Public attention is now focused at last on the weakened and precarious condition of the music directors (our current euphuism for celebrity conductors) across the entire United States.
Merely to mention the orchestras involved is to convey the magnitude of the problem. Of our six major orchestras—those of New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Los Angeles—only one orchestra is secure and comfortable in its choice of conductor, and that is Cleveland’s, largely because Christoph von Dohnányi, the orchestra’s new music director, has yet to begin his first season. Elsewhere the situation ranges from troubled to dismal. In Boston, Seiji Ozawa’s reign, long under attack from the press, is openly threatened by the popularity of Sir Colin Davis, the orchestra’s principal guest conductor. In Chicago, Sir Georg Solti, hitherto the most securely entrenched conductor in America, must contend with extensive newspaper discussion of the choice of his eventual replacement. In Los Angeles, Carlo Maria Giulini is increasingly perceived as a musician of limited repertory, somehow lacking in that “star quality” no less necessary on the West Coast than elsewhere. Even in Philadelphia, where for over half a century Eugene Ormandy seemed oblivious to everything but old age, Riccardo Muti seems (despite having just signed a new contract) to have failed to excite his musicians or to provide a new and convincing image for the orchestra.
The most strained situation is in New York. Here Zubin Mehta has in no way succeeded in exerting an influence on the
