Antal Dorati With Israelis

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 6

Antal Dorati With Israelis

Antal Dorati, the 60year old Hungarian conductor who will conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra In Christchurch on Saturday next week, has been described, rather flamboyantly, as “the music man with a tiger inside,” and he has positive views on the interpretation of music. “No music is very difficult to conduct,” he says. “It’s an easy metier. But just that very easiness makes it difficult —the responsibility is so great. “If I had 300 years of life, I might be very good at the end. The more styles a conductor can absorb and radiate, t'he better a man he is. I look on myself as a specialist in non-specialisation. I don’t believe you can be a good conductor of Bach if you can’t absorb Schoenberg and Stravinsky—and vice versa.” At 14 Antal Dorati, the child of a highly musical family, was enrolled at the Budapest Academy of Music. Several years later he graduated as the youngest and one of the most brilliant students of conducting, composition and piano. He had studied under Bela Bartok and Zoltan

Kodaly and his first conducting posts were in the opera houses of Budapest, Dresden and Munster. The opera and ballet claimed Dorati’s talents till 1944. He joined the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe in 1933 and spent five seasons with it at Convent Garden, conducting the London Philharmonic. With the Ballet Russe he toured Australia and New Zealand in 1939. In 1940 he became musical director of the Ballet Theatre in New York and that was his last post before he moved to specialisation in symphonic conducting. As a conductor with major world orchestras Dorati has been acclaimed throughout Europe and in North America. His posts as resident conductor included a four-year term with the Dallas Symphony and 11 significant years with the Minneapolis Symphony. Then in 1963 he went on to the BBC Symphony. After the Israel Philharmonic tour he will go to Stockholm as principal conductor of the Swedish orchestra. Throughout these years as resident conductor with orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic, Dorati has continued his independent career as a freelance conductor with

major orchestras and the impressive roll call includes the Berlin, Hague, London and Vienna Philharmonics, the Concertgebouw, and appearances as a guest conductor at the major European festivals. One aspect of Dorati’s renown is his reputation as a trainer of orchestras. “The Times,” commenting at the end of Dorati’s term with the BBC Symphony, wrote, “He was called in, rather like a doctor, to restore the orchestra to a state of executant health and make it a symphonic body comparable with the

finest in the world. The immediate results were startling; within a matter of weeks the orchestra had begun to play like a virtuoso body.” Dorati himself believes that part of the secret lies in “conducting for the orchestra and not for the audience.” “Men who conduct for the audience,” he says “should be chased off the podium.” Dorati has conducted the Israel Philharmonic many times before this tour of Australia and New Zealand In 1960 he was with the orchestra on its world tour.