Conductor, I I

The orchestra looked at him--plump, mop-haired, about the size of a cello and eleven years old. And this was to be the conductor of the NBC Summer Symphony--the same orchestra which veteran Arturo Toscanini had whipped into one of the world's finest. It was like a crazy dream.

Before their first rehearsal under Lorin Maazel, the NBC players gagged about bringing lollipops along, about a forthcoming concert under a trained seal or under Dominick the porter in an all-Verdi program. With precocious composure, Conductor Maazel called his tough situation to order. In a variable treble, prefacing most requests with "Could I ask" or "Might I have," he told the men the way he wanted diminuendos and crescendos. He chided a clarinetist for an altered beat. Gently he pronounced the NBC strings first "messy," then "much better."

All this he did without consulting a score except to refer to numbered sections; Lorin Maazel knows 22 symphonic works by heart. When the first rehearsal was over, he said: "I hope I got the men with me. I tried to." Conductor Maazel had acted the terrible child just a trifle, but so do many full-sized conductors, and the NBC Symphony was with him.

Many a critical listener to the first of his two Saturday night broadcasts was amazed and confounded by Lorin Maazel. Prodigious children are musical commonplaces, but leading a man-size orchestra is something else. The almost legendary child Mozart and twelve-year-old Fritz Reiner (now the Pittsburgh Symphony's grownup leader) are among the few who accomplished it. Conductor Maazel proved him self much better than good-for-a-kid. With real musicianship and understanding he put the NBC men through Wagner's rip-roaring Rienzi overture, Mendelssohn's twirling Italian Symphony, and a piece written by a girl-friend of his when she was 9, Dika Newlin's Cradle Song.

Lorin Maazel was born in Paris' suburban Neuilly to U.S. parents. His father, a singing teacher, later moved Lorin to an appropriate place for a wonder child, Los Angeles. Lorin studied piano and violin, took an interest in the orchestra when Papa Maazel gave him a Haydn score four years ago. So his parents took him to Vladimir Bakaleinikoff, assistant conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony, who is still his teacher.

In the past three years Conductor Maazel has waved a stick over seven orchestras, of which the best before the NBC Symphony was the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His beat is precise and his gestures graceful. He has one gift from the gods: absolute pitch, i.e., he can place a note without help from an instrument. Glib, articulate beyond his years, Lorin Maazel says: "I still have a lot of hard work ahead of me. I am constantly studying. I have yet to prove my mettle."

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