Meredith Music has announced the publication of The Conductor’s Challenge: Finding Expressive Meaning in the Score by Frank Battisti. ISBN 978-1-57463-133-3, $24.95.
This extension and expansion of Guide to Score Study, co-authored with Robert Garofalo, examines the various stages conductors traverse in arriving at an interpretation. Battisti emphasizes the importance of the conductor’s imagination, personality and on-going study—weeks/months/years—in developing an interpretation that is personal, well informed and faithful to the composer’s expressive intent. He examines the score analysis process including the role and function of a work’s musical elements; the need to balance intellectual understanding and intuitive feelings about a piece and the challenges faced by conductors when transforming an interpretation into a performance. As examples, he traces the procedures he used in forming interpretations of “Lisbon” and “Horkstow Grange” from Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy, Copland’s Down a Country Lane and “Sinfonia” from Stravinsky’s Octet for Wind Instruments.
Meredith Music Publications is exclusively distributed by the Hal Leonard Corporation.
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