Walter Matthau and Mozart . . . Another Odd Couple : Music: Actor will guest-conduct the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra on Saturday at the Wilshire Ebell.

In the Red Room of a sprawling Pacific Palisades mansion, pianist Antoinette Perry sits at a shiny red baby grand, conferring on the intricacies of Mozart’s Concerto in A with host Walter Matthau, who for inspiration sports a yellow cap embroidered with the insignia “Mozart.”

Matthau, who has had no formal musical training--he cannot read music--is preparing for a performance Saturday night at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. He will conduct the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra with Perry as soloist in the allegretto from the K. 414 concerto, marking his second appearance at the helm of the 28-member ensemble.

“Am I supposed to conduct while you are playing?” Maestro Matthau deadpans to the pianist. “Listen, Zubin (Mehta) told me nobody listens to him anyway. So why doesn’t the orchestra just come in when it’s supposed to?”

Matthau soon tires of discussing things Mozartean, preferring instead to take his visitors on a tour of his home of 20 years that is bright and flowery and perfumed with potpourri. Piped-in music plays in the pink-and white-boudoirs and bedrooms, even reaching across the pool and gazebo into Matthau’s office, where memorabilia from his films “Hopscotch,” “The Fortune Cookie” and “Charley Varrick” line the walls, along with a couple of Tonys for his work in “The Odd Couple” and “A Shot in the Dark.”

Matthau, 69, believes his passion for music was born in the womb.

“My father played music on the phonograph and I think it got through to me,” he says. “He moved out just after I was born. Then there was no music in the house.

“As a child we were too poor for me to study. We grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan; you know, dead-end kids in the ghetto. But when I was 6, I went to public school where each Friday they had music appreciation on the radio. My love of music must be some kind of genetic transference.”

As an honorary trustee, Matthau provides incalculable publicity to the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra. He also has made a small donation used to purchase a computer. “They want money from me for the privilege of getting up there,” says Matthau who accepts no fees for his podium excursions.

Although Matthau will donate his services to the Beverly Hills Symphony in August and in December conduct an orchestra from USC at a dinner at the Biltmore, he entertains no musical aspirations. Rather, he laments the dearth of acting jobs. (Matthau last appeared in “The Incident,” a TV movie drama that aired in March.)

“I am an actor who should be working a lot more than I am,” he says.

Music director David Keith, who founded the Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra in 1975, will conduct Haydn’s Symphony No. 82 and Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G at Saturday’s concert. He says that Matthau exhibits a “good sense of Mozart.” As the music unfolds, he “choreographs what he feels the sound can be.”

Nevertheless, a “safety net” will be in place. Concertmaster Frances Moore is expected to provide cues, determine dynamics and above all, give the downbeat that portends tempo and tone to come.

Pianist Perry, a member of the UCLA music faculty, welcomes the opportunity to work with the actor, believing his impeccable sense of timing will lead to a successful collaboration.

“Timing in music is so important, as it is in acting,” she said. “There is a lot of overlap between comedy and music.”

Indeed, Danny Kaye, who regularly conducted pension-benefit concerts for some of the leading orchestras, was not above throwing a baton or two in the air, kneeling in prayer, kissing a player or yelling bravo midway through a performance.

Dudley Moore, an Oxford-trained pianist and composer, has appeared several times with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performing Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and other selections at the Hollywood Bowl.

Phyllis Diller, who studied keyboard for more than 26 years and at one point had 12 pianos in her home, landed several orchestral engagements for her alter ego Illya Dillya, a grande dame of music partial to performing Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto.

“Comedy, like music is about not only timing, but hearing and listening,” says Diller, who in April joined the Oakland East Bay Symphony in an arrangement of Bach’s Prelude No. 1.

Actor David Ogden Stiers, (Winchester on “MASH”) is building a secondary career conducting pension-benefit concerts across the country. He charges no fee, serves on no boards. “I don’t buy my way into conducting,” said Stiers, who studies “offbeat” recordings and works with a conducting coach. His most recent appearance was leading the Utah Symphony in the last two movements of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, played by Joseph Silverstein.

Stiers also is a regular at “Battle of the Bands,” an annual benefit bash for the Eugene, Ore., Symphony. (The Colorado Springs Symphony stages a similar do.)

Here, prominent local personalities conduct selections before a panel of celebrity judges. Participants have included marathon runner Alberto Salazar clad in running shorts and conducting Vangelis’ score to the film “Chariots of Fire,” and Atty. Gen. David Frohnmayer.

The would-be conductors are trained at the University of Oregon School of Music, where, according to Dean Bernard Dobroski, they are taught how to hold a baton, how to stand, how not to fall off the podium and how to give the downbeat. They also study videos of Karajan, Toscanini, Ormandy, Bernstein--and Danny Kaye.

“Celebrities take these sessions very seriously,” says Dobroski. “We teach them how a conductor re-creates the essence of what a composer wants and talk about the mystical qualities that distinguish the great conductors from the ordinary.

“But, above all, we want these people to feel the sensation of what it is like to bring their hands down and have an orchestra respond.”