It’s natural for girls and boys with stars in their eyes to dream of their futures. Young tennis players hitting against a backboard dream of winning Wimbledon—either the sterling silver Rosewater Dish or the silver-gilt cup and cover. Young capitalists with their first savings account dream of helming a multinational conglomerate replete with golden parachute. Not surprisingly, young violinists practicing Paganini dream of leading a Top Ten orchestra to glory, not always as a touring soloist, but as the leader of the first violin section.

“When I was a little boy,” former longtime Boston Symphony concertmaster Joseph Silverstein recalls, “I was admonished by my mother: ‘If you don’t practice, how will you ever grow up to be concertmaster of the Boston Symphony?’”

Of course, dreaming was just the beginning. “The forks in the road,” Silverstein says, “gave me the opportunity to realize it.”

The concertmaster is the key to an orchestra’s quality and success on many fronts, the most important of which are music making—sorting out bowings with the conductor and making sure the parts are properly marked are also major responsibilities for a concertmaster—and organizational efficiency.

Musically speaking, Minnesota Orchestra music director Osma Vanska says, “The concertmaster is the leader of the biggest group in the orchestra, providing an important link between the orchestra and the conductor.”

If the biggest group in the orchestra is not breathing the same, Vanska adds, you cannot make great music.

It can be a demanding—and even dangerous—job. Arturo Toscanini, acclaimed conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, was a real stickler for perfection. He often would throw a fit when he could not obtain the results he wanted from the orchestra; a lawsuit was brought against him in Milan when he accidentally injured the concertmaster with a broken violin bow.

Still, the concertmaster post has its rewards.

Money has a voice in the equation because the concertmaster must help the organization make the most efficient use of its limited rehearsal time. With both management and union representatives watching the clock, the concertmaster who helps a conductor have time for what’s important can save the conductor’s sanity—and perhaps the concertmaster’s own job.

“If you can make suggestions that save even 15 to 30 seconds of rehearsal time, you’re doing your job,” says Los Angeles Opera concertmaster Stuart Canin, who held the position at the San Francisco Symphony under Seiji Ozawa and served as concertmaster of the Grammy-winning conductorless ensemble the New Century Chamber Orchestra.

But there's another side to the money game. Concertmasters usually negotiate their contracts separately from the rest of the orchestra and often make double the union scale. But, according to American Symphony Orchestra League president and CEO Henry Fogel, “there are some orchestras where principal and assistant principal players receive fixed percentages of the standard scale.”

According to the most current figures available, in 2003 the five top earners among US concertmasters were Cleveland’s William Preucil ($372,233), New York’s Glenn Dicterow ($366,316), San Francisco’s Alexander Barantschik ($361,429), Boston’s Malcolm Lowe ($355,647) and Los Angeles’ Martin Chalifour ($343,667).

That type of financial security can provide considerable opportunity for a talented, ambitious string player. Frank Almond, concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, knew he couldn’t count on a solo career, even after his success in the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. “I was interested in becoming a prominent concertmaster because it allowed you to do so many different things,” he says.

Influenced by the legendary Joseph Gingold, Silverstein, and the New York Philharmonic’s Glenn Dicterow, Almond saw there was “a practical and economic stability to playing in a big American orchestra.”

Even 26-year-old Juliana Athayde, newly appointed concertmaster of the Rochester Philharmonic (and first graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Concertmaster Academy), got it: “I always liked the idea of concertmaster because you get a chance to teach,” she says, “to play chamber music, and to live in one place, in a home.”