Prodigy in Paris

Until 18 months ago, bright-eyed Pierino Gamba seemed like an ordinary Roman boy of eight who had taken a few piano lessons. He hated to wash and he liked to play with his electric train. Then his father, a baker, decided that Pierino should become a conductor.

After his eighth piano lesson, Pierino had dumfounded his teacher by learning the minuet from Mozart's Don Giovanni in twelve minutes. An unsuspected possessor of absolute pitch, he could name any note he heard struck on the piano. In one morning, Pierino learned the first movement of Beethoven's First Symphony and shortly after conducted the entire symphony at the Rome Opera. After that came concerts in Milan, Zurich, Basel.

At first the skeptics said, as Samuel Johnson said of a dog walking on his hind legs: "It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." In Zurich, an oboist tested Pierino by deliberately playing a false note during rehearsal. The bambino stopped the orchestra, sternly told the oboist to get back on the track.

Last week, Pierino walked briskly on to the stage of Paris' Palais de Chaillot, dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroyish black velvet jacket, white lace collar, and short pants. The podium had been built up so nine-year-old Pierino could see all of the 70 musicians of the Association des Concerts Lamoureux. He conducted Schubert's Unfinished without a score, and handled it decisively. He was less certain in Beethoven's Fifth--the brasses got away from him in the finale. But he did well enough to touch off 20 minutes of cheers. Pierino took seven neat brisk bows. Then he forgot his dignity and gamboled happily up & down the stage. Backstage a reporter asked him: "What do you feel when conducting Beethoven's Fifth Symphony"?" Pierino's prompt answer was at once profound and naive: "Mi sento bene" (I feel fine).

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