Assuming you have the dream, realizing it is pretty simple, says David Halen, co-concertmaster of the St. Louis Symphony. “You have to become the best soloist you can,” he explains, “understand music, have a basic working knowledge and love of the symphonic literature, and be really well schooled in getting along with people."

Joseph Silverstein patterned his approach after his two teachers, Joseph Gingold and Mischa Mischakoff. He singles out how Mischakoff’s accuracy (“He played every note in “Ride of the Valkyries”), scrupulous reading of dynamics, and incredibly accurate rhythm provided “a model for the rest of the section.

“Presumably they can all do it,” Silverstein says, “The key is getting them to do it when it counts.”

His big picture: “The concertmaster has to respond to the conductor as if the conductor has presented an absolutely infallible idea. Then, the concertmaster is doing his job.”

Ken Goldsmith, professor of violin at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, adds that a concertmaster has to know his or her section well enough “to bow for the weakest members.”

He recounts how Mischakoff, who led orchestras in New York for Frank Damrosch, Philadelphia for Leopold Stokowski (“It was Stokowski who told Mischakoff to change his name from Mischa Fischberg”), and Detroit for Paray, rewrote bowings depending on the strength and characteristics of the string section he was leading.

The Orchestra of St. Luke’s co-concertmaster Krista Bennion Feeney singles out “stylistic dexterity” as a primary skill. “I don’t perform with a Baroque bow very often, although I own one and practice and play with it because you learn a lot by exploring the equipment that was used by our predecessors. But since so many of our players are familiar [with Baroque bowing], it’s easier for us to implement what conductors [who favor period instruments], like [Sir Charles] Mackerras and [Roger] Norrington, want, even though we are playing on modern instruments.”

So how do you get there from here? There are concertmaster-type courses at most major schools, usually emphasizing repertoire and concertmaster solos like those in Sheherazade and Ein Heldenleben, and then there is the Cleveland Institute’s groundbreaking Concertmaster Academy, headed by the Cleveland Orchestra’s concertmaster Bill Preucil.

Preucil says that “a great teacher can teach a telephone pole to play the violin,” but that not every telephone pole can become a concertmaster. If you’re not sure about whether you have the right stuff, Preucil coaches, positive indicators include chamber-music experience; feedback about your leadership you’ve received from teachers, colleagues, and conductors; knowing the whole score, not just your part; being able to recognize implicit but unmarked dynamics; and how you get along with people.

His prize student, Juliana Athayde, says that working with Preucil in the one-on-one mentorship that is the Academy’s model enables her “to gain information that I would have otherwise had to find out over a period of years,” including how to come up with a better bowing, how to resolve a personnel or musical matter, and how to get people on the same page, as well as professional aspects outside her own playing.

“Hardly a day goes by,” she says, “that I don’t think of something he told me that doesn’t come in handy.”

It turns out that there are as many paths to a concertmaster’s chair as there are chairs.

Malcolm Lowe, the Boston Symphony’s concertmaster, started playing in smaller orchestras in rural Saskatchewan. By the time he was seven, he was a concertmaster although he hardly knew what that meant. “I can't remember much,” he says, “except the relationship between the concertmaster and the conductor. As I went on, I was a concertmaster virtually every place I went. You learn a lot of the intangibles that way, and your personality traits—the integrity and sensibilities you bring to the music you play, your priorities, and how you function in that role—dictate whether you absorb the things you need to know.”

In a completely different scenario, San Francisco Symphony concertmaster Alexander Barantschik became a concertmaster by accident. After playing for five years in the Leningrad Symphony under the great Yevgeny Mravinsky, he left Russia at the age of 25, went to Vienna, applied to the Bamberg Symphony for a section job, auditioned, and got the job. A week later, impressed by his playing, they asked him if he’d like to audition for the concertmaster job. “I thought ‘I have nothing to lose,’ and said yes,” he recalls. “Next week I came back, auditioned, and got the job.”