TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041690/0416520.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.3 KB | 255 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 66

A Musical Pilgrim's Progress


MICHAEL TILSON THOMAS conducts like a sprightly Ichabod, arms
flapping, legs skittering. The audience is unusual too; it's
all ears

By JESSE BIRNBAUM


    From a huge caldron on the kitchen stove in a London flat
wafts the comforting aroma of classic chicken soup, enough to
feed a hungry orchestra. From a small upright piano in the
living room wafts a bittersweet trickle of melody, enough to
feed a hungry spirit. Michael Tilson Thomas, the 45-year-old
principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, is
cooking on both burners.

    The soup, redolent of the shtetlach of Thomas' Jewish
forebears, speaks for itself. The melody, from Anton Bruckner's
sixth symphony, needs no elaboration either, but Thomas can no
more resist parsing a composer's score than he can eclipse the
twinkle in his brown eyes.

    He is searching for the sound and phrasing of a passage that
he wants to hear at a string rehearsal later today. With his
right hand, its long thin fingers oddly flat at the tips and
turned up like little spatulas, he plays the simple passage at
heartbeat tempo. After a brief descent, the notes reverse
direction, then fall, then rise slightly, then fall again and
then, sighing, rise and fall into silence.

    "What gets to me about that theme," Thomas tells his
visitor, "is that it takes many directions but basically it's
all one thing: falling." That reminds him of a Rilke poem,
Autumn. "The leaves are falling," he says in singsong
paraphrase, playing the passage again, "falling from on high
as if from heaven's dying orchards. And each leaf falls with
its own special gesture of denial, saying, No, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no."

    Very nice. But invoking Rilke to demonstrate Bruckner is an
impulse perhaps best confided to close friends, and certainly
not to 100 or so impatient orchestra players. Besides, any
conductor who was foolish enough to flog his musicians with
images of leaves -- let alone leaves whimpering in denial --
would be hooted off the podium at the first fluttering whimp.
Thomas learned a lesson on this point in his callow days during
a rehearsal of Also Sprach Zarathustra with the Chicago
Symphony. All his schoolboy nattering on the intellectual
subtext of Strauss evoked only sly mockery from the musicians.
At length, Thomas got the message.

    "O.K.," he said. "Four bars happy, and then on the G-flat,
six bars sad." The players came through.

    The London Symphony fiddlers know happy and sad too, and
they get really sad when they are subjected to boring lectures.
Thomas' approach, therefore, will be straightforward. "I'll
just say, `Let the phrase fall gently downward, legato --
smoothly.' The violinists will know that the left hand must be
the most intense and the right hand must be the lightest,
exactly at the right moment. As they do it again and again, it
will work into their own reflexes and their own minds and will
become more natural, more beautiful. That's when it gets
exciting -- when I suddenly hear them play it, and think, `God,
that's it! I could just give them a downbeat, and they could
play all by themselves.' That's my true success."

    That's what they all say, though everybody knows there isn't
a pit bull alive that can drag a conductor off the stage. In
any case, true success nowadays means more than the ability to
produce a memorable performance. It means winning the
directorship of a major ensemble, a substantial recording
contract, the admiration of players, the acclaim of critics and
audiences.

    It also means consummate musicianship, and that is Thomas'
unrivaled badge of excellence. Among American conductors, none
is more talented or adventurous; among the world's best, he
ranks in the top dozen. Almost unnoticed, he has established
America's sole full-time training orchestra, the Florida-based
New World Symphony, which prepares young musicians for
professional jobs. The fine London Symphony Orchestra, a
self-managed group, passed over several other ranking candidates

as its maestro last year.

    "He's a fantastic musician," says Lennie MacKenzie, chairman
and the senior of the L.S.O.'s two concert-masters. "He's
helped us a lot. He's a stickler on the box [podium], and he
hears everything." On the box, Thomas, a reedy 6 ft., 158 lbs.,
looks like a sprightly, awkward Ichabod, arms flapping, legs
skittering. His baton work is exceptional. His face reads like
an animated directory of musical dynamics: he throws cues with
his eyes; his expression darkens and brightens with such
intensity that it seems riveted to the musicians' nerve
endings. "He's got a good touch with the players," says L.S.O.
managing director Clive Gillinson, "and an extraordinary
imagination."

    It is music that rules his imagination. Hiking and rock
climbing in the Utah hills, he thinks he hears Palestrina; when
the vast silences of the New Mexico desert engulf him,
Gregorian chants ring in his head. He carries an electronic
Yamaha keyboard on his travels and in taxis or during airport
delays unleashes the instrument to noodle a few "stolen
moments." He enjoys trivia. Learning that Schubert on his
deathbed asked for James Fenimore Cooper's latest novel, Thomas
sends his wit on irreverent flight. "Schubert," he says, "was
fascinated by America! Can you imagine him on horseback in the
American wilderness?" Breaking into a high, sweet tenor, Thomas
croons his version of "Tex" Schubert:

    From zis wallee zey say you are goink . . .      Oh,
remember das Red Riwer Walleee . . .

    Beverly Sills, who in her singing days performed under
Thomas' baton, admires his good humor and energy. "He's got a
nonstop mind," she says. "He's open to new ideas, and he's a
delight to make music with." Leonard Bernstein, who at 71 is
America's dean of conductors, took the young man's measure
years ago. Thomas, he declared, "reminds me of me at that age!"
That's high praise indeed from a conductor with an ego the size
of Carnegie Hall.

    Almost from the beginning, comparisons with Bernstein were
inevitable. Both were wunderkinder; both are excellent
pianists; both made spectacular debuts in their 20s, when they
were called upon to substitute for indisposed conductors; both
have a strong affinity for the American musical idiom; both
command a cunning show-biz flair on and off the podium.

    Thomas' gift for shtick comes from his Russian-born
grandfather, actor Boris Thomashefsky, who pioneered Yiddish
theater in the U.S. Michael's father Ted, who shortened the
family name, is a retired Hollywood writer and director. His
mother Roberta adapted her own mother's nickname, Till, to
invent the lilting Tilson that goes with Michael. (The British,
impressed by double-barreled monikers, think his full surname
is Tilson Thomas; he does not object.) Friends call him M.T.T.,
or Michael Tee Tee.

    Michael, who was born in Los Angeles, believes his birthday,
Dec. 21, has an almost mystical significance. "It's the longest
night of the year and the shortest day," he explains. "So this
is a very important balancing point for me -- it's where I feel
my maximum strength. As the days grow shorter, I get stronger
and stronger. Somehow, maybe the moment in which the clock has
first started ticking and the moment when you first make your
entrance into this world are important in some way."

    He made his entrance into the music world at the age of
three. "We had venetian blinds on the west windows," he
remembers, "and in late afternoon, the light would come through
at a very extreme angle. And in those bands of light were
millions of little dust particles dancing. I used to stand at
the piano and try to play music for the dancing dust."

    By the time he reached his late teens, Michael had
progressed from accompanying dancing dust to accompanying
violin and cello students in the master classes of Jascha
Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky. He was also getting solid piano
instruction at the University of Southern California from John
Crown, who was important not only for his teaching skills but
also for his musical lineage. "Crown," says Thomas, "was a
pupil of Moritz Rosenthal, and Rosenthal was a pupil of Liszt!
Liszt was a pupil of Cherney, and Cherney was a pupil of
Beethoven! It's really fun to think that some particular thing
that I'm doing, the way I put my hands down on the keyboard,
or some musical thought, some way or another comes through that
line."

    The line extended with further training under
composer-conductor Pierre Boulez and at the Berkshire Music
Festival at Tanglewood, where Thomas won the Koussevitzky Prize
for conducting. By 1965 he was William Steinberg's assistant
at the Boston Symphony. And then, like all understudies in
show-biz song and saga, he prepared for the star to break a
leg.

    The break came on an October night in 1969 at New York's
Philharmonic Hall. It was not a fracture that disabled the
72-year-old Steinberg but sudden fatigue. Thomas, not yet 25,
was standing in the wings when the maestro walked offstage just
before the intermission and told his assistant to get out there
and finish the concert. Thomas proceeded to take the orchestra
through a Starer concerto and Till Eulenspiegel without a slip,
and the critics flipped. By 1972 he was the Boston's principal
guest conductor and had his own orchestra, the Buffalo
Philharmonic.

    He was gifted, he was busy and he was ambitious, but he was
still not ready for prime time. Veteran members of the Boston
and other orchestras that he conducted found it hard to forgive
an impudent kid his sudden celebrity. (When the frisky
youngster appeared in New York City, recalls a former
Philharmonic player, one of the musicians dubbed him Michael
Tinsel Tushy.)

    Inevitably, after Steinberg departed, the Boston's governing
board balked at naming Thomas as full-time replacement. It was
just as well. Thomas needed the maturing that eight years in
the Buffalo boondocks would provide. He also needed to get his
head straight. Now and then, some of his friends enjoyed
sharing a little marijuana, a little cocaine. He was charged
with carrying a little of both in his luggage after customs
inspectors in New York City checked his gear one day in 1978.
He paid a small fine, though the affair, Thomas recalls, was
"scary and painful." Now, he says, he smokes nothing and drinks
"interesting waters." The life of the ascetic, as well as of
the aesthete, appeals to him. He gets his highs roaming in the
wilderness. He likes poetry -- Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson. He
keeps a journal. He reads science fiction and the Iliad.

    If Sills and other influential fans had votes, M.T.T. would
take over the N.Y. Philharmonic when Zubin Mehta leaves at the
end of the 1991 season. There are others, though, who doubt
that Thomas is the right man. The orchestra needs a more
distinguished leader, they argue, one who will electrify
audiences and increase record sales. Thomas lacks sufficient
public following; he has not yet demonstrated the infectious
fervor of a Bernstein or the Olympian stature of a Karajan.
Says Thomas prudently: "I don't think I'm going to be asked."

    In any event, he has already assured himself of a special
place in music with the successful development of the New World
Symphony. Its 90 members, none older than 30, are avid
music-school graduates who get a $300 weekly stipend the year
round and free living quarters in a converted Miami Beach
hotel. They are given three years in which to land a
professional job elsewhere -- or get out. In the two years
since the group started, 30 players have moved on to steady
positions. The orchestra, Thomas says, is "a very important
expression of my idealism. We can give these kids a foundation
at the very beginning, so they won't burn out and so they can
keep their souls together. I've told them that whoever has his
soul at the end of 50 years of music making will be the
winner."

    He may be right. The kids adore Thomas and under his
tutelage are learning the meaning of happy and sad. If they can
keep their souls intact, they, and generations of their
successors, should one day occupy the majority of chairs in the
nation's best orchestras. And that, for the sake of music
making, is not just chicken soup.