TV REVIEW : ‘Legendary Maestros’ a Look at Conductors at Work

No musician is more powerful than the conductor. And none is more mysterious.

He doesn’t bow a fiddle or blow a horn. Actually, he doesn’t make a sound by himself. He merely waves a stick or, in a few cases, waves a hand. And yet he makes music.

Sometimes he makes it out of love. Sometimes he forces others to make it for him out of fear. Sometimes he makes it virtually in his sleep. In all cases, however, he is the undisputed boss.

He is the one who shapes the sound, who decides the speed, who establishes the focus. He is the one who, for better or worse, interprets the composer’s wishes. (The masculine pronoun is used here by sad default. Women are just beginning to make a modest mark on the podium.)

The strange phenomenon of orchestral leadership is examined--philosophically, technically and historically--in a fascinating documentary called “Legendary Maestros: The Art of Conducting.” It airs tonight on PBS, part of the on-going Great Performances series. Anyone interested in serious music-making, in serious image-making or, perhaps, in artistic alchemy shouldn’t miss it.

The program--conceived by Stephen Wright, directed by Sue Knussen and written by Stephen Pettitt--isn’t notable for coherence. It flits from person to person, from period to period, from old black-and-white footage to recent color shots, with scattershot freedom. In the end, it surveys more trees than forests. Still, it offers revelations.

Isaac Stern, who has fiddled while many a maestro has burned, offers some interesting, optimistic comments about the man in charge. “He has to know exactly what he is doing from the point of view of the composer, and he has to convince the men and women who are playing in the orchestra that if they are six, seven, eight, 80, 90 or 150, he knows more than all of them put together.”

Archival footage, much of it very rare, illustrates the point in many ways. A silent clip dating back to 1913 shows the legendary Arthur Nikisch, eyes blazing, beard bouncing, as he conducts a few measures of a composition impossible to identify. The images explain what Nicolas Slonimsky meant when he called Nikisch “the first of his profession to open the era of the conductor as hero.”

There are, of course, conductors and there are conductors. The passing parade on display here includes rehearsal footage as well as performance footage. In most instances, the preparations are more revealing than the final product.

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We observe the saintly romantic Bruno Walter (“One cannot conduct ‘Tristan’ unless capable of ecstasy, and one cannot do the ‘Pastorale’ if one doesn’t love the meadow and brook”). We watch the indomitable Otto Klemperer uttering disdain for Walter out of the side of his mouth. We see Arturo Toscanini whipping up storms of passion, and having a tantrum when things don’t go as he wishes. We see the monumental Wilhelm Furtwangler at work, and hear him deride Toscanini as a “bloody time-beater.”

The producers, thank goodness, are not beyond making their own critical judgments. It is suggested that the narcissistic Leopold Stokowski might have been mainly a showman and even a charlatan. It is suggested that Herbert von Karajan might have been too much a salesman, and Fritz Reiner too cool.

The cameras show us Leonard Bernstein being flamboyant, Serge Koussevitzky being soulful, Thomas Beecham being practical, George Szell being intellectual. Most startling, the cameras show us Richard Strauss being bored.

Some of the footage is frustrating because antsy cameramen, then as now, think the viewer wants to see the red-faced horn-player at climax time, when the conductor is much more important. Some of the camera work focuses on the maestro’s face when what we really want to see is his arm.

“Legendary Maestros” concentrates on a golden age, a time when a music-director had to spend most of his time with his orchestra. In those days, the ensemble really reflected the boss’s personality. Szell was synonymous with Cleveland. The Boston sound was the Koussevitzky sound. Eugene Ormandy and Philadelphia were inseparable. In those days, we didn’t have jet planes.

Although the PBS documentary covers a lot of territory in 90 minutes, it makes no attempt to explain the conductor’s art from an academic perspective. We are not told what the left hand should or could be doing while the right hand is defining tempo and meter.

Nevertheless, the program does deliver fascinating chunks of history. It illuminates its subjects with contemporary commentary or telling juxtaposition. Beethoven’s Fifth is heard--and seen--as conducted by Toscanini (feverishly), by Klemperer (grandly), by Karajan (slickly) and by Szell (analytically). Each interpretation makes sense in its own way. Preferences must be predicated on that elusive, subjective quality called taste.

One doesn’t want these great excerpts from great performances to end. One yearns in vain for glimpses of Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss, Victor de Sabata, Tullio Serafin, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Charles Munch, Ernest Ansermet, Pierre Monteux and several generations of masters whose careers were hidden behind an Iron Curtain.

Still, at a time when the dumbing down of television threatens to become a political reality and an economic necessity, one must be grateful for any favor. This tantalizing film is a big one.

* “Legendary Maestros: The Art of Conducting” airs tonight at 9 on KVCR-TV Channel 24, and at 10 on KCET-TV Channel 28.