Orchestras: Beat Me in St. Louis

Two years ago, St. Louis summoned Conductor Eleazar de Carvalho from Brazil to take over its ailing orchestra, and Conductor de Carvalho, 49, lost no time in letting the patrons know what they could expect. "I am a man of the avant-garde," he said in his first press conference. "We must do something to open their ears."

De Carvalho's latest "something" left mouths open, if not ears. What was it? The U.S. premiere of Greek Composer Yannis Xenakis' Strategic for Two Orchestras and Two Conductors, in which two orchestras get to play segments of the same score at the same time (though not the same segments) to find out which one comes closest to the composer's intent.

Signals & Flips. "A word of explanation," began Assistant Conductor Edward Murphy, as workmen lowered a basketball Scoreboard over his head. In playing the score, he explained, the opposed conductors (Murphy and De Carvalho) would choose a "tactic" or a combination of two "tactics." They would then pass their choice on to the musicians by means of hand signals, and to a scorekeeper by the flip of numbered switches on a little box. The scorekeeper used a chart prepared by the composer with the help of a computer that supposedly showed which tactic had triumphed.

The basketball Scoreboard? To let the audience follow the match. And, oh yes, remembered Murphy: a "tactic" referred to the instruments used and what they were to do. Each tactic lasted at least 15 seconds. Tactic 2, for instance, was all percussion, while in Tactic 3 the string players struck the backs of their violins, cellos and violas with their hands.

Honks & Gongs. Maestro de Carvalho leaped into the lead with what sounded like honks and whistles, but Murphy soon caught up with gongs and tappings. Halfway through the sevenminute match, Murphy took a one-point lead, but then, with a flurry of weird whines from his violins, De Carvalho went ahead to stay, was declared a six-point winner (100 to 94).

Was it music? "It's junk," said one violinist. "We could have competitions between cities," glowed De Carvalho at intermission. His musicians felt otherwise. "I put my life savings into a Guarnerius violin," said First Violinist Melvin Ritter, "and I don't want to take it onstage to thump it on the back." Clarinetist Andrew Crisanti was kinder: "You have to take it in the right spirit-after all, we're in show business."

On the evidence, the show business was paying off. In the two years since De Carvalho took over, season ticket sales have gone up 20% .