MUSIC : Legendary Fleisher Will Conduct and Solo at Arts Center : The pianist turned to teaching, conducting and one-hand repertory after a hand became disabled in 1965.

More than one generation of music lovers has regarded pianist Leon Fleisher--and particularly his work with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra--as the stuff of legends. Thus, people felt heartsick when Fleisher’s right hand became disabled in 1965, at the peak of his career.

Fleisher, 62, subsequently turned to teaching, conducting and playing the one-hand repertory commissioned from Ravel and Prokofiev by Austrian pianist Paul Wittenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I.

Fleisher will appear in both roles--conductor and soloist--with the Pacific Symphony today and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

“When it turned out that I wasn’t able to do the repertoire I grew up playing,” Fleisher said last week in a phone interview from a friend’s home in Los Angeles, “it became inevitable I would take up the stick.”

But the transition took some adjusting. “With a piano, you have a direct connection with the instrument,” he said. “You are personally responsible through your skills for the sounds that come out of the instrument. As a conductor, you have 90 to 100 musicians, who are sometimes skeptical about your abilities.”

He described his first conducting experience--a community orchestra in Annapolis, Md., in Paul Hindemith’s monumental “Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Weber” as “scary, very frightening.”

“I was conducting (with gestures) from the floor to the ceiling, from the left wall to the right wall,” he said. “That’s one of the things you learn with experience: The size of the gesture can be smaller and equally effective.”

In 25 years, he has become reconciled to the change in career.

“I’ve discovered in my old age that the greatest joys are those that are shared. That’s certainly what you do with an orchestra,” he said.

Still, he said: “Sometimes you feel like you’re on the back of an enormous dinosaur astride the Grand Canyon.”

What happens when he serves as both conductor and soloist?

“I have disagreements with the conductor very frequently,” he said with a laugh. “I’ve done it a number of times, and it’s getting a little bit easier, simply because I’m learning to trust the orchestra more and more. The orchestra loves to have that responsibility. The musicians are forced to listen, to look, to know their parts so well. . . . Often, it’s a welcome relief for them.”

Fleisher briefly ventured a return to two-handed playing in 1982, after years of physical therapy and surgery to alleviate his carpal tunnel syndrome. But the effort, although hailed by critics, turned out to be physically premature.

Incidentally, he made that appearance with the Baltimore Symphony conducted by Sergiu Comissiona, who was to lead the Pacific in this week’s concerts. Comissiona, however, withdrew and cited his new duties as music director for the Vancouver Symphony. Fleisher said Carl St. Clair, the Pacific’s newly appointed music director, recommended his serving as conductor.

“Carl remembered that I had done an almost identical program when I had my 60th birthday present--which was the Boston Symphony itself,” Fleisher said. “I got to conduct it on the evening of my birthday. He asked me if I would do that here. I was delighted.”

Fleisher cited three main influences in his life--conductor Pierre Monteux, with whom he made his debut at age 14; pianist Artur Schnabel, and Szell of the Cleveland Orchestra.

“Never in my life,” he said, “have I met a musician who had anything negative to say about Monteux, who was one of the most benign, lovable and accomplished conductors--and self-effacing--and of great historical importance.

“Isaac Stern put it most succinctly when he said, ‘When you play with Monteux, if you’re going to sneeze a year from now, he has a handkerchief ready.’ There was that kind of security.”

Schnabel was simply “the most powerful influence in my life.”

“I almost can’t talk about him,” Fleisher said. “I came to him when I was 9 and stayed with him for 10 years. He shaped my entire awareness of music and provided me with the knowledge that music-making is a sublime activity--can be, should be.”

And of Szell, whom Fleisher describes as “one of the most powerful influences in my life as an artist,” he said: “His ear was probably one of the most refined and demanding of his time. He created an orchestra such that 90 people played as one.”

Szell, of course, was also known as a severe disciplinarian.

“He was only as demanding on other people as he was on himself,” Fleisher countered. “I don’t think that orchestras are against that kind of work. I don’t think they want to be slovenly. They want to participate. He might not have been the world’s greatest diplomat. But that was part of the time.”

Besides, Fleisher saw another side to Szell.

“We were playing in London, and Szell invited me to his room to sing through the piece--I think it was the ‘Emperor’ Concerto--because he didn’t have a piano in his hotel room. We were sitting at a table and I was drumming, playing the table, while he was singing and whistling (the orchestra’s part). At some point, he stopped me and said, ‘You made a mistake.’ And I said, ‘But I’ve never played this table before.’ ”

Still, that sort of good-humored give and take is hardly typical of the conductor-musician relationship.

“Conducting is not a very democratic affair,” Fleisher said. “Conductors stand higher than the musicians. Psychologically, that’s not a good position for an orchestra player to be in. On top of that, he has a stick in his hand. . . .

“But one is not up there to be loved. One is up there to be respected, and if you have the wherewithal to command the respect of the orchestra, they will play.”

On at least one count, Fleisher sees the role of the conductor as precisely the same as that of any musician.

“Schnabel likened the role of a performer to that of an alpine mountain guide who knew how to get you up to the top of the mountain, but the purpose was for you to enjoy the view from the top,” he said. “You are only the indispensable middleman.”

Leon Fleisher will conduct the Pacific Symphony in music by Beethoven, Ravel and Rachmaninoff at 8 p.m. today and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Fleisher will also be soloist in Ravel’s Concerto for the Left Hand. Tickets: $9 to $30. Information: (714) 474-4233.