a remarkable feeling it is! This is why I play.