Eddie Silva’s video blog for St. Louis Symphony.
Before the Brahms 2 rehearsal you see here in the video blog, David Robertson was take the orchestra through On the Beautiful Blue Danube. There was an allusion to Jane Austen that Robertson made to describe how the music should sound–all very precise surface structure with lots of family tension below. And then he did something I’ve never seen him do before–he put the baton in his mouth so he could gesture with both hands to the violins. “Expand, expand,” the gesture seemed to say. Or conducted with the baton in his mouth just to show that he could do it.
Then came Brahms 2. Roger Kaza talks about the horn solo in the video blog. And you see Robertson, baton in hand.