Triumphant Trio

The three young winners were all foreigners, and each conducted in a distinctive style--The Athlete, The Professor. The Sailor. They were the prize trophies of the most elaborate conductor-hunt ever staged, and when they closed the second Dimitri Mitropoulos International Music Competition at Carnegie Hall last week, the vigor and variety of their art made the contest's logarithmic complexity seem thoroughly worthwhile.

Elephant Ears. The winners arrived in New York last month with 55 other conductors who had survived auditions held throughout the world. Only seven were American, but all were tempted by the competition's rich prizes: for the three first-prize winners, $5,000 each, plus a year's contract as assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. Leonard Bernstein was chosen as chief judge, along with enough lady committee members to fill at least 54 violin sections.

The first test eliminated no one: each contestant transcribed from memory the score of a short composition right after he heard it played. Then, working with a list of approved works that included symphonic selections from the baroque to the contemporary, each was given the podium of the Symphony of the Air for a 15-minute tour. Half were dismissed with thanks. The preliminary rounds lasted five full days--a tense ordeal for the conductors, an exhausting one for the musicians. While the contestants conducted, Bern stein occasionally patrolled the aisles making elephant ears with his hands, the better to judge. When the semifinals arrived, twelve were left, including two Americans; a Pole got appendicitis, and then there were eleven.

Provocative Fact. The eleven played a difficult repertory that tested all their talents--the overture of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Chopin's Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, a recitative and duet for tenor and soprano from Mozart's Don Giovanni. Then, as a harrowing surprise treat, each was given the score to Tadeusz Baird's Czetry Eseje--a contemporary work none of them had seen before--and told to be on the podium in four minutes, ready to conduct. Six survived. Said Chief Judge Bernstein darkly: ''One provocative fact: there is not one American among the six finalists.''

But American or not. the three victors are a spectacularly gifted lot:

sbCLAUDIO ABBADO. 29. from Milan, had by far the most flair. He stood with feet planted as on a rolling deck, and with great sweeps of the arms drew a rich and textured sound from the orchestra. A pianist. Abbado had none of the usual percussive tastes of the pianistic conductor: instead, he even trusted the beaters and blowers in the orchestra to come in without cues while he painted tones in the violin section. Abbado studied at the Mozarteum and the Vienna Academy of Music, and in 1958 he won the Koussevitzky Prize for conductors at Tanglewood.

sbPEDRO CALDEROX, 29. of Buenos Aires, made his debut with the Argentine National Symphony in 1957. His technique is brisk and athletic, and he embellishes a graceful, conservative beat with little dance steps. While conducting the first movement of Bartok's Concerto jor Orchestra, he became so involved in the rhythmic current that his left hand began to drift meaninglessly--but the good-natured Symphony of the Air helped him sound ingenious.

sbZDENEK KOSLER, 34. of Prague, made all the others look like gifted amateurs. He was the professional, the scholarly genius, the gently firm hand--a bulgy, balding, smiling junior George Szell. He played Mozart as well as he played Dvorak, and at the final concert, he alone was called back for bows from the podium.

Kosler is already a major musician in Czechoslovakia, where he is permanent conductor of the Ostrava State Opera and a regular guest with the Czech Philharmonic in Prague. He won the Besancon Competition in 1956, and since then has toured Hungary. Rumania. Bulgaria and the Soviet Union. Rosier seemed so much music's master that it was a mystery why he should want to dally as an assistant conductor at Philharmonic Hall. "He'll spend a year just watching Bernstein conduct." said a worried musician, "and he'll forget how to do it himself."

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