112 The Art of Conducting (1/2)

Chapter 112: The Art of Conducting

Translator: Kris_LiuEditor: Vermillion

What was out of expectation was that the music did not start as soon as Lucien waved his baton. Standing in the front of the stage, he raised both of his arms up high. His whole body was shaking slightly, as if there was a great momentum of power coming out of his body.

Before the audience realized what happened, Lucien quickly swung his arms backwards and lifted the baton again. Here came Serenade for strings in G major.

Short and direct, the music notes impacted every listener’s mind. The confusion and nervousness of the audience suddenly disappeared, and they were now immersed in the joy brought by the serenade.

Lucien was smiling. His whole body was rocking in a pleasant way together with the music. The happiness that was being delivered to the audience was so infectious that many of them started to nod and shake their bodies, synchronizing with the development of the music.

Christopher and Natasha never watched Lucien’s rehearsal before. Now, they were both very surprised by Lucien’s new way of conducting, which was totally different from the traditional style.

Usually the simple function of conducting in the past, due to the conservative style of music, was only to direct a musical performance to ensure correct entries by various members of the ensemble, thus, neither the emotion of the composer of a music piece nor that of the conductor was conveyed. For example, although both Victor’s and Christopher’s range of movement when they were conducting was wide, they never really tried to show their own feelings to relate to the orchestra members, or to provoke the audience’s emotion.

Following the development of theme music, Lucien also changed his way of conducting to fit in the trend of moving from classicism to romanticism. Lucien spent a lot of time on learning from the great conductors in his original world, such as Arturo Toscanini and Herbert von Karajan, in order to form his own style of conducting.

Under Lucien’s direction, the orchestra perfectly captured the joyful, lively spirit of the first movement of the serenade.

Then, Lucien’s waving of the baton became more gentle when the serenade entered the second movement. The melody was like a piece of veil-like, rosy dream, floating in the air and then slowly falling on everyone’s mind.

The dream was about love and romance, about beautiful girls and handsome boys, about the endless wild flower field and the cool breeze in summer, about one’s youth, the most sweet years in one’s life.

Transiting smoothly, the rondo form of the third movement made many of the listeners feel like dancing. They even wished it was an evening party, instead of a formal concert.

In its ending part, the music returned to the lively, youthful and pleasant style again. When Lucien finished his conducting and turned around, the audience pause a bit and broke into a sudden, warm applause during the short break, as they just realized that the serenade was over.

”A serenade in the Psalm Hall!” Piola exclaimed to his friends, greatly surprised.

In the past, serenade, as an informal music genre, was usually not qualified to be played on an elegant and decent music stage. Very rarely was serenade put on this kind of occasion in the past, and people never really liked it. Today, Lucien broke the stereotype and made a piece of serenade as impressive as a symphony.

”Graceful and gorgeous, exquisite and balanced,” Sharon commented. Even the aftertaste of the serenade was fascinating.

In the box, Christopher smiled and said to the grand duke and the Saint Cardinal, ”Again, a surprise from Lucien.”

The grand duke nodded, ”His conducting’s definitely a bonus for the serenade.”

Before the concert started, although Natasha looked very confident, she was still a bit worried about Lucien. Now, she was totally relaxed, leaning against the back of the seat and listening to her father and the Saint Cardinal talking about Lucien’s new style of conducting. She was curious about what would be the next surprise from Lucien, and so were all of the other listeners.

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After the short break, when Lucien came back to the stage and passed by the concert members, Rhine smiled and said to him in a low voice, ”It seems that your conducting received a pretty good feedback, and I believe Symphony of Fate will just shock them.”

Lucien smiled and nodded to Rhine, looking rather confident. Then, he stood in front of the orchestra and closed his eyes.

The entire Psalm Hall and the whole square quieted down.