A LITTLE CHILD LED THEM: Il-Year-Old Conductor For Great Symphony Orchestra

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 117, 19 September 1941, Page 9

A LITTLE CHILD LED THEM: Il-Year-Old Conductor For Great Symphony Orchestra

"7 HEN the members of the NBC Summer Symphony Orchestra ’ of America — the orchestra which Toscanini had whipped into one of the world’s finest-first saw their conductor for the new season, they laughed., Not unnaturally, perhaps, for who could imagine an 11 year-old boy conducting a full symphony orchestra? Certainly not the public; least of all the men whom he must lead and direct, After one rehearsal under the baton of Lorin Maazel, however, the orchestra was prepared to admit that they had been wrong. Plump, mop-haired, and hardly bigger than a ’cello, Lorin is not the conventional idea of a child prodigy. With precocious composure and in a

| variable treble voice, he politely prefaced his requests with "Could I ask?" or "Might I have?" pronounced the string section first "messy" then "much better"; and gently chided a clarinettist who altered the beat. He rarely consulted the score, and then only to refer to numbered sections, for he knows 22 symphonic works by heart. Critical listeners to his two Saturday night broadcasts were amazed at his interpretation of such music as Wagner’s "Rienzi’ Overture, Mendelssohn’s "Italian Symphony" and Dika Newlin’s "Cradle Song." Lorin was born of American parents in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly. His father, a singing teacher, later took his wonder child to Los Angeles in order to develop ~ his musical talents. There, Lorin studied the piano and violin, and was "discovered" to the orchestral world through a Haydn score which his father gave him four years ago. This also introduced him to Vladimir Bakaleinikoff, assistant. conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, who is still his teacher. In the past three years, Lorin has conducted seven orchestras, of which the best before the NBC Symphony was the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His beat is precise, his gestures are graceful, and he has one gift from the gods; absolute pitch, i.e., ability to place a note without help from any instrument. Lorin Maazel is very much older than his years. After the first rehearsal, he said, "I hope I got the men with me. I tried to." And later: "I still have a lot of hard work ahead of me. I am constantly studying. I have yet to prove my mettle."