CONDUCTORS
(See Cover)
Seated amidst the gilt and crystal of a venerable concert hall, watching an elegantly tail-coated conductor lead a Brahms symphony, the modern concertgoer may sometimes feel that he is inhabiting a scene preserved in amber. In such a tradition-rounded realm, the conductor and everything under his sway appear to have been unaltered in half a century. His basic repertory is the same. The makeup of his orchestra and its instruments are unchanged. The auditoriums he performs in are virtually the size and shape they always were. Through an epoch of transformations that have touched nearly every human activity, the conductor would seem to be one person who has clung to an accustomed role and function.
Not so. The conductor's profession today bears as little resemblance to what it was 50 years ago as does the life of an astronaut to a World War I pilot's. Even within the present generation, the changes in the music world would dumfound a Toscanini. Orchestras have grown up, spawned offshoots and multiplied; there are 1,400 in the U.S. today, from small-town groups of amateur noodlers to massive metropolitan institutions. Festivals have flowered in tropical profusion. Recordings and TV have created vast new outlets. The jet airplane has catapulted careers into global orbit. Musicians who used to scrape along on 25-week seasons are now working 52 weeks, making far more money, and even demanding more authority in hiring and firing their coworkers.
No Relief. And the conductors? There are not enough good ones to go around. Now that most of them jet off to play musical podiums with the world's far-flung orchestras, they scarcely have time to guide the artistic policy of their own ensembles, plan the programs, select the soloists, learn new works, rehearse and perform—let alone address fund-raising luncheons of the ladies' clubs. The best of today's established conductors are thus tired, aging, or both. The Boston Symphony's Erich Leinsdorf, 55, who has announced that he plans to resign at the end of the 1969 season because of his killing schedule, likens himself to "a 27-inning pitcher" with no relief in the bullpen. Like Boston, New York and Chicago are also in the market for new music directors, and the conductors in Philadelphia and Cleveland—Eugene Ormandy and George Szell—are both over 65.
In short, conducting is increasingly becoming a field for younger, more vibrant men—all the more so because of the overriding example of Leonard Bernstein. His projection and box-office appeal have made him as much the model for conductors in his era as Toscanini was in his, although, as Bernstein nears 50, even he is slackening his frenetic pace somewhat. In this image-conscious culture, every orchestra wants its conductor to have some of Bernstein's incalculable personality force—what Conductor Charles Munch calls the "magic emanation" that can lift a conductor's performances above the mere exercise of knowledge and professional skill.
Two at Once. Among young conductors today, one who has this emanation —plus musicianship—to an extraordinary degree is Bombay-born Zubin Mehta, conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Though he is only 31, Mehta managed the formidable feat of adapting to Western culture, then precociously stormed the most daunting