CONDUCTOR IS ALSO COMPOSER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31159, 8 September 1966, Page 18

CONDUCTOR IS ALSO COMPOSER

As well as being one of the world's most eminent conductors, Antal Dorati Is a composer. The 60-year-old Hungarianborn maestro arrived in Christchurch yesterday with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he is guest conductor during its present tour. Mr Dorati said he began writing music when he was very young but his compositions ceased after he was about 20. Then. 25 years later the “block” disappeared, and he resumed his interrupted second profession. Among his works Mr Dorati listed a symphony, a dramatic cantata, a choral work incorporating a madrigal suite, a missa brevis, a largo concertanto for string orchestra and chamber music. A string octet was recently performed for the first time and Yehudi Menuhin conducted a performance of the largo eoneertanto (“a very long, slow piece in one movement”) three weeks ago. His latest composition, still unplayed, is entitled “Contours” seven short movements written for a large orchestra. While he made use of 12tone techniques, he employed traditional elements too. He was firmly of the belief that the new should not supplant the old but that both could be used without a conflict in style.

When he was conducting his own works, he found he had to study them just as diligently as those of another composer. “But I would rather h»”e another conductor for them. i

“It is a matter of good man-

ners, too—a well-known conductor must not push his own works too hard.” Sometimes, he said, he regretted the long period in which he wrote so little. However, he felt that the instinct which had told him not to compose was right, just as his later, opposite one was was right, too. “1 think I’ve got something to say to other people now.” The qualities to which he gives special attention when conducting are clarity and natural expression—“nothing forced, ever. The range of every instrument is very large, and the idea is to exploit it not strain it.”

Of the conductors who had most influenced his development he cited Furtwangler and Toscanini: “Most of all. Toscanini.” Antal Dorati will conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert of works by Stravinsky and Brahms at the Civic Theatre on Saturday.