Word: maestro
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When he made his debut as conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1940 Lorin Maazel was a plump little child, no taller than a cello and braver than a flute. "I have yet to prove my mettle," said the ten-year-old maestro after climbing down from the podium where he had proved himself a wizard. Last week, at 32 Maazel was again before the Philharmonic, a wizard with plenty of mettle, especially by his own reckoning. "I am considered " he proclaimed, "the leading conductor of my generation...
...memory that swallows symphonic scores at a glance, Maazel conducts with clear, functional beauty, avoiding ostentation to such a degree that he occasionally loses the spirit of his work in his wish to perfect it. When a tenor faltered during Maazel's Der Rosenkavalier, the maestro coolly ignored him, pushing ahead with a relentless beat that humiliated the singer and ruined the song. But in the concert hall, his command of the orchestra is invariable, and his reading of the great scores is almost errorless...
...concerts in Prague, say, does more for good will than years and years of propagandizing by the embassy. People from the embassy have told me this." Musicians have told him so. too. but the Maazel they see most clearly is not the blushing ambassador. He is the young maestro who was called "Little Lorin" for so many years that he now insists on "Mr. Maazel.'' the austere young genius who in his zeal to become a man sometimes cannot still Little Lorin's sweet, boastful voice...
Beckwith told questioners that he got a job as chauffeur and valet for Bernstein through "mutual friends" after deserting the Marine Corps in September, had lammed off with the Lincoln for a three weeks' toot. Said absent-minded Maestro Bernstein, who apparently forgot to report the theft: "All I know is that he let me out at a recital on Nov. 24 and never did pick me up again...
Full of beans a top a San Francisco podium, Boston Pops Conductor Arthur Fiedler, 67, unwound a 96-piece orchestra in his own three-minute baroque version of The Twist. The white-maned maestro played the score "tempo a la Chubby Checker" after listening to one of the tubby twister's records and checking it with a metronome. Afterward, at a local nightclub to gyre and gimbal a bit himself, Fiedler adjudged the dance craze: "It's authentic primitive Americana, not from Siberia or Laos, I don't think it's physically unattractive either...