A Leader of Equals

Conductor William Steinberg is a threat to American musical tradition. For one thing, he is downright chummy with his Pittsburgh Symphony musicians. For another, he blatantly delights in performing "the music nobody wants to play, nobody wants to conduct and nobody wants to hear." The traditional image of the success ful symphony conductor is a shaggy-haired despot who rules with an iron fist and remains disdainfully aloof at all times. But Steinberg treats his musicians with courtesy and respect, regales them with a rich sense of humor, rides in the bus with them on tour, and preaches such heresies as "gaiety is the only atmosphere for music making." As for the age-old maxim that deviations from the standard classical repertory spell box-office suicide, Steinberg persists season after season in offering one of the most adventuresome and widely varied pro grams in music.

Broken Rule. Such maverick practices are getting Steinberg everywhere. Since he took over the listless Pittsburgh Symphony in 1952, he has molded it into a musical instrument of precision and depth; it now ranks as one of the five or six best orchestras in the country.

Last week the Pittsburgh Symphony was embarked on a twelve-week tour of Europe and the Near East sponsored by the State Department. Its two performances at the Herodes Atticus amphitheater in Athens drew 9,000 listeners. At the Lucerne Festival, the audience awarded the orchestra such a thunderous ovation that the festival management broke a longstanding rule and allowed an encore. The Pittsburghers' triumphant week was climaxed by a tempestuous reception for its Edinburgh Festival debut, with the Queen leading the applause.

The son of a textile manufacturer, Steinberg, 65, was born in Cologne, Germany. After graduating from the Cologne Conservatory of Music, he served as conductor of the Cologne and Frankfurt opera houses, came to the U.S. in 1937 at the behest of Arturo Toscanini to be his assistant conductor of the NBC Symphony. In 1945 he was appointed conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic and held that post for seven years before going to Pittsburgh.

In Pittsburgh, he found an orchestra with a skimpy budget of $400,000, a season of 26 weeks, and only lukewarm support from the community. After the departure of Fritz Reiner in 1948, the symphony had gone four years without a permanent conductor; morale was low and performances inconsistent.

The autocratic Reiner had made a practice of firing 25 to 40 orchestra members each year. Steinberg established a "stick-together" policy and cut the annual turnover rate to less than ten. "Within just a few seasons," he explains, "experience, confidence and the pleasure of making music made good musicians into excellent musicians."

Steinberg likes to describe his role as a primus inter pares--a leader of equals --and he takes great pains to let his musicians share in the sense of accomplishment that most conductors reserve to themselves. And he is known as a conductor who religiously does his homework. Steinberg often rehearses without a score, and continually amazes the players by humming his own interpretation of each instrument's part.

Bright Future. Steinberg is also a vigorous fund raiser and public relations man, once promoted a concert by donning a fireman's helmet and red suspenders to tear around town on a fire engine, gaily clanging the fire bell. As a result, the Pittsburgh Symphony today enjoys a 30-week season, a budget of nearly $1,000,000, and a base of community support so broad that there has been some talk of rechristening it the Tri-State Symphony. Prospects for the future are exceptionally bright, thanks to a grant of $5,000,000 from Heinz and Mellon funds, which the orchestra is in the process of matching.

This coming season Steinberg will take a year's sabbatical from his Pittsburgh post to conduct 48 concerts with the New York Philharmonic while Leonard Bernstein is on his sabbatical. Steinberg will also make his debut with the Metropolitan Opera, conducting 24 performances of three operas. "I have some real killers arranged for New York," he says gleefully, referring to Berlioz' rarely performed Symphonie Funebre et Triomphale, a work for 180 musicians that will require the West Point Band as well as the Philharmonic, Leon Kirchner's Second Piano Concerto, and the American premiere of Bartok's Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra. "Then I have something for the New York snobs--an all-Mendelssohn program. This is really the height of snobbishness, the wonderful answer to the question of just what do the snobs need."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.