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As most of the music world knows, Peter Oundjian had been first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet for 15 years when a strained left hand forced him to resign in 1995 (see Practical Musician, page 28, and "Bow to Baton," January/February 1997). But conducting had always been his second love, and Oundjian transformed adversity into opportunity by taking it up full-time. He made his official debut that summer with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at the 50th anniversary of the Caramoor Festival and became the festival’s artistic director in 1997. His stature as a conductor has been growing steadily, and he has clearly succeeded in bringing to his second career what he learned in the first. This past summer, he really made the Caramoor Festival his own, putting on inventive programs and inviting performers of his choice. "Of course, my musical experience has made a huge difference to my conducting," he says. "For example, as a performer you learn how to handle harmonic movement and pacing to achieve rhythmic vitality, and teaching helps you explain to a group of musicians in very few words how to unify its playing. Take tone production. For a scintillating fortissimo that’s vibrant but not strident, you let the strings play pianissimo with tremendous vibrancy, then ask for a crescendo, and if the vibrato is maintained, you get a wonderful sound; the power seems to shake the entire space. Or take expression. You can create pathos, anger, uncertainty, or longing with the sound, at the same dynamic level. This is how we tell stories with music, and quartet players do it all the time. Orchestra players can also do it, if they have a unified concept, so as conductor, you are a unifier. But you must also be a motivator. You must have a very strong idea of what you want to hear, and motivate the players to receive it from your hands, or your face, or whatever you’re using to express yourself. "Just as in chamber music, you’re constantly listening and responding to what you hear. You move your hands, and something comes back. If it’s what you expect, you’re on the flow; if it isn’t, you immediately try to change it or adjust to it. Suppose we’re approaching a climax with a crescendo; because of what I’m hearing, I know when the climactic downbeat will come. If the crescendo had started later, I would have had to wait longer; if it had come earlier, the climax would have arrived sooner. It’s a process of complete give and take, even though you’re leading all the time. "With every group I conduct, I try to share an idea, to create a specific feeling and character with the very first upbeat, and from that moment on, I play chamber music with the musicians. I want to feel I’m almost sitting next to and conversing with every single person on the stage. And I think a lot of them know that. When it goes well, it’s very exciting; the spontaneity is incredible." Oundjian loves conducting chamber orchestras and is doing a good deal of it. "There’s something wonderful about matching every stroke perfectly, just as in chamber music," he says. "I work with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Tapiola Sinfonietta in Finland, and I spend eight weeks a year with the New Sinfonietta in Amsterdam. St. Luke’s is a sort of combination—big enough to do symphonies and piano concertos by Brahms and Beethoven. "And it’s that magnificent repertoire, as well as the extraordinary range of colors and sounds, that makes conducting symphony orchestras so satisfying. When you’re searching for new ways to express yourself after a long quartet-playing career, you obviously look for the kind of depth you found in the great quartets." Last year, Oundjian conducted the orchestras of Toronto, Houston, Minnesota, and St. Louis; next season he’ll return to the last two and also conduct in Cincinnati, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, Ottawa, and several European cities. "I must have conducted 200 works by now," he says, "from classical to contemporary, including several premieres." Watching him in rehearsal and performance at Caramoor in 1999 left no doubt that in a few years he has indeed become a conductor who can motivate and unify his players, as well as enter into a reciprocal partnership with them. Over the summer he put his own stamp on the festival with several "marathon" programs; he conducted one of them as well as the opening gala. An all-Brahms marathon included a grandly conceived, warmly romantic Second Symphony, a very dramatic first Piano Concerto with Anton Kuerti, and the Double Concerto with two highly impressive young soloists: violinist Joseph Lin and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, participants in a program aptly called "Rising Stars," which was started in 1992 by André Previn, Oundjian’s predecessor at Caramoor. "He invited about a dozen young string players, students from top music schools, for a week and played chamber music with them," Oundjian explains. "It became a huge success, so this summer, we decided to bring back 24 participants from previous years for chamber-music performances and a string-orchestra concert at the end. They’re all fantastic soloists and chamber-music players, some with important positions in major orchestras. The place was just swarming with outrageous talent and wonderful music. Conducting this group was like putting your foot on the accelerator of a Ferrari; the immediacy of the experience was just incredible." What is it like to walk out on stage with a baton instead of a violin? "The only difference is that you can’t play out of tune," he says with a grin, adding more seriously, "My responsibility, or perhaps my privilege, is the same: to galvanize the available energies, to inspire people to play, to interact, to make music come alive." —Edith Eisler
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