June 2004 Archives

I've enjoyed the attacks Susan Elliott of Musical America has made on The New York Times, for its coverage (and critical remarks about) the New York Philharmonic's recent conductor excitement. We need debate, for God's sake. Music critics -- excuse me, classical music critics -- are far too polite.

But I don't quite get why Susan says the Times is "slanted." The critics there don't like Lorin Maazel, the Philharmonic's music director. Susan does like him. But that doesn't make the Times critics "slanted," no matter how often they repeat their view. They just don't think the same thing Susan does. And their opinion is pretty common, out there in the music world. So it doesn't need any special explanation. To dislike the way Maazel makes music is, right or wrong, just (as far as I can see) what most musical people in New York tend to think.

Maybe that's why the Philharmonic made its move -- extending Maazel's contract, but also bringing in Riccardo Muti as a regular guest conductor (he, remember, was the music director the Philharmonic originally wanted, choosing Maazel after Muti turned them down), and then also bringing in two much-liked younger conductors, David Robertson and Alan Gilbert for steady guest-conducting gigs. That certainly got the Philharmonic talked about, and created an impression that something's going on there. What that something might be, I wouldn't try to say. I don't claim any special insight into what goes on inside that institution.

Though one thing did strike me. Maazel conducts for many weeks each season. Add Muti for four weeks, Gilbert and Robertson for two, and maybe a couple of weeks of Colin Davis, who up to now has been the Philharmonic's principal guest conductor. (Weird! The Philharmonic's press release about the conducting changes didn't say a word about what Davis future with the orchestra might be.) What you've got is more than half the season committed to a regular stable of conductors, leaving, perhaps, precious little time and flexibility to engage other guests the Philharmonic might like to consider as future music directors, after Maazel finally steps down in 2009. Or maybe I'm wrong about this; maybe the Philharmonic has plenty of flexibility in the remaining half of the season. But I wonder if they're limiting their options, and how they'll proceed if neither Gilbert nor Robertson wants to succeed Maazel, or if the orchestra doesn't want them.

The Times doesn't report these stories very well. That's quite apart from the Times critics' opinions, which are their own business. I'm talking about the Times's reporting, their purely journalistic coverage, which isn't written by people who know much about the orchestra business. When Ralph Blumenthal used to cover orchestra matters a couple of years ago, he'd get the names of major orchestras wrong, writing (for instance) "Cleveland Symphony" instead of "Cleveland Orchestra," a telltale sign that he wasn't in his comfort zone.

Robin Pogrebin, who covers these stories now, is also not at home with classical music or orchestras, though she does (or so I'd gather from some of the stories she writes) have board members from the Philharmonic and other major institutions in New York running to her to leak things. I'm not sure, though, that she has sources beyond these leaks, who can reliably tell her what's really going on. (If you get leaks, you need these sources to evaluate the leaks.)

And her writing repeatedly shows that she doesn't have any real handle on the field. Her story this time, for instance, talked about the influence of the Philharmonic musicians on the Maazel extension. Timidly, Pogrebin ventured the thought that musicians in the Chicago Symphony, too, were going to have some influence on the choice that orchestra's next music director. But if she really knew the field, she could have said much more -- that musician empowerment is a growing trend throughout the field, for instance, and that the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra decided not to have a music director, but instead chose to give its musicians far more artistic control. Pogrebin's Chicago example seemed like a random scrap of information, vaguely relevant, but not grounded in any reasonably thorough understanding of what's happening around the country.

Pogrebin, of course, has a nearly impossible job as an arts reporter. One week she's covering the Philharmonic; next she'll write about architecture, and after that about the New-York Historical Society. There's no way anyone could be completely at home in all these areas. So I feel for her, but at the same time I have to say that when she writes about classical music, she doesn't really get it right.

As long as I'm talking about the press, I might as well say something about how music critics write about music directors. Or, more specifically, the way they write about how music directors are chosen. Often, critics suggest their own choices for these positions, reasoning, as far as I can tell, something like this: "I like the way X conducts. And if one concert by X is good, a whole season would be even better. I also like the kind of repertoire X conducts, and would like to see my local orchestra do more of that repertoire. So they ought to choose X as their music director, and let him [or her] plan their entire season."

Which sounds completely reasonable, though it's surprising how often music directors don't plan their orchestras' seasons, but instead take responsibility only for the concerts they themselves conduct. They also might, in practice, play only a small role in the choice of soloists and guest conductors. I've even heard about one top orchestra whose music director -- one of the most famous conductors alive -- wants nothing to do with choosing guest conductors, because he doesn't have time to hear other people conduct, and therefore doesn't think it's right to have an opinion about which conductors ought to be engaged. This may be common, for all I know.

But what's more important are all the things orchestra managements think about, when it's time to pick a music director, that music critics often don't mention. Orchestra managements want to know, for instance, whether a conductor will be effective having authority over the musicians, not just on the podium, but in deciding when people go on vacation, who gets to play concerti with the orchestra, and how string players are going to rank in the hierarchy of their sections. Because of these responsibilities, managements are often wary of hiring young music directors, especially at major orchestras; they want a conductor to have years of experience doing these things in Atlanta, let's say, before they consider him or her for a music director's job in Chicago or New York.

Next, managements want to know how a prospective music director conducts the standard German repertoire. For better or worse, that's at the core of most orchestras' programming. It's the music ticket-buyers -- and donors -- most want to hear. So it's rare for an orchestra to take a chance on a conductor who doesn't have this music firmly under his or her belt, or who specializes in something else. Not long ago I had a long talk about orchestral matters with someone very influential in the field, and we talked about music director choices. I ran some names by him. Yan Pascal Tortellier? Not a good choice; conducts the French repertoire, not the German. Antonio Pappano? Best known for opera, hasn't yet done the symphonic repertoire enough. I'm not saying these judgments are correct, but they're an example of how orchestra managements often think.

Finally, managements want to know how prospective music directors accompany soloists. Are they good at doing this? Do soloists like to play with them? If not, the orchestra will have a problem. Choose a music director soloists don't like, and they're less likely to play with the orchestra. Or, maybe, they'll ask for a higher fee. Or they won't make themselves available on those occasions, which pop up every season, when a soloist cancels, and a replacement has to be found, often at the last moment. (When the Cleveland Orchestra did the Verdi Requiem at the end of this past season, two of the soloists cancelled a day or two before the performance.) So it's in an orchestra's interest to have a music director that soloists like to work with.

And now there's something else -- how effective will a prospective music director be in the community? That's going to be a factor in future choices.

I'd like to see critics take these things into account when they speculate about who's going to get a music director's job, or when they offer their own choices. They don't have to agree with all this conventional orchestra wisdom, but they ought to be aware of it, and when they offer their own choices for music director posts, they ought to score each candidate on each of the factors orchestras look at. Then, if they like, they can explain why they think someone should be picked, even if he or she doesn't meet all the conventional requirements -- but at least they'll be talking about the same things orchestra managements talk about, and thus might be listened to.

(There are more factors than I've named, by the way; I don't claim to be an expert. One rather deep consideration can be how a prospective music director might help the long-range development of an orchestra. The San Francisco Symphony, according to one account I've heard, was in terrible shape after Edo de Waart's reign as its music director. Herbert Blomstedt then was chosen to succeed de Waart, not because he would make exciting music, but because his solidity would help the orchestra restore its discipline. After Blomstedt, they were ready for Michael Tilson Thomas, who could build on what Blomstedt had done, and bring the orchestra to its present height.)

Subscribers to Musical America had a delightful surprise this morning -- editor Susan Elliott went out and bashed The New York Times. She was reacting to the Times's coverage (linked here) of the New York Philharmonic announcement, about Maazel's contract being extended, Muti coming in regularly to guest-conduct, with still more regular guest-conducting slots for David Robertson and Alan Gilbert.

Susan's position was simple enough, starting with her headline: "New York Times Coverage Slanted?" (You have to subscribe to Musical America to read the editorial.) After setting the stage by describing the Times's double-barreled coverage (a news story paired with commentary by the chief Times classical music critic, Anthony Tommasini), she gets down to business:

Why [she asks] is New York’s primary newspaper so invested in bashing the New York Philharmonic’s current executive and artistic leadership? Lorin Maazel is hardly chopped liver, and so what if he is older than David Robertson and Franz Welser-Möst?

She then defends the Philharmonic and Maazel:

Has the orchestra ever played better than under Maazel in recent memory? Have the players been happier with their artistic leader in the last decade? Is the orchestra running the deficits of the Saint Louis Symphony, which just appointed Robertson, or the Cleveland Orchestra, where opinion on Welser-Möst is still divided? And by the way, yes, the strength of an orchestra’s leadership is reflected in the bottom line.

To which my main reaction is, hey, fabulous! Let's have some debate, for God's sake. Let's disagree with each other, let's shout and scream, let's stop being all classical music-like and civilized. If these things -- which in the end are the survival of classical music -- are important, let's get aroused about them.

But I can't resist adding a few words of my own. First, the Times isn't slanted; its critics just have a different view from Susan's. Further, Susan should at least recognize that this view isn't unique to the Times. As far as I can see, most of the New York music world (musicians and administrators) isn't exactly crazy about Maazel, and neither, on the whole, are the people I meet from orchestras around the country. Not that Maazel doesn't have supporters (and, yes, the Philharmonic certainly does play well, at least from a technical point of view, when he conducts). But so many people dislike the music Maazel makes that nobody has to propose any "slant" to explain what the Times critics think.

St. Louis, further, is in good financial health, and the Philharmonic would be no means consider itself financially secure going into the future, whatever its momentary bottom line might be. No orchestra would. And as for the bottom line being a measure of an orchestra's health, yes, sure, in some ways it is -- but it's in no way an artistic measure. The Boston Symphony, during the desert of the Ozawa years, was rolling in money. The Pittsburgh Symphony saw a steady drop in ticket sales, with all the financial problems that go along with that, during a period that included most of Mariss Jansons's tenure -- and during those years, thanks to Jansons and the musicians, Pittsburgh was arguably the best place in America to hear orchestral music.

As for the Times, they really don't report these stories well.

As we all know, the classical music world is looking for a new, younger audience. Just today I learned about a chamber music concert where a lot of the audience was young. Turned out these younger people worked for companies that gave money to the group that presented the concert, and they'd gotten free tickets. But still they seemed to love the music.

(An obvious question: Does the presenting group have these people's names? It's important to market future concerts to them!)

And then at the ASOL conference in Pittsburgh, I met the new executive director of an important orchestra, who's just 30 years old. He has a new marketing director with dynamic ideas, who's also in his 30s. And, I'm told, the new board chairman of this orchestra is also under 40.

All this focused something I've been thinking for a while. There's no shortage of younger people who work in the classical music business. My wife, a classical music critic for The New York Times, is in her 30s, and many times has told me how many colleagues she has of about the same age. I know plenty of orchestra administators (along with staff members of other classical music organizations) who are in their 30s or their 40s. Orchestral musicians, too, can be young, even in major orchestras. Some are in their 20s. As I've pointed out before, orchestras now are younger than their audience.

So if people in the field are young, there's got to be a younger audience, out there somewhere, ready to come to concerts whenever someone figures out how to attract it. That's much more logical than thinking that the younger people who work in classical music are somehow aberrations, so untypical of people their age that they can't possibly be representative. I'd add that this pessimistic supposition doesn't fit my experience. All the younger people I've met in the classical music business seem perfectly normal (one measure of which is that they all have friends who don't pay attention to classical music at all).

So where's the younger audience? I bet it's not so very far away.

Not that I wanted a work binge. But for three months, more or less, I've had a life like finals week in college, minus a few days when, with no absolutely immediate deadlines, I simply collapsed, or stole a few moments to do something fun.

So in the last month, here's some of the work I've done:

-- wrote the script for the last of my Pittsburgh Symphony concerts, and hosted the event

-- started work as a consultant for a major orchestra, discussing problems related to finding a new audience

-- finished three short canons for three unaccompanied female voices, and a song for soprano and piano (would have written more if I'd had time, and actually I wrote most of these pieces before the work siege began)

-- wrote commentary for three Concert Companion tryouts, two with orchestras (the New York Philharmonic and the Pittsburgh Symphony), one at a tech conference organized by Walter Mossberg, the wildly influential personal technology columnist at the Wall Street Journal (and no, my Pittsburgh and Journal connections played no part here)

-- spoke about the future of orchestras on Kurt Andersen's very fine Studio 360 show on public radio; I was the guest for the entire hour-long show (you can hear it here -- look for "Barenboim, Beethoven, Tilson Thomas")

-- spoke about the connections between pop and classical music for a show on the CBC (Canadian public radio, in effect)

--  did newspaper and radio interviews about the Concert Companion, with at least one more coming up

-- went to the American Symphony Orchestra League convention in Pittsburgh, though I didn't see much of the larger performing arts conference that enveloped it

-- gave a lunchtime talk to the artistic adminstrators of the assembled orchestras, about the audience for orchestral concerts

-- wrote my June NewMusicBox column, about why New York needs a website that would review new music concerts

-- discussed a lot of future work: more orchestra consultancies, more concert hosting, some commissions for compositions (none of which, of course, may actually happen)

And more. The Concert Companion took more time than all the rest put together, and I'll say more about it somewhere in my next few posts. It proved an amazing success, more or less confounding the dubious speculations some people indulged in ("it'll keep people from listening!"). At a focus group after the Pittsburgh concert, even the one participant who didn't like it said he'd recommend it to his friends, because everybody else in the focus group had liked it so much.

The Pittsburgh concert I hosted was also very gratifying. I put something in the script about feeling I was part of a new Pittsburgh institution. The audience burst into applause, not because I'd said something nice about their town, or their concert series, but because they and I have evidently forged a real bond. Somehow the symphony, I, and the audience really have created an institution, and it's both gratifying and fun.

More to come on some of these things, especially the Concert Companion. It's good to be back (and to have time to breathe).