The man for Mozart

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Josef Krips, erstwhile conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, here conducting the pianist Malcolm Frager. I have always liked Frager's playing, since back when I was a teenager.

I am into Krips because I just wrote this story about his years in Buffalo.

It made me kind of emotional to watch him in the video because I had been talking to people about him. His movements are so conservative. He inspires respect just by standing there.

I read in an old copy of The Buffalo Evening News (as The Buffalo News used to be called) that Krips would tell the orchestra before playing Mozart that Mozart would be looking down on them and that they had to play it the way Mozart would want it to sound. For him.

Krips loved to play with Leonard Pennario which is one reason I love him.

Another reason is that Krips loved the Tridentine Mass the way I do.

I will shut up now and just let you watch him conduct.

The master!