Page "Conducting" Paragraph 17

The two men had very different techniques: Toscanini's was Italianate, with a long, large baton and clear beats ( often not using his left hand ); Furtwängler beat time with less apparent precision, because he wanted a more rounded sound ( although it is a myth that his technique was vague ; many musicians have attested that he was easy to follow in his own way ).

In any event, their examples illustrate a larger point about conducting technique in the first half of the 20th century: it was not standardized.

Great and influential conductors of the middle 20th century like Leopold Stokowski ( 1882 – 1977 ), Otto Klemperer ( 1885 – 1973 ), Herbert von Karajan ( 1908 – 1989 ) and Leonard Bernstein ( 1918 – 1990 ) – incidentally, the first American conductor to attain greatness and international fame – had widely varied techniques.