An American Abroad

''I am not interested in a steady post in America any more," says American Conductor Dean Dixon. He has his reasons.

As a Negro, he is convinced that his chances of finding a permanent post in the U.S. are no better now than they were when he decamped for Europe 13 years ago; as a musician, he is so much in demand abroad that he has not been able to take a vacation for eleven years. And his popularity shows no sign of diminishing.

Last week in Frankfurt, after Dixon conducted the Hessian Radio Orchestra in a program of Schoenberg, Debussy and Mozart, the ovation he got only echoed what critics have been saying in print that in his first season at the head of the orchestra, Dixon has made the musicians play "as if transformed." For all his flair, Dixon is no fancy Dan.

His gestures are so economical that the audience often fails to see them; when the orchestra is surging forward on its own momentum, Dixon may suspend conducting entirely for bars on end. Such restrained emotion is reflected in Dixon's musicmaking. It is neither hot-bloodedly Tuscan, in the manner of Toscanini, nor chiseled and cold, as many Europeans believe all music made by Americans must be. Instead, it is full-bodied and vigorous while it remains consistently controlled. In Frankfurt, Dixon's style has earned him a reputation for playing Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms in the Germanic fashion--which is the highest accolade the city can bestow.

Dixon, 47, spends about a third of the year in Frankfurt, the remainder of his time racing by plane or in his own Volkswagen to performances with virtually every major orchestra in Europe. He is an extraordinarily accomplished guest conductor, a talent he had already well developed before he left home in the 1940s, with degrees from Juilliard and Columbia in his pocket. By then he had already collected kind reviews while leading such major U.S. orchestras as the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony. Trouble was, he got no offers of a fulltime conducting post, and in 1949 he moved to Paris, later to Sweden, where he took over the Goteborg Orchestra.

Convinced as ever that his self-imposed exile is necessary ("I know of no Negro member of any leading American orchestra"),* Dixon stubbornly harbors an American dream. "I would like to go back," says he, "leading my own symphony." But despite his dreams, home remains a hilltop house outside Frankfurt, where he lives with his second wife--Finnish Baroness and Playwright Mary Mandelin. And Frankfurt, it seems, is where Dixon is likely to stay. "These people," he says, "are really in the music business."

* Conductor Dixon is misinformed: the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony, among major orchestras, all employ Negroes as fulltime members.

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