This exciting book* should not be called ‘Shoot the conductor’ but ‘Shoot this conductor’, since it does not question the role of the conductor, quite to the contrary. The book is about a violinist who desperately wanted to be a conductor and worked as a concertmaster for conductors who were determined to prevent him stepping on the podium.
Anshel Brusilow started playing violin in 1933 when he was five, in a Russian Jewish family of Philadelphia. At sixteen, he was soloing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He also studied conducting. During his study years he met and studied with Pierre Monteux. That Maestro was not an easy person and neither was his wife, ‘Mum’ Montreux: « Her presence was at least so commanding as his. We complied with Maître in order to please and with Mum in order to stay this side of trouble ».
Later, Brusilow became associate concertmaster under George Szell in Cleveland, until Eugene Ormandy snatched him away to make him concertmaster in Philadelphia, where he remained from 1959 to 1966. But he was unsatisfied with the violin. He wanted to conduct. He formed chamber groups on the side and conducted summer concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The price was high: it ruined his father-son relationship with Ormandy. When Brusilow created his own Philadelphia Chamber Symphony, and later, when he became Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Ormandy and his entourage would do everything to make his work unsuccessful.
So that’s what the book is about: the shooting from two famous conductors one someone whom they did not want to be conductor. Especially Ormandy acted merciless and he was helped by some influential people of the music industry. It was a cruel game, yet the now retired Brusilow recalls it with humour. Of course, in this book there is a lot more of background information about the life and the role of musicians, concertmasters and conductors, It shows who strings are pulled, how intrigues are spun, and so, at the end, it is most truly a valuable and very interesting autobiography, which any reader will passionately devour chapter for chapter.
*Anshel Brusilow & Robin Underdahl
Shoot the Conductor: Too Close to Monteux, Szell, and Ormandy
University of North Texas Press
ISBN-13:9781574416138
336 pp. 50 b&w photos, notes & index.
