Discipline

Assuming the weighty mantle of the late Fritz Reiner presented problems enough. But when Conductor Jean Martinon, 54, took over the reins of the Chicago Symphony last year, he walked straight into a crossfire of warring factions and a bitter union-management dispute that delayed the opening of the season. Chicago has run its share of conductors out of town (Desire Defauw, Artur Rodzinski, Rafael Kubelik), but Martinon prevailed, and by season's end there was no doubt who was in charge.

What is more, despite the strains of transition, Martinon and his musicians are making beautiful music together. Under Reiner's exacting baton, the Chicago Symphony had become one of the best disciplined orchestras in the world. Last week in the opening concert of their 74th season, they proved they were still that under Martinon--and something else. Hunching forward with busy, close-chested strokes like a crone over her knitting, or bending grandly backward to summon a sweeping crescendo, Martinon embroidered his music with an airy Gallic elegance and tonal sheen--a style distinctly unlike the Teutonic floods of deep sound that distinguished the orchestra under Reiner.

Carved Potato. A spare, intense man who wears his white hair in a brush cut, Martinon has a dashing air. He is entitled to it. Son of the town architect of Lyon, France, he completed his first symphony at 22 and was embarked on a highly promising career when World War II intervened. Martinon fought in the front lines as an infantryman, was captured by the Germans, escaped twice, finally ended up in a prison camp. Then in 1940, using a carved potato to rubber-stamp forged papers, he made his way back to Occupied France and joined the underground.

His Song of the Captive was an immediate success in postwar Paris, and he reeled off a batch of film scores. One day Paris' Pasdeloup Orchestra, in dire need of a fill-in for their ailing maestro, asked Martinon to guest-conduct a performance of his own complex First Symphony.

Martinon's podium debut at age 33 led to further invitations, and incredibly, just a dozen performances later, he found himself in England conducting the prestigious London Philharmonic through a ten-concert series. "I knew nothing about conducting," he admits. "I had to learn backward the rules." But he learned fast, and his native gift landed him posts with Paris' Lamoureux Orchestra and the Israel Philharmonic, and in 1960 he became musical director of the city of Duesseldorf.

One Regret. During his first year in Chicago, Martinon greatly broadened the orchestra's predominantly German classic repertory from both ends--more Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and a wide sampling of modern composers. Next season, on commission from the Chicago Symphony, he will premiere his Fourth Symphony.

To maintain "a balance of body and spirit," Martinon practices yoga, spends his summers mountain-climbing, skin-diving and composing. He has one regret about his dual role. "Before I became a conductor," he sighs, "all the other conductors played my music. But as soon as I started to conduct, they stopped playing it. They just don't like to give publicity to other conductors. C'est la vie."

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