Maestro, BBC-2’s latest venture into reality-TV programming, has yet to be imported to the United States, no doubt because it’s a trifle arty for the average American TV viewer. In the series, which ran throughout August and September, eight semi-celebrities took crash courses in orchestral conducting, then competed for a chance to conduct the BBC Concert Orchestra as part of a televised concert. (The comedian won.) Not altogether surprisingly, Maestro attracted quite a bit of attention in the British press, not all of it favorable. Norman Lebrecht, for instance, called it “a new nadir in arts broadcasting” and “a calculated insult to art.”
It happens that I know a thing or two about conducting–I did a fair amount of it in my college days–and so I decided that Maestro would make a suitable topic for my “Sightings” column in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal. Is it really true, as the producers of Maestro seem to suggest, that you don’t have to be a trained musician in order to successfully lead a symphony orchestra? Or might there possibly be more to the art of conducting than waving a wooden stick? To find out, pick up a copy of Saturday’s Journal and see what I have to say.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.
Watch Sue Perkins, the winner of the Maestro competition, conduct the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony here:
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
