Don's Weekly Listen: Larry Rachleff

A couple of days ago, we lost Larry Rachleff, one of the best conductors and best teachers of orchestral performance that this country has ever produced. In a fairer musical world, he likely would have had a major orchestra under his direction, in addition to an elite student one. As it was, he settled for a career shuttling between Houston, where he helped build Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music into an international orchestra education destination, and Providence, where he led the Rhode Island Philharmonic for over 20 years.

For Larry, the single virtue that informed the rest was humility: humility before the musicians in front of him, humility before the audience, and most of all, humility before the score. This is not to say that he was retreating; quite the opposite. He could be a holy terror in rehearsal, particularly if the second violins stumbled over a difficult passage that had been addressed the day before. He occasionally jumped around the podium like a frenzied demon. Interpersonally, he could be mercurial.