I just ran across this story from the Salt Lake Tribune about the possible succession of Keith Lockhart as music director of the Utah Symphony by their former principal conductor Pavel Kogan. Kogan was also a candidate for music director here in Oregon, but Carlos Kalmar was chosen instead.
It’s interesting to read what one player, concertmaster Ralph Matson has to say about the possible move (he’s effusively positive), because I remember doing due-diligence while on the search committee here in Oregon, and the impressions of many of the musicians I talked to in Utah were very similar to our own here in Portland after his guest appearances. He was very charismatic, flamboyant in his gestures, and knew how to milk an audience for applause. And very, very Russian. He was also very knowledgeable about the scores he conducted here, though I have to say he was allowed to pick mostly his own repertoire, and it didn’t fall at all out of the mainstream (Brahms First Symphony, Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet, among others). But he also tended to have four basic settings: very fast, or very slow, and very loud, or very soft. It became exhausting to play under him, just from the physical demands, never mind deciphering the beat, which often became very erratic and hard to follow. I believe that the phrase “one trick pony” was uttered more than once in back stage note-comparing sessions between us musicians.
So I find it interesting that Utah is getting close enough to him this time around that it’s gotten out into the major press in Salt Lake. Obviously, there is a mating dance of some sort going on, or this story wouldn’t have run. People have obviously been talking to the critic in Salt Lake, either from management, the musicians, or both. Kogan is a serious musician, very serious, which is why he was appointed to counter-balance the pops associations that came along with Lockhart, who retained his position as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra. I wonder how he will jibe with audiences in Salt Lake City, especially with the need to connect to new and more diverse prospective concert goers that is the concern of nearly every cultural organization in this country these days.
With quality conductors hard to find (or at least, marketable ones) every reasonable candidate must be given at least a good, hard look. We’ll see what happens…