Here is something nice: Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in a concert a couple of weeks ago. The program includes both the Schubert Unfinished and Bruckner Symphony No. 8. That's nearly two hours of music conducted from memory (yes, he has the scores on the stand before him, but he never opens them) and while standing. Oh, and he is ninety-four years old.
I said old guys: the other one is Clint Eastwood who just released a new film, a western, in which he both stars and directs and rides a horse a lot. And he is ninety-one. There was a story in the press a few months ago. The Universal Studios lot in Hollywood was threatened by a wildfire and they were trying to evacuate everyone. It was a Saturday morning and Clint Eastwood was there working on editing a film, this one I guess. He refused to leave. That's his idea of retirement.
Personally, I like what the old guys are doing.
4 comments:
Clint Eastwood’s new film is getting mixed reviews in large part because he isn’t convincing in the main role; he’s too old to play it from how the script describes the character. John Wayne had this problem too, The Green Berets made a man who had been a film legend into a laughingstock.
Part of growing old gracefully is recognizing one's limitations and accepting roles where one can shine within those limitations. I can admire, say, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva in Haneke’s Amour more than I can admire Eastwood in his last several films.
"A man's gotta accept his limitations..." I believe Clint Eastwood said that a while back.
It seems the reviewers are more positive about HB's concerts than CE's movie. A review of the Salzburg concert is here:
https://seenandheard-international.com/2021/09/salzburg-festival-lovefest-for-herbert-blomstedt/
In the August 30 New Yorker Alex Ross wrote:
“No nonagenarian has sustained a schedule anything like Herbert Blomstedt’s. Earlier this month, he spent nearly two weeks at Tanglewood, working with the Boston Symphony and with students from the Tanglewood Music Center. At the end of the summer, he will take the Vienna Philharmonic on an eight-city European tour. In the fall, he goes to Dresden, Berlin, Tokyo, Leipzig, Munich, Bamberg, Oslo, and Paris. More American dates are slated for next year, including a return to the San Francisco Symphony…. The esteem in which orchestras and audiences now hold Blomstedt is a belated reward for a resolutely unshowy musician who has gone about his business decade after decade…. No gesture feels out of place, no gesture feels routine. So it was with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which the Boston Symphony played under Blomstedt’s direction at Tanglewood … a performance that surged with vitality without boxing the ears.… Throughout the symphony, Blomstedt found an equilibrium between headlong force and melancholy lyricism…. The strategy of restraint achieved a glorious payoff in the last pages of the finale, when the orchestra let loose with a frothing energy that bordered on animal joy.”
Just reading about HB's schedule is enough to tire me out. Perhaps the Elixir of Youth is to be found in the Classical Canon?!
I very much regret not attending the Blomstedt concert in Salzburg. He seems the perfect antidote to the endless promotion of the Next Young Thing!
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