Mellowing Rebel

Hovering over the open-air podium with his arms outstretched, the white-bearded, white-jacketed conductor looked like a snowy egret about to flap off into the fading sunset. Instead, he flew into Beethoven's Sixth Symphony, his baton carving the air, his left hand kneading a softly glowing tone from the strings. In Copland's Quiet City, he moved with the sure, deft strokes of a tailor stitching a hem, weaving the complex patterns into a taut whole. The interpretations, typically, were masterpieces of lucidity and logic, and at concert's end the audience at Stanford University awarded a resounding ovation to Geneva's Ernest Ansermet and his Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.

The performance was part of a ten-concert series by the orchestra at Stanford. Though the Suisse Romande is well known to American audiences from its recordings, this was the orchestra's first visit to the U.S. As debuts go, it was a grueling test. Ansermet (pronounced ahn-ser-may) led his 115-member ensemble through a symphonic obstacle course, accepting the challenge of some of the thorniest works of Stravinsky, Bartok, Prokofiev and Berg. As if that were not enough, Ansermet then jetted to Manhattan to conduct five equally demanding works with the New York Philharmonic last week as part of its month-long Stravinsky festival.

The major piece on the program was Persephone, in which Ansermet, with a strong assist from Actress Yvette Mimieux, as the narrator, and Tenor Leopold Simoneau, displayed his clean and convincing way with Stravinsky.

In Decent Darkness. From Ansermet's spirited and successful attack, it was hard to believe that he is 82. Half a century ago, he braved fistfights and a barrage of vegetables to first promote the works of such tradition-shattering composers as Debussy and Stravinsky. As conductor, first of the Diaghilev Ballet Russe and later of the Suisse Romande, which he founded in 1918, he daringly premiered more new works than most conductors attempt in a life time. Ansermet built the Suisse Romande into one of Europe's most finely honed ensembles, guest-conducted almost all of the world's major symphony orchestras. His mission throughout has been "to bring things of value to light and to leave those of no worth in decent darkness."

In the late 1930s, with the advent of the unmelodic twelve-tone school of Arnold Schoenberg, Ansermet saw darkness. Atonality, he declared, was not music. Drawing on his early background as a mathematics teacher, Ansermet published a complex tome that sought to prove "by mathematical formulas that the strict twelve-tone system is entirely opposed to the laws of hearing."

His close friend Stravinsky was enraged, and the two had a falling out. When the invitation came to take part in the Philharmonic's Stravinsky festival, Ansermet accepted, hopeful of a reconciliation. But Stravinsky was delayed by illness in coming to Manhattan, and the expected meeting never took place. "I hope we can make peace," said Ansermet. "We are too old to fight."

Sad Substitute. Reconciliation or no, Ansermet will continue his assault on atonal music. After he retires from the Suisse Romande at the end of next season, one of his first projects will be to write a second book "in order to make the first book clear." His objections to atonality are not those of an old man clinging to the past, but of a musician expressing a carefully thought-out conviction. The trends in new music, he suggests, are simply a sad substitute for originality.

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