Alex Ross laments the dismal representation of female conductors in the world of concert music:
The problem is not that there is any lack of female conductors—the journalist and blogger Jessica Duchen has drawn up a list of nearly a hundred of them—but that there is “one heck of a glass ceiling regarding where they work,” as Duchen says. …
In 2008, in a column about [female conductor Marin] Alsop, I wrote, “The problem isn’t that misogyny runs rampant in the music world; it’s that the classical business is temperamentally resistant to novelty, whether in the form of female conductors, American conductors, younger conductors, new music, post-1900 concert dress, or concert-hall color schemes that aren’t corporate beige.” I was naïve about the degree to which male-chauvinist attitudes persist. Shortly before Alsop’s Last Night appearance, the young Russian-born conductor Vasily Petrenko, who leads the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the Oslo Philharmonic, declared that orchestras “react better” to male conductors and that “a sweet girl on the podium can make one’s thoughts drift towards something else.”
Ross translates an interview with conductor Yuri Temirkanov, music director of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic:
Q.: In your opinion, could a woman conduct?
A.: In my view, no.
Q.: Why not?!
A.: I don’t know if it’s God’s will, or nature’s, that women give birth and men do not. That’s something that no one takes offense at. But if you say that a women can’t conduct, then everyone’s offended. As Marx said, in response to the question “What’s your favorite virtue in a woman?”—“Weakness.” And this is correct. The important thing is, a woman should be beautiful, likable, attractive. Musicians will look at her and be distracted from the music!
Q.: Why? There are women in the orchestra; people indifferent to a women’s charms. Besides, how many times would you be enraptured by appearances? After all, it’s something you tire of, and switch to the heart of the question. Statistically, of course, there are women conductors.
A.: Yes, they do exist.
Q.: Nevertheless, you maintain that these are less than women, or less than conductors.
A.: No, simply that in my opinion, it’s counter to nature.
Q.: And what is it in the conductor’s profession that runs counter to a woman’s nature? That’s counter to the essence of the conductor’s profession?
A.: The essence of the conductor’s profession is strength. The essence of a woman is weakness.
(Video: A 2007 interview with Marin Alsop, the first female conductor of a major American orchestra)
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