At San Francisco's hungry 1, strapping, curly-haired Gregory Millar used to appear with his friend Mort Sahl, belting out pop songs in a voice vaguely reminiscent of Mario Lanza's. At the New York Philharmonic's first Saturday-night concert, Tenor Millar was sitting in a box at Carnegie Hall listening to Conductor-Pianist Leonard Bernstein conclude a fal tering performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1. Minutes later, and without warning, Millar was on the podium conducting the Philharmonic himself.
Minutes & Hours. Millar, 35, is one of three assistant conductors appointed by the Philharmonic this year. Although the orchestra formerly had a single assistant conductor, Bernstein decided a year ago to take on three promising younger men. His reason: young conductors have a hard time getting experience in the U.S. This fall, besides Millar, Bernstein chose Massachusetts-born Rus sell Stanger, 30, and Israeli-born Elyakum Shapira, 33. All three were in the hall at last week's concert when Bernstein walked offstage and announced that he was too ill to return to conduct the next scheduled work—Schumann's Symphony No. 4. (He was suffering the aftermath of a case of bronchitis contracted during the orchestra's six-week, 20,000-mile summer tour)
Millar had been on his job for only five days and had never stood before the orchestra, but Bernstein rose from his dressing-room sofa and handed him his baton—although Stanger, the only one of the assistants to have led the orchestra on tour, suggested drawing lots. "I have complete confidence in you," said Lenny to Millar, who had conducted the Schumann work in San Francisco a year earlier.
Last week's crisis recalled another sub stitution—in 1943, when Lenny himself filled in for the ailing Bruno Walter and scored an immediate hit. On that storied occasion, Lenny had a morning to prepare; Millar had four minutes. Still in his business suit, he whipped the orchestra through a workmanlike performance.
Clubs & Violins. Next day, with Bernstein still sick, Millar conducted the Schumann again, while on the same program Shapira took over Beethoven's "Leonore" Overture and Stanger led Debussy's Afternoon of a Faun and Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. All of them, the audience agreed, sounded first-rate. Said one Bernstein fan:
"Lenny probably didn't mind the David and Goliath angle—that it took three men to take the place of one."
All three Davids have had sound training (Millar at Berkeley, Stanger at the New England Conservatory, Shapira at Juilliard), and in 1951 Conductor Millar even founded his own orchestra, the San Francisco Little Symphony, while appearing in nightclubs on the side. He was first violin with the Vancouver Symphony in 1945 when Bernstein made a guest appearance with the orchestra, advised him to make conducting his career. How did Bernstein know he was any good? Said Lenny as he returned to his orchestra last week: "You can smell a conductor."