PODIUM GARB

posted by James Reel

There’s been plenty of talk about how orchestra players should dress on stage, but have you given any thought to what conductors wear in rehearsal? Probably not, because that’s something seen only by musicians, not by audience, except in the occasional (and increasingly rare) documentary, or in photos used as fillers in CD booklets. Most famously, Bruno Walter wore a sort of precursor to the Nehru jacket, familiar from many of his album covers:

Walter’s contemporaries tended to wear white shirts and ties, as did the musicians in rehearsal, but things began to loosen up in the 1960s. Get a load of this out-of-character orange outfit sported by Pierre Boulez in 1971:

And today? Charles Noble, principal violist of the Oregan Symphony, offers a few observations in this post.