conductors, redux

Towards the end of any orchestra’s season, you tend to hear a lot (make that a LOT) of armchair quarterbacking by the rank and file about the leadership of any conductor within rock throwing range. Some even make the entire organization’s woes solely the responsibility of the stick waver. I’m sure that’s gratifying to the most egotistical of conductors (most of whom range pretty high on the ego scale anyway, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken up conducting), but for those who are music directors and are busting their butts doing all manner of fundraising, it would be something that they’d take offense to.

By the press being lavished upon the recent news that the Chicago Symphony has succeeded in bagging Riccardo Muti (the oldest music director hire in their history, btw), you’d think that the last remaining great conductor who still has his/her full faculties intact had be hired, the rest of the world’s orchestras be damned.

Muti is a catch, there isn’t much doubt about that, but after the news of Dudamel in Los Angeles, and Gilbert in New York, it seems to be news of a more staid sort. It seems appropriate that the ensemble that might be legitimately called the Crotchetiest Orchestra in America has hired its oldest music director in history, and a European, and a conductor whose tastes in modern music might be best summed up with the phrase “No, but thanks”. This from an ensemble which chose those lively wunderkinds Bernard Haitink and Pierre Boulez as its interim conductors after the surprise departure of Daniel Barenboim. They might even be secretly relieved that Muti wasn’t lured to Berlin after Rattle was re-upped last week.

I wish that there were more great, or great-in-waiting conductors in the world, and especially in America. There are some very bad ones, for sure, and some that are merely mediocre. As a member of a major orchestra (in terms of budget) with a less-than-major ability to pay for artists, we see many of the latter, and a few of the former each season. We’re lucky to have a very capable music director in place, and a few guest conductors who are coming back several times who show a lot of promise and a good rapport with the orchestra. The most interesting conductors in the past year or so have been from Finland and Spain – places where there continues to be vigorous state support of the arts, and a long tradition of classical music.

On a side note: the orchestra is going to La Grande and Cove in Eastern Oregon for its annual Community Music Partnership over the weekend, so I won’t be posting until I return on Sunday.