TAKE FIVE: LORIN MAAZEL

Kristen Peterson, Las Vegas Sun

Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007 | 7:04 a.m.

What: Symphonica Toscanini

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: UNLV's Artemus Ham Hall

Tickets: $50-$95; 895-2787

It's not your usual tribute act breezing through town.

Fifty years after the death of celebrated Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, a symphony named after him is trekking across the United States on a 20-day tour, stopping Saturday in Las Vegas.

"In the Footsteps of Toscanini: Symphony of the Air" comes with pedigree, honor and a New York Philharmonic music director, whose style and fondness for Toscanini made him the No. 1 choice when the group of musicians in Italy sought a conductor.

The privately funded orchestra, made up of young musicians handpicked by Lorin Maazel for each concert, strives to present concerts much like those Toscanini would have led, Pia Elda Locatelli, president of Symphonica Toscanini Foundation, said by telephone from Rome.

Maazel and the symphony share a mutual understanding, esteem and affection for celebrating Toscanini's legacy, she said.

This year's tour resembles a four-month tour Toscanini led with his La Scala orchestra in 1920.

"He performed almost 70 concerts and they moved from one place to another on a train, if you can imagine," Locatelli said.

Here is a quick look at the maestro, the orchestra and the legend:

1. Maazel and Toscanini

"Both are very rigorous, demanding to musicians. And that's why the level of the orchestra Symphonica Toscanini is so high," Locatelli says.

Not only did the two meet more than 50 years ago in what was a touching moment for the young Maazel, they both have conducted the New York Philharmonic.

Finmeccanica, the high-tech company sponsoring the tour, presented Maazel with one of Toscanini's batons, which Maazel used during the intermezzo from Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana."

2. Music

The group is on a mission to create the same energy that Toscanini, a conductor faithful to composers' intentions, was able to provide concert halls of his day. Saturday's program is music favored by Toscanini: Brahms' Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini" and Wagner's "Tannhauser Overture."

3. Maazel

Maazel began conducting when he was 8 years old and made his debut on the podium with the New York Philharmonic in 1942 at age 12. The year before, he conducted Toscanini's NBC Symphony, a result of a personal invitation by the Italian maestro.

He has led more than 150 orchestras, is music director of the Spain opera house, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, and has been New York Philharmonic music director since 2002.

4. Toscanini

Born in 1867 in Parma, Italy, Toscanini was a cellist with a photographic memory, nasty temper and zest for perfection. He began his conducting career in 1886 while touring with an Italian opera in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and at the last-minute replaced the conductor in a production of "Aida." He was artistic director of La Scala, conductor of the New York Philharmonic in the 1920s and '30s and led the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1954. He also struggled against facism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. He championed music by Wagner, Verdi and Brahms.

5. A first

The Symphonica Toscanini is a privately funded orchestra with a $10 million annual budget in a country where state funded and operated orchestras are the norm. The orchestra began in May with members of the former Filharmonica Arturo Toscanini, with whom Maazel had already worked. Maazel selects musicians for each performance or tour from a pool of 200 musicians.