Books and Arts;Book Review;Classical music;Conjurors;

文艺；书评；古典音乐；音乐的魔术；

Music as Alchemy: Journeys with Great Conductors and Their Orchestras.

音乐就像点石成金——一段与伟大的指挥家和乐团的奇妙旅程。

IN “FANTASIA”, Walt Disney's 1940 film of musically inspired animations, each piece begins and ends in the same way, with the silhouetted figure of Leopold Stokowski, a British conductor who died in 1977. He stands alone against a dark red background while the mysterious movements of his hands conjure the music in and out of being. “Fantasia” was hugely popular, and made a notable contribution to cultivating a wider appreciation of classical music. But it also unwittingly peddled the still pervasive myth that conductors are, in effect, magicians—sorcerers who single-handedly extract waves of finely variegated sound out of thin air.

1940年沃特·迪士尼拍摄了音乐动画“幻想曲”，每一段的开始和结束都是利奥波德·斯托科夫斯基的剪影。而这位英国指挥家于1977年去世。他独站在深红色背景前，手上的动作充满了神秘色彩，音乐便随着动作此起彼伏。“幻想曲”获得了巨大的成功，并且它对古典音乐新诠释所做出的贡献也非同一般。但它也无意中增加了指挥家的神秘色彩，时至今日人们仍然觉得不可思议，好像他们就是魔术师——独自一人就凭空变出变幻莫测的美妙声音。

Tom Service, a British radio presenter and writer on classical music, has taken the mysterious business of what conductors actually do as the subject of his first book, “Music as Alchemy”. Conductors, including the ones studied in this book, have been scrutinised before, often in considerable detail. What sets Mr Service's book apart, in addition to its breezy tone and infectious, easily worn enthusiasm, is his focus on the relationship between the conductor and his or her orchestral musicians. Many hours have been spent not just in concerts given by the six conductor-orchestra pairs taken as his subject, but in observing them in the rehearsals beforehand and quizzing members of the orchestra about their side of the experience.

汤姆·瑟维斯是英国一位与古典音乐相关的电台主持人和作家，他的第一本书《点石成金的音乐》主题就是揭开指挥家的神秘面纱。包括书中提到的每一位指挥家，都曾被详细介绍过，而且可谓到了事无巨细的地步。但瑟维斯先生的书的特别之处不仅在于他活泼的文笔和极具感染力的热情，还在于书中对指挥家与他们乐队关系的解读。作者花了大量时间，不仅探索了作为书中主人公的六位指挥家和他们乐队的音乐会，还深入了解了他们前期的排练，“拷问”乐队成员，从他们的角度寻找答案。

This is not a method that would pass muster in scientific inquiry—few orchestral players would be rude in print about their chief conductor—but it yields some insightful results. The reader learns, for example, that most players in the Budapest Festival Orchestra do not really mind when Ivan Fischer lays down the law, but that the players of the robustly democratic Concertgebouw Orchestra most certainly do. Mr Service finds that the London Symphony Orchestra see the benefit of Valery Gergiev's high-octane, “everything will be all right on the night” attitude, but that the Berlin Philharmonic rely on a slightly more thorough approach from Sir Simon Rattle.

这种方法并不是科学调查方法——几乎没有乐队成员会在书中对他们的指挥发牢骚——但同样也能获得一些极富洞察力的结果。譬如，读者通过本书会了解到，有些布达佩斯节日乐团的成员就不介意他们的指挥伊万·费舍尔发号施令。但相反，皇家乐团的成员就强烈要求民主，不会接受个人号令。瑟维斯先生发现伦敦交响乐团得益于瓦列里·格吉耶夫的高强度风格，坚信“晚上开场前一切都能就绪”，但柏林爱乐乐团就更加青睐西蒙·拉特尔那种略微周密的做事方法。

The interviews with the conductors themselves, awkwardly woven into the narrative as full transcripts, are not particularly rewarding. The book's strength is in its mix of stories and perspectives, which ably convey the murky process by which orchestras and conductors build a bond of mutual trust.

指挥家的专访只是编成文字记录一般的叙述，了无趣味，所以没什么特别的价值。本书的长处在于书中不乏故事和观点，巧妙地叙述了乐队成员和指挥如何建立起相互信任的神秘过程。

The most illuminating chapter is perhaps the final one, about the relationship between Claudio Abbado and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. Famously reticent, Mr Abbado gives little away himself, but his players say it all for him—a fine confirmation of his gifts as a conductor. He is special, the musicians explain, not merely because of his clarity of vision, authoritative analysis or the mysterious energy of his gestures, but rather because of the way he listens. He appears to live the music, inviting them to live it with him.

书中最出彩的一章大概就属最后一章了，描写了克劳迪奥·阿巴多与琉森节庆管弦乐团。阿巴多先生沉默少语是出了名的，所以他自己并没有多说什么，但他的乐团成员完全代劳——成为他指挥天赋的最佳证明。成员都说他不一般，不仅是因为他有敏锐的洞察力、权威的阐释和充满神秘力量的手势，而是因为他聆听音乐的独到之法。他能唤醒音乐，并邀请音乐伴他左右。

Players need to believe conductors understand what they are doing, and that their individual efforts make a difference. Conductors, in turn, need to trust their orchestras to do everything possible to make the music happen in the moment. The currency of this trust is listening, and one of the most interesting pictures to emerge from the book is that of the conductor as a kind of chief listener. Hand gestures, whether the baton-traced polygons of the textbooks or the mysterious finger-flickerings of Mr Gergiev and Mr Abbado, are construed less as specific directions than as signs of a kind of ultra-responsive listening, a listening which feeds back into how the players hear each other.

演奏者要相信他们的指挥知晓他们的一举一动，也明白他们每个人的努力都举足轻重。同样，指挥家也要相信他的演奏者一定会让演奏毫无差错。信任源自倾听，而指挥更像是首席听众，这是书中传达出的最有趣的一点。不论是课本里用指挥棒划出的多边形，还是格吉耶夫先生和阿巴多先生指尖迸出的不可思议的弧度，指挥家的手势都不仅仅是特殊的提示，而是一种无需回应的聆听，只需演奏者相互聆听就够了。

As the book's title suggests, it may indeed be most appropriate to think of this listening process as a kind of magic. But if so, it is a magic that comes through dedication, not sorcery.

就像书名一样，我们的确应该把这种聆听过程视为魔术。就真是魔术，也是表演者们尽心奉献变成的魔法，不会有什么法术。