A Reluctant Maestro Bidding a Heroic Farewell : Commentary: USC Symphony conductor Daniel Lewis will retire tonight after 25 extraordinarily productive and influential years.

Daniel Lewis, who bids farewell to USC and its symphony orchestra tonight, isn’t your average garden-variety maestro. Perish the ignoble thought.

And his farewell won’t be notable for easy, sentimental flourishes. Mawkish muck isn’t exactly his forte.

Lewis has never followed predictable paths. He has never settled for practical compromises.

For 25 arduous years, he has been a galvanizing force on the campus. He brought uncompromising quality to his triple job--conductor, teacher of conductors and, perhaps most significant, trainer of orchestras.

His regime has been extraordinarily productive and extraordinarily influential. On a good day, his USC orchestra could withstand comparison with almost any orchestra in academia and beyond. His students, moreover, have gone on to spread the Lewis gospel nationally.

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As a parting gesture, the professorial virtuoso has chosen to lead his charges through the massive, climactic convolutions of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, significantly subtitled “The Tragic.” No one will accuse Lewis of going out with a whimper.

It is significant, no doubt, that the valedictory is to be held within the posh confines of Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena--not at Bovard Auditorium, the drab campus cavern Lewis calls “a barn.” The conductor, who turns a feisty 70 on May 10, says he “wanted to avoid any folderol” in conjunction with his last concert. But Larry Livingston, dean of the music school, opted for an unusually festive locale to commemorate the end of the Lewis era.

“USC’s symphony is the envy of virtually every school in the country,” Livingston declared. “I have a deep personal appreciation for the combination of Daniel Lewis’ artistry, his teaching and his absolute insistence on the highest standards.”

Lewis is pleased, no doubt, to be thus recognized. But, candid to the end if not to a fault, he admits to mixed feelings about the current state of music in general, and about music in and near his workplace in particular.

“The university,” he says, “is becoming just another professional school. Priorities and administrative attitudes toward the arts aren’t what they used to be. Individual departments don’t have much autonomy these days.”

He worries about bureaucratic attitudes that may favor students who strive for instant success yet lack discipline and dedication. He laments the general decline of a broad, liberal education.

“It gets harder and harder at USC,” he admits. “The stress factor is so high.”

His orchestra was always a splendid instrument--technically polished, highly energized, responsive to all manner of interpretive challenges. “It used to function as a window through which the public could look at the school,” he says. “Now it is in danger of becoming just another part of the curriculum. That doesn’t interest me.”

He complains that universities today are “buying students whose interest lies in making solo careers. (For these students) putting on a concert isn’t such a special event anymore. . . . There is a blase attitude.”

Stubborn in his laudably unreasonable quest for perfection, Lewis doesn’t want to preside over what he calls “sight-reading sessions.”

Does all this mean he is leaving under a cloud of rancor?

“Not at all,” he insists. “I just don’t agree with some of the changes.”

In passing, he also bemoans external changes affecting the orchestral image at USC. “In the days when KUSC was a classical-music station, our concerts used to be broadcast. When there were more newspapers in town and space was more plentiful, we used to get frequent reviews. It was important for the students to see that their work was taken seriously beyond the campus.”

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Then there is the weariness factor. “Twenty-five years at USC is enough,” he concludes. “I have been teaching, here and elsewhere, for nearly 45 years now, and it’s time to do something else. I’m burned out.”

He may, of course, be protesting too much. A veteran scarred by artistic wars in academia as well as the so-called real world, he can look back on a career marked by triumph, tribulation and, yes, frustration.

With his special skills as a baton technician, not to mention his reputation as a musician blessed with equal parts vitality, curiosity, intelligence and refinement, Lewis deserved a major career with major symphony orchestras. That, he claims, wasn’t for him.

“It’s a rat race, a dead end. Who wants to spend all that time on an airplane?”

Nevertheless, he has flirted with the glamorous, competitive life of a podium star. He has brightened horizons, fleetingly, at the Ojai and Cabrillo festivals, with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, with symphonic organizations in Seattle, Atlanta, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Eugene, San Diego, Louisville, Salt Lake and Denver. He has undertaken academic posts in Santa Barbara, Boston and with the lamented Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute.

He made some highly successful guest appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic--at the Music Center and at the Hollywood Bowl. He served a distinguished, adventurous 11-year term on the podium of the Pasadena Symphony and a less happy tenure advising the pops-oriented Glendale Symphony.

Still, he never attained the public status he deserved. At best, he was ambivalent about playing the big-league game. He never hired an agent, much less a p.r. manager. He wanted success on his own terms.

“I’m not really sure what happened with the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” he says. “I fell in and out of favor. I’d be persona grata for a few months. Then I’d hear nothing for two or three years.”

Perhaps Lewis demanded too much in rehearsals. Perhaps, like numerous strong-willed personalities before him, he suffered from some sort of personality conflict with the management.

“In 1988 I made what turned out to be my last appearances with the Philharmonic,” he recalls with a rueful smile. “Ernest Fleischmann (the notoriously crusty impresario) suddenly started calling me maestro . Then I knew I must be in trouble.”

And what will he do after reaching the final Mahlerian cadence?

He claims he’d like to do nothing connected with music for six months. But he has received some interesting offers. He is sorting his options.

Meanwhile Los Angeles will have to figure out how to get along without Daniel Lewis. It won’t be easy. It won’t be fun.

* Lewis conducts the USC Symphony tonight at Ambassador Auditorium, 300 W. Green St., Pasadena. Tickets $10 , $15 , $20. (818) 304-6161.