Colorado Voices
Colorado Symphony Maestro Peter Oundjian saves his most exuberant expression for the orchestra
Clip | 4m 47sVideo has Closed Captions
Oundjian ends the orchestra’s 100th season and talks about being a conductor.
Oundjian and the Colorado Symphony perform Beethoven's "Symphony No.1" as one of the last pieces of the 2023/2024 season. He talks about the Colorado audience and what it means to be a conductor.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS
Colorado Voices
Colorado Symphony Maestro Peter Oundjian saves his most exuberant expression for the orchestra
Clip | 4m 47sVideo has Closed Captions
Oundjian and the Colorado Symphony perform Beethoven's "Symphony No.1" as one of the last pieces of the 2023/2024 season. He talks about the Colorado audience and what it means to be a conductor.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipThis is very pure sound.
It can be big sound, but its acoustical.
And there's something wonderful about just experiencing the sound that comes out of these incredible instruments, each of which has been created over many decades or even hundreds of years to create this sound.
Well, my own preparation is obviously very long, but you have to work extremely hard as a conductor.
I mean, some people wonder what does a conductor do?
But you really should know the score inside and out at every moment so that you can guide everybody.
You shouldn't really be looking at the score, receiving news.
You know, as you look at it.
You have to really absorb it.
But the work that we do together on the stage is in the end, it's all about bringing the character of the music in each particular moment to life in the most convincing way we can possibly do it.
Good.
Yes.
Good.
Yeah.
Trumpets a tiny bit less.
If you could.
It was beautiful quality, but even less.
Just play once the only the eighth notes here, please.
No timpani?
No.
First.
You know, this is a great orchestra.
There are.
There are many wonderful orchestras all over the world.
They can play the notes and they can play the dynamics really well.
What makes the difference for a listener is what is the dramatic sweep?
Like what?
What is the narrative?
What are we saying to them, as it were, when we're playing?
And that's what we really work on.
I don't really figure out in the same way that some conductors know exactly what they're going to say about every passage.
I tend to be much more reactive to what they're doing because a lot of the time they play exactly what I had in my mind.
I mean, hopefully I'm showing a spirit and a character of the music and certainly the tempo, and they follow extraordinarily well.
I'm prepared for hopefully everything, but I only work on the things that I feel can be even more beautiful or even more exciting, or even more magical.
And I tend to be looking for the most character that we can possibly put in any particular movement that might be incredible elegance in a kind of dance movement in Beethoven or high drama in the climaxes of the Vaughan Williams Symphony, or evoking an incredible sort of sadness or loneliness in some parts of this voice.
It could be all kinds of things, honestly, and we must play with a great deal of variety.
Some people think of classical music as a kind of limited right.
No limits.
No limits, in my view.
There's so much to express and there's so much to enjoy in the kind of music that we prepare and then we perform.
Yeah, it's wonderful if we could try.
I don't want to hurt anybody, but just slightly lower wrist.
If the wrist is lower, we're a little flatter bow and you know, we're going to hear that.
So it's so brilliant.
Yeah, right on it.
Okay.
It's the conductor's job to kind of inspire and give energy so that we can all play with one interpretation.
And we have an incredible audience in Denver.
I mean, phenomenal.
It's so exciting.
I sometimes say jokingly because I grew up in England, It's, you know, you get to the end of an exciting piece.
It's like a rugby match, you know, It's like it just the audience erupts and the people of all generations, a lot of young people, some people are dressed with tiaras and evening gowns and beautiful dinner jackets.
Other people have holes in their jeans.
Everybody is welcome and everybody's happy.
And in some cases, they may have paid quite a lot for a ticket.
And we better be giving 110% to give them an experience that truly is out of the ordinary.
And they go home and say, you know, that that moved me in a way that that I think has enormous value.
There is no greater example of human collaboration that I can think of.
It's an amazing thing that 60, 100, 200 people can express with one voice in one moment.
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Colorado Voices is a local public television program presented by RMPBS