Less is known today about Fritz Reiner than any of the other eminent orchestral directors of the so-called "golden age" of conducting. Despite his lingering influence, his career was overshadowed by Arturo Toscanini, Leopold Stokowski and Leonard Bernstein, who conducted more flamboyantly and were better self-promoters.

	"FRITZ REINER: MAESTRO & MARTINET" By Kenneth Morgan University of Illinois Press ($34.95)

Reiner's acerbic personality made matters worse, stunting his celebrity. Kenneth Morgan's impressive new biography of the Hungarian-born maestro goes far in filling the gap, adding to Philip Hart's earlier biography.

Notoriously exacting on the podium, the technically superb Reiner essentially replaced the entire Pittsburgh Symphony over his tenure, dismissing an astonishing 90 percent of the musicians in his first three years.

Morgan sheds welcome light on much of Reiner's life (1888-1963) and on the orchestras he led -- Cincinnati (1922-31), Pittsburgh (1938-48) and Chicago (1953-63) and his time at the Curtis Institute and the Metropolitan Opera.

Particularly intriguing are explanations, albeit in dry scholarly prose, for Reiner's despotism on the podium.

He mercilessly humiliated his musicians when they erred.

"The score calls for a C natural, but what you have given me is a thud!" Reiner once shouted at a rehearsal. He once meanly dismissed a horn player, saying "Stop. You play like a baby." He often fired players on the spot.

Reiner's tyrannical behavior has become lore in Pittsburgh. Nearly every retired PSO musician who served under him tells some version of the bass player who mocked Reiner's famously small beat by taking a telescope to a rehearsal.

Morgan corrects the apocryphal version of the tale, in which Reiner wrote on a small piece of paper, "You're fired."

The author contends that the player wanted to be released from his contract, and he tried the stunt other times.

Some of these outbursts were shrewdly calculated to establish the authority Reiner felt he needed to command an orchestra at the highest level.

Once, when guest-conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra and sensing "indifference from the musicians," Reiner deliberately conducted vaguely, causing many mistakes.

"So this is the famous Boston Symphony Orchestra," he then said, sardonically. The players responded by trying to prove their worth, in turn giving in to Reiner's instruction.

While Morgan claims to analyze "the conductor's personality in depth, showing how his background and psychological complexity crucially affected his music making," it amounts more to a listing of facts rather than true analysis.

Why was Reiner so "irascible and explosive?" What in his upbringing made him so mean-spirited? From where did this deep insecurity stem?

While Morgan states "Reiner's inability to control his anger when errors occurred was one of his greatest failings," he doesn't dig deeper to discover why. Many potentially crucial points are simply mentioned here, from Reiner's marriage scandals to his lack of friends to his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism. Yet Morgan has space for the obligatory description of a dictator at home, writing, "Privately he was a witty, relaxed, cultivated man who read widely."

What the biography lacks in depth, it has in breadth. Morgan outlines Reiner's full career, from job moves to a list of his recordings to his important focus on his support for new music (especially Bela Bartok). The latter was extraordinary. More than half of the compositions Reiner performed in Pittsburgh were 20th-century. A 1947 survey of American orchestras "ranked Pittsburgh first in performing European and American contemporary music." How times have changed.

Reiner's catholic tastes within the canon surely played a role in the present PSO's remarkable versatility, not to mention that his rigorous musical standards and insistence on touring built its foundation as a world-class ensemble.

Morgan includes a substantive discussion of Reiner's interpretative skill. While it's hindered somewhat by the lack of musical examples, it is fruitful.

Other intriguing tidbits include Reiner's wanting to move the PSO permanently from the Syria Mosque to Carnegie Music Hall, which likely would have seriously damaged the prospects of a cultural renaissance Downtown.

Also, Reiner took a pay cut in 1941 to help the PSO get by, not unlike what another director, Mariss Jansons, took during his tenure. The truth that money has always been a problem for the PSO is again made clear here. The biography may not have penetrated the stern exterior of Reiner enough, but perhaps that is something of an overarching statement about the man in itself.