Kindling a New Flame

Many a first-rate pianist has taken up conducting as a career. For Leonard Bernstein, the late George Szell and Daniel Barenboim, it was largely a matter of having a large and effusive talent--or sheer ambition--that simply had to spread into other fields. When Pianist Leon Fleisher took the podium last week at Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall, however, it was a case of dire necessity. Though he was once the foremost pianist of his generation, his right hand has been partly crippled since 1965, and he is trying to establish himself in a new career.

After five years of tests and medical treatment, including physiotherapy and psychotherapy, Fleisher's doctors are still unable to come up with a cure. Indeed, they are not even sure of the cause. The official diagnosis is that Fleisher's malady much resembles writer's cramp. But what started as an occasional feeling of "pins and needles" in the fingers is now a cramped condition in which the fingers curl into the palm involuntarily. In the past six months, the trouble has become so bad that Fleisher, now 42, can barely sign his name.

His New York debut showed that the conducting ranks can well profit by Fleisher's misfortune as a pianist. He had all the right instincts, and plenty of natural talent to communicate them. Leading the New York Chamber Orchestra in a program of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, he demonstrated a smooth, supple rhythmic sense and ideas about the music that were definitely his own. As New York Times Music Critic Harold Schonberg put it: "Some conductors have worked for years on less."

Imaginary Piano. Most conductors stand up while they work. Fleisher sat on a tall rehearsal stool. This was because, after sitting down professionally for most of his life, he admits laughingly that "I don't know what to do with my behind." More important, Fleisher feels that he can establish contact with his players better if he is able to be "among them, rather than above." Most conductors give the beat with the right hand and use the left for expression. Not Fleisher. He sometimes swung both arms up, fists closed. He often seemed to be playing an imaginary piano, both hands thrusting forward as if striking a two-hand chord. At a private seminar a few weeks ago, Conductor Morton Gould asked Fleisher to beat time with his right hand, and then asked him to pretend that he was playing the piano. "You're ten times as expressive the second way," was Gould's advice.

Perhaps that was why Fleisher, apparently unconsciously, seemed to be pedaling in Haydn's Sinfonia Concertante. He did not use a baton. Later he confided that last winter, rehearsing an amateur orchestra, he "started with a stick but found that it took on a life of its own, and did things I did not want it to do, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice." No danger of that this time. The "Haffner" Symphony was a model of Mozart interpretation--clean, clear and crisp--and in Mozart's Concerto in C Major, K.503, Fleisher afforded Soloist Claude Frank the kind of knowing partnership that made it seem as if the two men were playing four-hand piano --which indeed they used to do, as brilliant pupils of the late Artur Schnabel.

Envy of His Fellows. In his heyday, 1952 to 1964, Fleisher had a mastery of the classic and romantic repertory that made him the envy of fellow pianists. No pianist can overwhelm an audience at every performance, but more nights than not, a rare spark seemed to pass between Fleisher and his listeners. It was not the kind of spark that stemmed from mere dramatics or showmanship. What he had was the kind of flame that was ignited by rubbing the smallest phrase just so, and then building from there. "It was like making a happening," he recalls. "When the stars were right, I could kind of get out of myself and into something mysterious and wondrous and exciting." Fleisher is still hoping to achieve such moments at the keyboard again. With great determination, he has plunged into the tiny but exciting piano repertory written for the left hand alone by Ravel, Prokofiev and Britten. Mastering the vast orchestral literature necessary for a conducting career will be a tougher job. But if anyone has the musical dedication and the talent to succeed, it is Leon Fleisher.

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