The score that lay open on the podium is one of the most formidable in classical music. Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony is nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand" because it requires an enlarged orchestra, a double chorus of adult voices, a children's chorus, plus eight soloists. Hillis was conducting the monumental work for the first time—with only two days' warning.
The drama and excitement were lost on no one. As the symphony came to its thunderous conclusion, first the audience and then the orchestra and singers stood up in a 10-minute ovation. Had Mahler really come down to help? Replies Hillis with a twinkle, "I wouldn't be surprised."
Chicago Symphony director Sir Georg Solti was supposed to conduct the work before a sellout audience. But two days earlier he had fallen, injuring his back and arm. The conductor's baton passed to Hillis, 56, founder-director of the Chicago Symphony Chorus.
"Of course, he was wonderful," Hillis says of Solti. "He went over the score the day before, showing me beat patterns and soloist cues." She annotated her score with red, blue, yellow and green pencils. "I was so blind and deaf from studying," she adds, "I was beyond fear."
Her triumph was hailed far outside the concert hall. Telegrams arrived in her office in Wilmette, Ill. from all over the music world. Leonard Bernstein, whose first big break came when he substituted for Bruno Walter in November 1943, wired: "Congratulations. I know what it feels like. More power to you." There was some kidding from old friends like Seattle Opera director Glynn Ross, who asked: "Are you sure you didn't trip the maestro?"
Hillis was not all that surprised that she had stood up to the challenge. "A lot of people consider me a pushover. But when things count, my back is made of that same stainless steel my grandfather invented," she says, referring to Elwood Haynes, president of the early Haynes Automobile Co. and developer of alloys. ("Seven of them are now flying around in space," boasts Hillis.)
Margaret was born into a music-loving family in Kokomo, Ind. She began piano lessons at 5 and "by 8 I knew I was going to conduct." To prepare herself, she studied five instruments and entered Indiana University as a piano major, only to take time off during World War II to become a civilian flying instructor for the Navy.
Warned that conducting was still a male preserve, she took a teacher's advice and studied choral conducting under Robert Shaw at Juilliard. "Until then it had never occurred to me," Hillis says, "that I would have to enter conducting through the back door."
Today Hillis concedes it was good advice. She made her professional debut conducting her own American Concert Choir and Orchestra in New York and was soon in demand by opera companies across the U.S. When Chicago Symphony conductor Fritz Reiner decided to form a chorus for the orchestra, he turned to Hillis.
After five years of commuting between Manhattan and Chicago, Hillis has now settled outside Chicago in a 1920s Georgian house which she shares with her secretary and chorus singer, Elizabeth Burton, and Joyce Imes, a percussionist. Her days are long; she spends up to eight hours studying scores in addition to rehearsals. Is she up to a repeat performance at Carnegie Hall? "I'd do it again tonight," she says, smiling, "but this time I'd like an orchestra rehearsal."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
