Orchestras face the music: Conductors are scarce

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 3, 2000

Where have all the conductors gone?

That's the lament you hear these days from the people who run American symphony orchestras.

"The pickings are slim," says Henry Fogel, president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, speaking of the predicament facing his counterparts at three of the other fabled Big Five orchestras.

The New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Orchestra are all seeking to fill pending music director vacancies. They're not having much success.

"If you start with the assumption that a world-famous orchestra needs somebody who is already a star to become music director, then it's very hard to come up with three obvious names," says Fogel, whose orchestra has the luxury of having its famous music director, Daniel Barenboim, under contract through 2006.

In fact, when the Cleveland Orchestra filled its music directorship a year ago, it went with a relative unknown, Franz Welser-Most, a brilliant but youthful conductor from Austria.

Add in the other major orchestras seeking music directors -- Minnesota, Indianapolis, Toronto and Houston among them -- and you have the makings of a full-blown crisis on the podium.

The Florida Orchestra also is in the music director market, with Jahja Ling stepping down at the end of the 2001-02 season. Last month, executive director Leonard Stone and other members of the orchestra's search committee flew to Europe to hear a possible candidate, Estonian conductor Eri Klas, lead his Finnish orchestra in a concert in Amsterdam.

Though search committee members won't offer their opinions of Klas on the record, it doesn't sound as if they were bowled over. But until he or any other candidate comes to Tampa Bay and guest conducts the orchestra for a week of rehearsals and concerts, it will be hard to assess his suitability for the position.

"One of the things you have to watch out for is the candidate who comes in and gives a great concert, and only later do you learn he's picked his three best pieces," says Fogel, who often advises orchestras on music director searches.

"Maybe he does a Mahler symphony, it sounds wonderful, and everybody says that's our man. Then you do some homework and discover the minute you put a Beethoven or Brahms symphony in front of him, he can't do it."

Guest conductors for this season, which opens in a couple of weeks, were already in place before Ling announced his departure. As a result, most of the likely candidates will be on the podium in the 2001-02 season. Only two guest conductors in this season's lineup -- Michael Christie, a young American who leads an all-Copland program in November, and Jeffrey Kahane, an outstanding pianist turned conductor who appears as soloist and conductor with the orchestra in May -- are potential candidates.

Two others I've heard mentioned are Christof Perick, a German widely experienced in opera and former music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Carlos Kalmar, an Austrian born in Uruguay who is principal conductor of the Grant Park Civic Orchestra in Chicago.

More names will be floated in the months to come. "I actually think there is a pretty good pool of candidates for an orchestra like Florida, which has a good reputation," Fogel said. "Being a success there would be a good piece on a conductor's resume. For all the time Jahja was there, most of the major orchestras asked him to guest conduct."

Obviously the music comes first, but the music director's job also has a strong marketing and civic leadership aspect. He or (still rarely) she is expected to do everything from schmoozing with big donors to championing music education in the community to putting an appealing face and personality on the somewhat anonymous identity of a symphony orchestra.

If the Florida Orchestra decides it needs its own concert hall, a distinct possibility, the music director would play a role in raising money and designing it.

But what's in a conductor's best interest is not necessarily the same as that of an orchestra and its hometown. Careerism can get in the way of commitment to the community.

In fact, many music directors are essentially absentee leaders. They hold jobs elsewhere and spend a lot of time on airplanes. Ling has three other posts and a full schedule of guest conducting. Usually he is in Tampa Bay only when conducting, which amounts to around eight weeks this season. He is paid an estimated $250,000.

Even the mighty Chicago Symphony has Barenboim's conducting services only about a dozen weeks a season.

Residency in the community -- presumably a measure of commitment -- was a priority of recent music director searches of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and the Florida West Coast Symphony in Sarasota. But given the peripatetic nature of the music world and the tight supply of conductors, that sort of stipulation may unnecessarily limit the field of candidates.

It can also be somewhat artificial. Several years ago, I visited Roger Nierenberg, then music director in Jacksonville, on the afternoon of a concert. His house had a decidedly unlived-in air. With the kind of money conductors make, they can afford multiple residences. Nierenberg also had a place in New York that, I suspect, was really home.

Likewise, Ling had a house in Tampa for a number of years, while keeping his primary residence in Cleveland.

An absentee music director isn't necessarily bad. For all his jet-setting, Ling has done a good job. He stuck by the orchestra during hard times when it almost folded. He kept up artistic standards.

But the orchestra's next music director needs to have more connection to the community than simply being seen in the concert hall on eight to 10 weekends a year.

Or perhaps a part of this change ought to involve redefining the job to allow more sharing of artistic authority. For example, it's standard for music directors to pick the guest conductors, but that can lead to conflicts of interest. It's not unknown for music directors to trade podium engagements with conducting colleagues, often represented by the same management, for professional or personal reasons, at the expense of their orchestras' musical needs.

Then there's the issue of repertoire. No conductor is great at every kind of music.

One solution adopted by some orchestras is the establishment of principal guest conductor posts to complement their music directors. If the music director has a particular talent for romantic 19th century works, as Ling does, then perhaps the principal guest conductor might be someone who specializes in, say, Baroque or contemporary American music or French impressionism.

"You could have a principal guest whose job is to find you two weeks a year," Fogel says.

So how will the process play out for the Florida Orchestra? For one thing, with a 12-member search committee that includes six musicians, the decision will ultimately lie with the orchestra players. They, after all, have to work most closely with the music director.

Some orchestras in music director searches, such as those in Jacksonville and Sarasota, put together a season of guest conductors explicitly identified as candidates. This sort of beauty contest approach can sell tickets, but Fogel doesn't recommend it.

"Even if you don't make it so blatant, everyone assumes the guests are candidates anyway," he says. "But it may be that one or two are not candidates because you couldn't get all the conductors you wanted or the dates you wanted. I've always felt the less spotlight on the process, the more naturally everybody can go about their job.

"I think there are some conductors who might refuse to come under such circumstances. What conductor wants to be known as the candidate who failed?"

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