Herr Doktor

"I am a completely independent man," declares German Conductor Hermann Scherchen. "I do not have to conduct works I don't like." And he doesn't. In fact, for 35 years, Scherchen repeatedly refused invitations to conduct in the U.S. because the programs offered were too conventional for his tastes. "There is an extraordinary prejudice in America," he said, "to do works of commercial interest. Beethoven's 'Eroica,' Tchaikovsky's 'Pathetique' --fine music, but I've done them before. I desire to do things of special interest."

Finally, at the age of 73, Scherchen has come to the U.S. to conduct. The inducement was a specially assembled chamber orchestra of his very own, unlimited rehearsal time and, most important, a program of his own choice. The result was a treat worth the waiting. In five concerts at Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall this month, with the accent on works of "special interest" from Bach to Berg, Scherchen displayed an attack that was clean, intense and boldly original. He braked tempos to the creeping point, intertwining each contrapuntal strand with meticulous care, then revved up the fast movements until the musicians were fairly bouncing off their chairs. To critics' charges that some interpretations were flawed by "exaggerations," Scherchen icily replies: "It is very fine if a man knows absolutely how it should be. I don't know."

Bird in a Storm. Stately and thick-chested, Scherchen on the podium was a study in the fine art of conducting technique. He held the orchestra in tight rein with an economy of direction, each hand working independently with machinelike precision. In climactic passages he carved the air with jabbing, slashing strokes of his baton while his left hand "danced like a bird caught in a storm. At other times he seemingly stared the musicians through their paces, intermittently striking cues with the suddenness of a judo chop.

Conducting, Scherchen contends, is a misunderstood art, and he accepts only students who agree to devote three years to learning his technique. He never takes more than four at a time. They travel everywhere with "Herr Doktor," as they reverently call him, taking lessons at intermissions, in taxis and restaurants. Scherchen, who at eleven knew all of Beethoven's music by heart, insists that before taking baton in hand, a student must have the score indelibly branded on his memory. Then the gestures will follow naturally.

Unknowns. Students hone their craft by conducting Scherchen, who sings the music in a croaking voice and veers off course at the slightest lapse in direction. But mostly they conduct in total silence under the concentrated stare of Scherchen's glinting blue eyes. "Isn't there a crescendo there?" he will interrupt. Says James Harrison, 29, of St. Louis, who is currently the only Scherchen student in residence: "The maestro has no place for mediocrity, and therefore he outlaws orchestras. One has to listen to music within one's mind, using the powerful force of imagination."

Through his 92 Westminster recordings, most notably Bach's B Minor Mass and Handel's Messiah, Scherchen has long been known and respected in the U.S. as a master of the baroque and classical repertory. But in Europe he is famed as the indefatigable champion of modern music, who played Schoenberg, Von

Webern, Berg, Milhaud, Bartok and Hindemith when they were still rank unknowns. Scherchen's mission, as he sees it, is "to conduct all those works which cannot be performed without me." The result is that he has probably premiered more significant modern compositions than any other conductor in this century.

Ear Capacity. His ear, as always, is tuned to the sounds of the future. At his 17th century farmhouse in Gravesano, Switzerland, where he lives with his wife Pia, 42, and their five children (he has a total of nine children, ranging in age from four to 46, by three wives), he has constructed three "electroacoustical laboratories" crammed with exotic space-age sound equipment. There he pursues his "burning interest": investigating the possibilities of "electronic sound forces." One sound force he will not tolerate is the telephone: a grocery down the road handles all his calls.

"The art of music has been dying since the beginning of the 20th century," says Scherchen. "The ear has developed new capacities; Beethoven no longer excites an audience as he did 15 years ago." The reason: "Beethoven has no high frequencies." Scherchen concedes that the electronic music being produced today is "primitive and monotonous," but foresees the day when it "will perhaps create the most fantastic reactions man has ever experienced." Whatever the sounds of the future, Hermann Scherchen means to have a hand in it. "My whole life has been doing new things," he says, "and I'm not going to stop now."

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