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> Berlin Radio Symphony's Lorin Maazel, 37, an American, survived a widely publicized career as a child prodigy. Taut and serious, gifted with a computer memory for scores, he can stamp his identity on musicians and audiences alike, though the identity is sometimes too cool and cerebral. At best, his precise, literal readings, etched sharply with the point of his metronomic baton, have clarity, balance and compelling strength.
> Toronto Symphony's Seiji Ozawa, 32, a Japanese and the only Oriental besides Mehta to flourish on Western podiums, is no less a dynamic charmer than Mehta. A favorite of young people, he sports a Beatle hairdo and a free-swinging style in the manner of Leonard Bernstein. Sometimes he indulges his expressive stick technique to paint panels of sheer sound, but he can also propel vibrant, vivacious performances as notable for their substance as for their sheen.
> BBC Symphony's Colin Davis, 40, ranks as Britain's best conductor since Sir Thomas Beecham. He has a relatively wide repertory, ranging from Mozart through Berlioz to Stravinsky, and an uncanny talent for instilling the faded and familiar with fresh life. His straightforward technique combines grace with precision and gravity with rhythmic bite, and his touch in the opera pit is firm and stylish.
> La Scala's Claudio Abbado, 34, is a stern, urgent pursuer of the long musical line, a Toscanini-like stickler for both fine-mesh detail and overall coherence. Imperious and intensely concentrated, he spurs an orchestra on with a clean, incisive beat, often achieving a surging pulse and crackling inner tension. He excels with the original texts of operas, giving them what one critic calls an "electric-shock treatment."
> Cologne Opera's Istvan Kertesz, 38, an unspectacular Hungarian, restricts himself to beating a steady rhythm with his right hand while flicking unobtrusive signals with his left—yet he radiates authority. His solid reputation as a traditionalist does not diminish the currents of conviction and warmth that he stirs into a composition. Armed with a wide repertory, he is equally effective in music as dissimilar as Mozart and Bartok.
> French Composer Pierre Boulez, 42, has the punctilious Gallic virtues: rhythmic deftness, a feeling for nuance, pointillistic detail. In compositions from Debussy through Anton Webern to Boulez, few conductors can equal his idiomatic mastery of bristling complexity and tangy dissonance. He probably never will build a repertory of the standard war horses; as a freelance conductor, he remains a self-confessed dilettante who works "entirely for pleasure."
Peaks & Plains. These musical individualists hardly add up to a new stylistic school of conducting, for their approach is much too eclectic. Nevertheless, they will be among the most influential figures of the next few decades and undoubtedly will write a new chapter in the history of the art. Before the great age of conductors, Composer Robert Schumann spoke of the orchestra as a republic, not subject to higher authority. But the giants of the last generation, following such 19th century models as Richard Wagner, Hans von Bülow, Artur Nikisch and Gustav Mahler, acted on the