Nureyev: From Barre to Baton : * Music: Nearing the end of his ballet career, the flamboyant Russian is making a leap to the podium, conducting small ensembles in out-of-the-way places.

What’s next for Rudolf Nureyev now that his legendary career in ballet is essentially over? Conducting, he says. That’s right. He wants to be a full-fledged, serious maestro.

Proof of his intent comes from Vienna, where the 53-year-old danseur just led a chamber orchestra in several performances at an obscure little concert hall off the beaten musical path, away from the prestigious, time-honored venues that boast premieres of Mozart and Beethoven symphonies.

Of his modest conductorial debut several weeks ago--nothing like the blazing terpsichorean one that put him on Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet stage in 1959--Nureyev says:

“This is something I’ve been preparing to do for many years, not some sudden impulse. And it gives me the same kind of thrill I had when (I was) very young.”

The flamboyant celebrity, speaking on a portable phone from his own island south of Naples (which has no regular telephone service), has stolen a few days of rest before his next concerts tonight--in Athens, with the same 25-member ensemble he drew together in Vienna.

Cello music floats in the background (“a soloist practicing”) and Nureyev complains of being “bitten by mosquitoes.” But he eagerly recounts the details of his current passion: “Right now I study conducting with Wilhelm Hubner of the Vienna Philharmonic. But it was long ago, before leaving the Soviet Union, that I began piano.

“It was my idea, about 10 years back, to enter a conservatory, maybe Juilliard. One day I had an encounter with (Herbert von) Karajan. We were in an elevator. He turned to me and said: ‘You should become a conductor. Conductors live a long time.’

“Silence fell between us. And then he said, not quite joking, ‘Come to me. I will teach you all my tricks.’ Of course I never took his offer, but others have given me the same advice--Karl Bohm, Riccardo Muti.

“When I talked with Lenny Bernstein he was very firm about what to do: ‘Find an old maestro and drag all the information from him. Do that and practice, practice, practice.’ ”

Last year Nureyev began his plan in earnest, studying with a longtime friend and colleague, Varujan Kojian, music director of the Santa Barbara Symphony and a former assistant conductor and concert master of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“Rudi is an excellent musician,” Kojian declares. “I am a violinist and we always play chamber music when we’re together. In Paris with other friends, too, but privately.”

Throughout their long association--Kojian conducted for Nureyev’s appearances all over the world--”he would always come to the orchestra rehearsals and sit behind me, watching intently.

“One day I asked him if he was interested and not much later he made a trip to Santa Barbara. We studied some repertory. He stayed for three weeks and went about it very seriously.”

But Kojian says he had a hard time convincing his pupil to get up before the student ensemble and try to put into practice what he had learned.

“The time came to face the orchestra and I almost had to push him. Imagine this supremely graceful man nearly stumbling onto the podium.”

Andrew Grossman, Nureyev’s agent at Columbia Artists Management Inc. in New York, confirms the new direction in his client’s career: “He’ll still dance character roles but conducting and learning this new profession are his primary focus.”

A decade ago, when the Russian dancer’s inevitable technical decline began, he tried acting in films, which seemed a natural transition for someone of his sculptural handsomeness and fiery Tartar temperament. That went nowhere. He also took over the directorship of the Paris Opera Ballet for seven years, but was forced out two years ago after taking six months off to tour in “The King and I.”

Now, Nureyev will continue to gain conducting experience, says Grossman, by appearing in out-of-the-way places, far from the glare of publicity.

In keeping with the way most careers of mega-stars are handled, Grossman has big publicity ideas for Nureyev the conductor. The Bolshoi Chamber Orchestra will tour the West in two years “and if all goes well Rudi will be leading it.

“First I’ve arranged for him to have 20 rehearsals with the ensemble in Moscow and we’ll do maybe a video at that time,” Grossman said.

The program Nureyev is now conducting consists of Stravinsky’s “Apollon musagete,” Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C Major for String Orchestra and Mozart’s Symphony No. 40.

The nomadic Nureyev, whose five luxurious residences around the world are equipped with pianos, harpsichords and a church organ at the Dakota in New York, travels with his electronic Casio keyboard.

“If you talk nicely to it,” he says with whimsy, “it can save you from solitude and sadness while touring.

“Leading an orchestra gives me great pleasure, even if it’s never a major career,” Nureyev said.

“There is this wonderful illusion that the music they transmit comes out of you. It’s enough to make a person euphoric.”