Antonio Ballista

“Everybody knows that music is also gesture. It is also easily understandable that an appropriate performance by an orchestra must proceed from well-chosen gestures. But, since in conducting there is seemingly no material connection between the gesture of the conductor and the production of the sound, it can happen that a conductor, being unable to communicate with the most appropriate gesture to obtain a desired sound, has to resort to verbal instructions.

This makes things more difficult for orchestral players, who are compelled to ignore and even to go against the gestures of this conductor in order to obtain the result he wanted to achieve. Inevitably this causes loss of time during rehearsals and a surplus of physical and mental effort for the musicians.

Ilya Musin, probably the greatest teacher of conducting ever, analyzed with definitive results the fundamentals of the connection between the gesture of a conductor and the production of sound from the orchestra. Ennio Nicotra can be considered something more then just his evangelist. Not only has he assimilated Musin's teaching, he has also, thanks to his great teaching ability, rationalized it better than anyone else among Musin's students.

Antonio Ballista