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In effect, he is a subconductor, able, and often compelled, to rescue the maestro when he misses an entrance or loses his place. Ravel was such a notoriously bad conductor that soloists who were condemned to play under his baton sometimes made a secret pact to take all their cues from the concertmaster. Says Leinsdorf: "If you have a good concertmaster, you don't have to move your left arm so much."
Switch, Switch. A concertmaster's influence is so strong, in fact, that by his example he can alter the entire sound of an orchestra. The suavity and elegance of Nadien's playing, for example, have already given his string section a correspondingly new tone. Beyond that, the concertmaster helps decide promotions, auditions, prospective new players, and acts as a father confessor as well as a liaison between the men and the maestro. Barbirolli says that the Italian appellation for concertmaster, violino di spalla, is more apropos: "His is the shoulder that the conductor leans on."
Or anybody else who happens to be onstage. During a Cleveland Orchestra concert six months ago, the E string on Soloist Isaac Stern's violin suddenly snapped in the final movement of a Brahms concerto. Concertmaster Druian quickly gave Stern his Stradivarius, passed the disabled instrument to Assistant Concertmaster Daniel Majeske and continued playing on Majeske's violin. Majeske replaced the string and—switch, switch—Stern finished with a flourish on his fiddle, having missed only one measure of music. Says Druian, with the understatement typical of the supercool concertmaster: "It's all part of the job."