New York

There we were in Avery Fisher Hall, we being more critics than you'd usually find at the New York Philharmonic. What drew us was a rare one-off event, not the normal four-concert run that guest conductors get on the Philharmonic's main subscription series, but instead a single evening led, in his Philharmonic debut, by Mariss Jansons, widely touted as a top choice to be the orchestra's next music director.
And there in the lobby was a man I'll call the Veteran, someone who's been around the block a few times in the orchestra biz and knows more about orchestras than any critic. "Don't think this concert means anything," he said, when I stepped over to say hello. "You can't draw conclusions from this one performance -- or," he added, "from next week, either," by which he meant a subscription series due to be conducted by Christoph Eschenbach, also rumored to be a top candidate for the music director's job. "Tonight has only one effect," the Veteran concluded. "It gives your critics' tribe a chance to pontificate."

He wasn't wrong. The event that evening, a concert in honor of Leonard Bernstein, was supposed to be conducted by Kurt Masur, the Philharmonic's outgoing music director (outgoing at the end of next season, which might as well be tomorrow, since orchestras plan their schedules far in advance). But Mr. Masur had to have surgery, and Mr. Jansons replaced him, agreeing -- though more than one veteran of the orchestral wars wondered why -- to conduct just a single concert with only three rehearsals, enough for some conductors, but surely not for him.
And here we start to see why it's risky to judge a conductor -- and, still more perilous, the relationship of a conductor and an orchestra -- from just one performance. First, you have to know the conductor. On this occasion, I was reasonably prepared; I'd heard Mr. Jansons three times with orchestras where he's currently music director, twice with the Pittsburgh Symphony and once with the Oslo (Norway) Philharmonic. I could easily understand why there's such a buzz about him in the American orchestral world, why professionals visit Pittsburgh and come back impressed, even moved.
I cast my own vote with an ecstatic review on this page in 1998, after Mr. Jansons' first appearance with the Pittsburgh Symphony in Carnegie Hall. Mr. Jansons got such fine shadings from the orchestra, both in dynamics -- subtle changes in loudness -- and in emotional tone. You can go to the New York Philharmonic and never hear Kurt Masur (who of course is good at other things) evoke a sound that's truly loud or truly soft. Mr. Jansons, by contrast, can conduct at the furthest extreme of triumphant loud glory and also at the edge of silence, urging more variety at both ends of the scale -- or, as a musician would put it, more gradations below piano and above forte (and more in the middle, too) -- than most conductors get in the entire spectrum.
Best of all, Mr. Jansons got these results by working with the musicians, not by dominating them. Some conductors -- like Riccardo Muti, who made the Philharmonic look hapless when he turned down its all but public offer of the music directorship -- can awe and charm and maybe intimidate an orchestra, forging a gleaming unanimity. Mr. Jansons brings the musicians into his conception of a piece, rousing them to join in as individuals, each realizing a united vision of the music in his or her own way.
This makes for gripping performances, even with a not first-rate orchestra like Oslo; the sound -- pointed, vivid, alive -- just draws you in. But would that happen with the Philharmonic? Mr. Jansons, I'm afraid, started with two strikes against him. He'd need more than three rehearsals (which might have been enough for Mr. Muti to work his more authoritarian magic); he'd need more than a single concert, maybe more than a single series of concerts to awaken a cooperative spirit. The Philharmonic, after all, is well known as a "stubborn instrument" (to quote a friend in the business), with musicians who respond better to authority than to persuasion, which may be why Mr. Muti did so well with them.

The first half of Mr. Jansons' concert was disastrous. He tried something sweet in the overture to Rossini's "La Gazza Ladra" -- toying with the second, more lyrical theme as if it were a waltz by Strauss -- but the musicians followed him with neither lightness nor apparent joy. The sound they made throughout the piece was nasty: forced, harsh and out of tune, as it also was in Leonard Bernstein's "Serenade for Solo Violin, Strings, and Percussion" (where Itzhak Perlman, the soloist, didn't help things because his own playing wasn't very alert)
After intermission, the Berlioz "Symphonie Fantastique" was quite a bit better, though still just a rough sketch of what I heard Mr. Jansons make it a year ago with his Pittsburgh orchestra. Two conducting details stood out, typical of Mr. Jansons, but conceivably also steps toward taming or inspiring the Philharmonic. In certain tricky passages for the winds and horns, he'd all but stop conducting, forcing the musicians to fall back on their own considerable resources and play with bracing crisp precision. In the fourth movement, the "March to the Scaffold," he got the brass to step out with a blazing full fortissimo, but also kept them from blatting mindlessly. How he did that was instructive. He held his hands high (which meant "play loudly"), but beat time with tiny gestures (meaning "loudly, sure, but not too loudly").

That would have frustrated people who like to see conductors act out the music. Those people must have loved Christoph Eschenbach in his Philharmonic appearance a week after Mr. Jansons', and in fact I watched four women all but dance out of Fisher Hall afterwards, one of them crying, "I could go backstage and hug that conductor."
Certainly Mr. Eschenbach -- petite and trim, stylishly bald, dressed in a sleek black Nehru suit -- was adorable, and musically he can be far more than that. I'd heard him at Carnegie Hall when he was music director of the Houston Symphony, and from that orchestra he got playing that was both notably lush and (a rare combination) notably precise. But this didn't happen with the Philharmonic. To some large part of the audience, Mr. Eschenbach may have dramatized the music he led, the Brahms Double Concerto and the Dvorak "New World" symphony; I thought he might have all too often flailed, trying to control too much and making it hard for the orchestra to settle into any rhythmic groove.
In the Brahms, he made some lovely transitions, easing one lyrical moment into the next. Since the slow movement of the Dvorak is all lyrical moments, I wasn't surprised that it came off beautifully -- though maybe the musicians simply were inspired by their breathtaking English horn soloist, Thomas Stacy, who made the movement's famous melody something rapt and unforgettable. Apart from the slow movement, the symphony was mostly dull -- not quite coherent, just a little slovenly, and also not quite balanced, the brass and horns sometimes covering the violins.

All of which leaves me with questions. If the cards were stacked against Mr. Jansons, why would he accept the gig? Possibly because people at the Philharmonic, both on and off the record, have been saying that no one who hasn't guest-conducted the orchestra will ever be music director. Thus Mr. Jansons might have thought he'd better appear. Why would he want a job so many people think is wrong for him? For a very human reason, I might guess -- despite his fame among professionals, he's never been at the lofty public height to which the Philharmonic would take him.
And should we rule out the Philharmonic for both him and Mr. Eschenbach, because their closely watched performances weren't any better? I won't try to pontificate. I might expect a potential music director to please me more. But then both men have distinguished records, including what's often a crucial backstage qualification, a distinguished record building the quality of an orchestra, which Mr. Jansons did for years in Oslo (and now does in Pittsburgh), and Mr. Eschenbach did in Houston. The musicians, or so I'm told, didn't take to Mr. Jansons but liked Mr. Eschenbach, especially for his sensitive partnership with the orchestra's concertmaster and principal cellist, the two soloists in the Brahms. But in the end, does either man have the stature to survive in the big town? From just one concert -- and without much more inside information -- I don't see how any critic can say for sure.

How do orchestras pick a music director? Most of us think they'd pick the best conductor, or else we'd like to think they'll pick the conductor with the most interesting repertoire, 

But that's not how it works. There are powerful backstage factors at work, as I mentioned in this piece. Some of them are:

1. A music director -- at least of a major orchestra -- has to be good at conducting the standard repertoire. We might not like that; we might want a conductor who's good at contemporary music. But then we're arguing about what orchestras should be, not who should conduct them. Major orchestras get most of their audience -- and, most crucially, most of their funding -- from people who want to hear standard repertoire. Thus they need a music director who's good at it.

2. A music director has to be good at accompanying soloists. Again, this is built into the way orchestras are now. Major soloists, playing familiar concertos, help draw an audience. If the soloists don't like working with the music director, they'll be less likely to play with the orchestra, which will mean fewer tickets sold.

3. A music director administers many things the musicians care about. He or she is normally in charge of hiring, firing, seating within the sections of the orchestra, leaves of absence, and many other things musicians care deeply about. If a candidate for the music director's job can't handle this -- and in a major orchestra, it's a giant, very tricky task -- he or she isn't qualified to do the job.

4. A music director has to build the orchestra. He or she doesn't just conduct wonderful concerts. He or she needs to maintain the quality of the orchestra, or in other words the quality of the musicians' playing, their intonation, their rhythmic precision, the balance among the sections, and the ability of the players to play each composer with the correct style. Some conductors are good at this; others aren't. Some conductors lead wonderful concerts with orchestras others have built, but can't build or maintain an orchestra themselves. These conductors aren't likely candidates for a major music director's job.