Loyal Conduct : Utah Symphony’s Silverstein Hasn’t Given Up on the Violin Since It Pointed Him Toward the Podium

Joseph Silverstein had the best seat in the house from which to learn how to conduct. He was concertmaster of the Boston Symphony for more than two decades.

“It was an extraordinary classroom for learning the art of conducting,” Silverstein said in a recent phone interview from Salt Lake City, where he has directed the Utah Symphony since 1983.

“From one week to the next, the Boston Symphony could sound quite different. It was simply amazing the effect each conductor had on my playing and the playing of the orchestra. They all had their own vocabulary of gestures, and those gestures affected me as a player in a different way.”

Some examples?

“My playing always had a tremendous rhythmic intensity when we played with Sir Colin Davis. I was able to produce more sound when we played with Eugene Ormandy and Sir John Barbirolli. There was always a great intensity, collectively, with Seiji (Ozawa).

“So I tried to understand what these people were doing that created a different response. If you watched Ormandy, you saw that his hands never stopped. There was never a moment his hands were not flowing from one pulse to the next . . . (which is) one of the reasons the Philadelphia Orchestra had that remarkable legato.

“On the other hand, (Georg) Solti had almost a spastic quality to his upbeats. His hand would snap back as a preparatory beat. When he did that, you all came in--wham!--on the next beat, and that was the source of the precision of the Chicago Symphony.

“But I tried to learn not only by observing them, but also talking with them about what they were doing that made it possible for me to play differently. Some of them were very articulate about it. I can tell you this--conductors love to have the concertmaster come to them later and ask, ‘How do you do this?’ ”

Asked to describe his own conducting style, which he’ll demonstrate in a Brahms program Monday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, Silverstein, 62, balked.

“Frankly, I don’t even think about it at this point,” he said. “I don’t want to be conscious of my physical presence on the podium. I will alter gestures from one night to next if something doesn’t work--until it does work . . . It seems awfully simplistic to say, but if a conductor becomes very conscious of his appearance both to himself or to the audience and all these gestures don’t have a musical function, don’t even bother.”

Born in Detroit in 1932, Silverstein began studying music with his father, an instructor in the public schools. He went on to study violin with Josef Gingold, Mischa Mischakoff and Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He joined the Boston Symphony in 1955 and became concertmaster in 1961.

Conducting came into his life as a result of the orchestra’s educational activities in the late 1960s, and also because then-Boston Symphony assistant conductor Michael Tilson Thomas began taking guest-conducting stints elsewhere.

“I was called into service as a backup conductor,” Silverstein said. “My colleagues were supportive. I gradually assumed the position of assistant, then was invited to be principal guest in 1971. Then my guest conducting activity increased.

“But it never took me away from the violin. It still hasn’t taken me away from the violin. My activities now are heavily weighted in favor of conducting, but a day doesn’t go by that I’m not practicing my instrument.

“I would not have gone into conducting if I felt it would have taken me away from the instrument,” said Silverstein, who will be the soloist as well as the conductor in Brahms’ Violin Concerto on Monday.

Although he is upbeat about American conductors, he has one major caveat: “For a really convincing performance of Beethoven’s ‘Eroica,’ you can’t expect a 31-year-old conductor to have the kind of grasp and maturity in a performance of a masterpiece like that until they have performed it hundreds of times, which is not going to happen until they’re 55,” he said.

Having played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for any number of conductors, Silverstein said: “I brought onto the podium . . . maybe 30 years’ experience with that piece, even before I conducted it the first time.

“The music becomes very much a part of you. It becomes closer to you all the time, and your feelings about the music become more intense all the time, if you really love it. It is communicating these very strong feelings about the music to the orchestra that produces the performance.”

And how many times has he played the Brahms Violin Concerto? “Not enough,” he said. “Playing the Brahms Violin Concerto is one of the great delights that life holds for a violinist.”

* Joseph Silverstein will lead the Utah Symphony in a Brahms program Monday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The program includes the “Tragic” Overture, “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” and the Violin Concerto, with Silverstein as the soloist. 8 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Philharmonic Society. $17 to $45. (714) 556-2787.

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MASTER MENAHEM: Famed pianist Menahem Pressler will conduct a free master class on Friday from 9 a.m. to noon at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive, Irvine. The class, sponsored by the UC Irvine School of Music, is open to the public. Pressler was one of the founders of the Beaux Arts Trio, one of the preeminent chamber music ensembles since its debut in 1944 at Tanglewood, Mass. (714) 824-6615.