Four for the Future

"This is worse than a Hitchcock movie," muttered the Frenchman. But no one was listening. Huddled in a dingy back room of Carnegie Hall last week, the seven finalists in the Dimitri Mitropoulos International Music Competition were wrapped in a cocoon of suspense, nervously awaiting the verdict of the judges. The Czech stared vacant-eyed at the wall; the Japanese seemed mesmerized by his feet. The German bustled around the room collecting autographs. The Chilean idly felt his wrist, suddenly exclaimed: "I have no pulse! My heart has stopped!"

It was the grand finale to two hellish weeks of elimination rounds in which 38 young conductors from 20 countries competed for a handsome reward: $5,000 for each of four first-prize winners plus a one-year contract as assistant conductors of either the New York Philharmonic or the National Symphony in Washington. The competition was unbearable; indeed, as the pressure mounted, some of the entrants seemed a bit teched. One shaggy-maned candidate continually roamed the hallways, humming and conducting an imaginary orchestra with all the jabbing vigor of a shadowboxer; another, never without his trusty baton, sat in on bull sessions and conducted the rhythm of the conversation, cueing each participant as though he were a virtuoso soloist. Superstitions were rampant. One contestant, lest he be jinxed, ran off with his hands clasped over his ears each time someone tried to wish him good luck.

Vigil's End. In the withering preliminary rounds, the first to be weeded out were the conductors who, like a child walking a Great Dane, were unable to hold a tight rein on the Orchestra of America. In the semifinals, which none of a ten-man U.S. contingent was able to reach, the remaining 13 candidates were put through a musical obstacle course: they had to conduct the first movement of Berlioz' Symphonic Fantastique, Debussy's First Rhapsody for clarinet and piano, a recitative and aria from Beethoven's Fidelio, and a surprise modern piece--Andre Previn's Overture to a Comedy--for which they were given only 30 minutes to prepare. Said Concertmaster Gabriel Banat: "It was a harrowing experience for them and a merry-go-round for us."

For the seven survivors, the worst part was waiting for the judges' decision. Their vigil came to an end last week when, after 45 minutes' deliberation, the ten judges, led by Leonard Bernstein, filed onto Carnegie Hall's stage to announce the winners:

> Alain Lombard, 25, from Paris, was easily the most dashing. He commanded the podium like an admiral on the bridge, embracing the orchestra with grand sweeping gestures of his long arms. His attack was marked by an easy, graceful masculinity, at times almost overpowering in its intensity. Conductor of the Lyon State Opera since 1963, he is the most experienced of the four winners. One of the judges, Composer Gian Carlo Menotti, announced that he had invited Lombard to guest-conduct at the Spoleto Festival this summer, a bonus prize to be awarded on a regular basis to future winners of the contest.

> Walter Gillessen, 24, of Cologne, displayed a Germanic taste for heavy percussion. Leading Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3, he stood with feet together and labored over the orchestra with the short, snappy jabs of a boxer working out on the heavy bag. Son of a conductor, he feels that conducting opera is least satisfying because "you have to follow the singers. And I want to be the leader."

> Juan Pablo Izquierdo, 30, from Santiago, Chile, is assistant conductor of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Chile and director of the music department at the Catholic University of Chile. A onetime composer who studied conducting in Europe, he favored lightly accentuated tempos, kept his gestures close to his chest as though he were playing a poker hand. Crouching, swaying from side to side, he was not afraid to let the orchestra forge ahead under its own steam while he shaped the tones of the violin section.

>Sylvia Carduff, 28, a willowy brunette from Chur, Switzerland, is the first woman ever to win the Mitropoulos competition. She was a sorceress on the podium, weaving richly textured tapestries of sound with balletic waves of her arms. In the fast movements, she hunched over the orchestra and urged them on with the furious scrubbing motions of a woman doing the Monday wash. A student of Von Karajan and graduate of the Lucerne Conservatory, she says she entered the contest because of the reluctance of orchestras to hire a woman conductor. "I wanted to show them," she says, "that a woman can beat men if she has to."

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