The Compleat Conductor

World renowned conductor and composer, Gunther Schuller, has stirred controversy with The Compleat Conductor, his highly provocative critique of modern conducting. In these pages he castigates many of this century's most venerated conductors for using the podium to indulge their own interpretive idiosyncrasies rather than devote themselves to reproducing the composer's stated intentions. Schuller painstakingly compares hundreds of performances and recordings with the original scores of...
More Description

World renowned conductor and composer, Gunther Schuller, has stirred controversy with The Compleat Conductor, his highly provocative critique of modern conducting. In these pages he castigates many of this century's most venerated conductors for using the podium to indulge their own interpretive idiosyncrasies rather than devote themselves to reproducing the composer's stated intentions. Schuller painstakingly compares hundreds of performances and recordings with the original scores of eight major compositions: Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, Schumann's Second (last movement only), Brahms's First and Fourth, Tchaikovsky's Sixth, Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe, Second Suite. Rare is the conductor who faithfully adheres to a composer's wishes, Schuller finds, as he fearlessly evaluates some of our most celebrated conductors, from Leonard Bernstein to Carlos Kleiber. Erudite and contentious, The Compleat Conductor throws down the gauntlet to conductors worldwide.