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By David Amos
 SAN DIEGO—There have been many books written about orchestral conductors, as a group or as individuals. But a book that was released in the middle 1990’s The Maestro Myth, by Norman Lebrecht, (Published by Birch Lane Press), has raised more than its share of eyebrows.
This book analyzes in plain language the social political, economic, and psychological dynamics of conducting.
It is more than just another book that gives us biographical sketches of the great conductors, chronicling their beginnings and later triumphs. Instead, it attempts to burst the bubble of the so-called “super-star conductor," showing how the majority of them are far from the pure musicians that their public relations machines try to portray, but they are egocentric, power hungry manipulators. Many are more charlatan than artists.
Granted, there are conductors who are supreme musicians, who have given us unforgettable moments of musical magic, both in live concert and recordings. I have my own list of all-time favorites.
Nevertheless, Lebrecht loads us with documentation and actual quotes from conductors. He reminds us that “the conductor plays no instrument, produces no noise, and yet conveys an image of music making that is credible enough to let him take the rewards of applause away from those who actually created the sound."
Here are a few eye-popping quotes:
Hans Keller: “The conductor’s existence is essentially superfluous, and you have to attain a high degree of musical stupidity in order to find watching the beat, or a conductor’s inane face for that matter, easier for the purpose of knowing when and how to play, than simply listening to the music."
Flutist James Galway: “ A bad conductor is the bane of a musician’s daily life; and a good one is not much better!”
Daniel Barenboim: “Orchestral conducting as a full time occupation is an invention – a sociological, not an artistic one – of the Twentieth Century."
Carl Flesch: “There is no profession which an impostor could enter more easily."
In an age when we are hearing more and more of the music of Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler, there is such lack of talent at the podium, such superficiality, and far less penetration than ever before. Although there are more conductors today, the talent level is at its lowest point, with the triumph of capitalism driving conductors to the lowest ebb, with only a handful of real conducting talents under the age of forty who will lead our orchestras for future generations. And to make matters worse, to sustain the superstar conductors’ high salaries (which on a given evening may be higher than the entire orchestra gets paid!), recording companies relentlessly crank out the same old symphonies, time and time again, in interpretations lacking the least bit of originality; only the high-tech sound is improved, certainly not the musical statement.
“Fake maestros have begun to abound in the podium, earning their greatest fame and fortune where musical discrimination is least refined among the concert-going public. Recent developments have proven Abraham Lincoln wrong: In conducting these days, you can fool al of the people all of the time. The concept of the great conductor is a fiction
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perpetrated for the preservation of musical activity in an era of multiple leisure pursuits”.
Pretty grim, isn’t it?
But, at the same time, we all need our heroes, every age does. We flock to see the superstars, and even the jaded orchestral musicians have a voice and vote in selecting their resident conductor. We are all, at one time or another, impressed with the charisma of certain conductors, their stage presence, and their movements. Is it all artistic, or just a magnetic personality which falsely gives us the impression that the music is being wonderfully interpreted? Maybe it is a combination of both factors.
I have written recently about the awareness of orchestral musicians, and how when facing a director for the first time, they have him pegged immediately.
The Maestro Myth takes individuals and groups of conductors in more or less chronological order, describing their careers and rise to fame. Many famous conductors are not mentioned, because, as Lebrecht says, “They did not make a contribution to the evolution of power politics in the global podium."
What we do get, however, is a full dosage of Toscanini, Furtwangler, Szell, Reiner, Stokowski, Previn, Koussevitzky, Ozawa, Solti, Bernstein, Boulez, Maazel Levine, Walter, Abbado, Mutti Mehta, Barenboim, and many others on which he feasts. Not to say that these are bad conductors, but to point to traits of power politics, favoritism, sexism, heavy-hitting money, and jealousy, all of which have nothing to do with music. Even the Kosher Nostra, Mehta, Barenboim, Perlman, Stern, and Zuckerman, are not exempt.
The biggest salvo is reserved for Herbert von Karajan, of whom Lebrecht says “Created his illusions on records and films and at his death he feared that it would not be enough, that he might disappear."
Karajan was molded by the Nazis, was a card-carrying member of the Party, and after the War turned defeat into a personal economic miracle. He came into world attention due to the promotion of the celebrated British record producer Walter Legge, who secretly went to Vienna ion 1946, contacted Karajan, and offered him immortality through a multi-year project of recordings with London’s newly formed Philharmonia Orchestra. It was a pure, heavy-hitting business deal, but it worked. The young Karajan, of which Zubin Mehta said “Music was never enough for him," transferred to the podium the Nazi philosophy of complete authority, unquestioned power, and under-the-table manipulation, together with the good-old capitalist was of making hay while the sun shined, which for him was a long time. Karajan himself said in 1955, “I shall be a dictator.""
‘The British critic David Cairns, no fan of von Karajan, summed it up well, and I personally agree: “Beauty without form, sound without meaning, power without reason, reason without soul. Machines, we are told, will one day compose symphonies; at present, they merely perform them."
This segues us to the surprising fact that practically all of the conductors who were active around the middle of the century were in some way affected by the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Whether they were the ones who chose to stay in Germany, were Jewish, part-Jewish, married to Jews, or simply against the Nazi regime, fled Germany, or emigrated to the U.S. or Israel, it seems that with every one of them there is a story to tell, as it relates to the Nazis, the Holocaust or anti-Semitism. This book is so full of interesting facts and surprising information, that I felt that a single reading was insufficient to absorb it all.
If you are fascinated by the conducting profession as I am, its glorious triumphs, sublime artists, master fakers, money-making machines, and abusive power struggles, The Maestro Myth is certainly worth your time.
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