New York

There were two reasons -- apart from innocent pleasure -- to hear Riccardo Muti conduct the New York Philharmonic two weeks ago. First, I'd heard that the orchestra sounded resplendent when he'd led it last season. Second, persistent rumors say he'll be the Philharmonic's next music director, after Kurt Masur leaves in 2002. I put these thoughts together and got curious. Suppose the rumors are correct? What sort of music director might Mr. Muti -- one of the world's most vivid conductors, former music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra and now in charge of music at Milan's La Scala opera house -- turn out to be?
And I must say the rumors are persistent. They even got out of hand in October, when Norman Lebrecht, an obstreperous British music journalist, wrote that the Philharmonic had offered Mr. Muti the job at a salary of $1.5 million, and he'd turned it down. The orchestra ferociously objected because the story wasn't true. And in Mr. Lebrecht's hands, it wasn't even credible. (In the same column, he'd told the world that Seiji Ozawa had been fired by the Boston Symphony. Mr. Ozawa's leaving, of course, but on his own initiative; the symphony's administration learned about his plans just two days before they were announced.)

But then last year at SummerFest La Jolla, a chamber music festival, a Philharmonic musician was asked in a panel discussion what part the members of the orchestra have played in the search for a new music director. Hardly any, he replied, except that, because he speaks Italian, he had been asked to chat up Mr. Muti at a party. This statement makes no sense, of course, unless we all agree that Mr. Muti is the favored candidate. And just last week, someone in the Philharmonic hierarchy made sure I'd hear that, at least in his view, Mr. Muti had been picked. All that remained, he wanted me to know, was to negotiate the terms.
Was that true? "No one has been offered the music directorship of the New York Philharmonic," says Lois Cohn, the orchestra's director of publicity, speaking with a kind of patient resignation in the face of all the rumors. More forcefully, but off the record, highly placed Philharmonic sources categorically deny that any offer has been made or that negotiations have taken place, although they volunteered that the orchestra did pursue Mr. Muti -- who hadn't appeared in America for many years -- to guest-conduct.

The results of that campaign, as I heard myself, were spectacular, and here people at the Philharmonic spoke on the record. "The orchestra had a wonderful experience with Muti both last year and this," says Ms. Cohn. "He enjoys making music with us and wants to continue." "Something electric happens when Muti conducts," says Welz Kauffman, the Philharmonic's artistic administrator. "It's a real rarity -- the audience is on the edge of their seats. We're hoping there will be a relationship, whatever form it will take."
So far, this only means that Mr. Muti will return to conduct in the 2001-2002 season. But the rumors can't be buried yet, and a friend of Mr. Muti's (a classical-music professional, who agreed to be quoted if I didn't use her name) brought all the strands together, at least to my satisfaction. "He's the Philharmonic's No. 1 choice," she said, but adds that no formal offer has been made.
And as she and others stress, the lack of any formal offer isn't a surprise. In the rarefied heights where Mr. Muti and the Philharmonic move, both parties are as powerful as sovereign states. Any conversation they might have is governed, in effect, by diplomatic protocol; the orchestra won't make an offer until informal discussions have convinced it Mr. Muti will accept. Any conversations so far would be tentative, exploratory and of course hugely private; while no one at the Philharmonic will confirm they've taken place, I think they very likely have.

And I'm glad to say Mr. Muti's recent concert made a convert of me. In the past I've wondered whether Mr. Muti's astounding force -- he can do with an orchestra more or less what Michael Jordan used to do with a basketball -- might have been a little abstract, creating an orchestral surge that sometimes overwhelmed the music it ought to serve. There's also lots of talk of Mr. Muti's ego, fanned by contentious articles on his La Scala reign that ran last year in Opera News. His relationships with singers, it's well known, can be stormy, and it's amusing to hear two views of that dispute. "He won't let singers sing the way they want," complain opera people bitterly, while Mr. Muti's partisans say exactly the same thing, only now in praise of his artistic determination.
Mr. Muti's program at the Philharmonic was hardly one an egomaniac would pick, since it featured three unfamiliar works, none of them a crowd-pleaser -- Stravinsky's Le Baiser de la Fee, Richard Strauss's early Aus Italien and the overture to Rossini's opera Il Viaggio a Rheims. Even the Philharmonic's musicians didn't know these pieces. "Muti wanted to see how flexible the orchestra was," his friend who spoke to me suggests. "His work with them last year was fun, but now his attitude was, 'Let's see what this is all about.'"
What I noticed first was the Philharmonic's sound. It's no secret that the orchestra can be undisciplined and coarse. As even Mr. Masur once said to me, "They're the best musicians in the world, if you can get them to play together." In the past, I've felt the principal woodwinds played too loudly, as if to draw attention to themselves; the trumpets' only message sometimes has been, "Hey, ma, look at me!"; and the strings have sounded gritty, especially the first violins, as if some of them weren't working hard enough to play in tune.
But not with Mr. Muti. The Philharmonic's musicians, it's well known, often scorn conductors, but this one caught their attention right at the start of his first rehearsal, and by the end of the last of the three concerts he led, the orchestra was his. The musicians even lined up to visit him in his dressing room, "as if they were about to kiss his ring," one source told me. They applauded vociferously when he took his bows at the concert I heard, and it was easy to understand why. He transformed them. Their sound was radiant; it glowed. The horns still played like independent contractors, but every other instrument took its proper place in the ensemble.
In no way did Mr. Muti shape the music to draw attention to himself. I would have liked a wider dynamic range; the Strauss, without more strongly marked soft and louder passages, was sometimes hard to follow (being such an early work, that may be the composer's fault). And in the Rossini overture, chords meant to be louder than their surroundings were unconvincing, because they were played not more loudly, but only with a sharper attack. But these are subtle points. Mr. Muti led the Philharmonic with great precision and respect, both for the music and the musicians. That was especially true in the Stravinsky, which with a little more work might have been crisper -- Stravinsky's characteristic dry, quick jumps from one instrumental group to another took a hair too long to come into focus -- but was in every other way admirable. The Philharmonic sounded like a tight, convinced ensemble.

So should Mr. Muti be music director? I've heard some doubts expressed -- he wouldn't spend enough time with the orchestra, some people say, and wouldn't be a presence in New York. My own ideal would be another Leonard Bernstein, if that were possible, someone who'd draw attention outside the classical music world (to help classical music's future evolve by building bridges to people who don't listen to it). But the only Bernstein figure currently around is Michael Tilson Thomas, music director of the San Francisco Symphony, whom the Philharmonic musicians don't like.
And Mr. Muti has another virtue. Orchestras don't just choose conductors for immediate effect; they also want someone who can build an ensemble that can hold together musically for many years. For this, Mr. Muti might be perfect. Mr. Masur deserves great credit for bringing the Philharmonic together after the sorry years when Zubin Mehta was in charge. Mr. Muti might take things further, giving the orchestra a polish and responsibility beyond anything it has now. He'd get my vote.

Wall Street Journal, February 17,2000