Inside Conducting, painting by Greg Evans
One of the first important texts about orchestra conducting is this one, written by Wagner in 1869, with the title of "Über dirigieren". I prepared a Web page with its English translation.
I have also found an spanish translation of this book, who did someone called Julio Gómez, and was published in Madrid in 1925.
Here is a very interesting text by my friend and orchestra conductor Jacques Bodmer, who as he was participating in an Internet forum on orchestra conducting - from the idioms on the text I deduct it was mainly a latinamerican forum - he summarized in a short text for laymen, the essential part of the orchestra conducting. This led to quote some texts by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Click to read the texts by Jacques and Furtwängler.
An article-interview with Sergiu Celibidache which I collected some time ago, I don't remember from which magazine, which describes his musical thinking and his vision of the conducting job.
Here there are some notes by Arnold Schoenberg on the
metronomical indications by Beethoven.
Here is the Chapter of this book by Felix Weingartner, "On the performance of Beethoven's Symphonies", which deals with the musical analysis of the First Symphony by Beethoven. This book was written in 1905 and this is noticeable in the arguments he uses, but everything he says makes sense, even if we don't agree in everything.
This is a humorous text that I found on the magazine "The double reed", and therefore it could be the ironic viewpoint of a musician in the orchestra. Anyway, here is What it takes to conduct an orchestra.
Listen to the audio recordings of the works I conducted in some of my final course examinations in the ESMUC:
I conducted the First movement of the First Symphony by Beethoven in June 2005 ( mp3 file of 3,48 MB), and
I conducted the Second movement of the Fifth Symphony by Beethoven in June 2006 (mp3 file of 4,9 MB)
The orquestra was the "Orquestra Pilot de l'ESMUC".
Orchestra Conducting Course in Vienna, from July 23rd to August 4th 2007, lead by Salvador Mas.
The Music School in Igualada (Escola Municipal de Música d'Igualada) organizes every two years an International Orchestra Conducting Course, lead by Antoni Ros-Marbà and with the "Orquesta Sinfónica del Vallés", the last venue of which was in July 2007. A few months before summer of 2009 you can check for information at the Web of the School.
Associación Ilya Musin, Orchestra Conducting Technique Course, Maestro Ennio Nicotra.
