Filling the Philharmonic's podium.(conductors of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra)

Orchestras, like people, lead lives, and the histories of orchestras inevitably become the histories of a series of lives. In the confined world of the American symphony orchestra, the lives of its putatively top members have therefore a resonance that goes beyond the music played or the people involved.

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra has always held a position of preeminence among American orchestras, not so much because of any marked artistic and performing superiority as because of its position in the media capital of the United States. Added to that, in its long history has been the conductorial fame of two of its music directors: Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein.

Most commentators would point to another American orchestra--Philadelphia under Stokowski and Ormandy, Boston under Koussevitsky, Cleveland under Szell, or Chicago under Reiner and Solti--as having been "better" in one sense or another, than the Philharmonic, but that judgment had to confront the oft-repeated proposition that, whatever its artistic and performing vicissitudes, on any given night the Philharmonic could outplay anyone. Whether in fact this proposition was true or not was immaterial: it was Philharmonic gospel. But by the end of the twentieth century that gospel tapestry was becoming ever more threadbare.

When the decline began is a matter of debate, but there was a noticeable change with the retirement of Leonard Bernstein as music director in 1970. His successor--in many ways a brilliant choice--was Pierre Boulez. As is the case with the selection of popes in Rome, the selection of music directors follows a course of choosing someone who can bring a different point of view. Certainly Boulez, an uncompromising modernist with, at that time, limited experience as a conductor, represented a daring move. And it must be said that the Boulez years (1971-78) brought much bracing musicmaking and in certain areas improved orchestral clarity, tuning, and attack. But the consensus was that his music directorship had been a failure as compared to his predecessor's, and with hindsight we can now see clearly that the appointment was premature.

To understand the "premature" aspect, one has to look at the monolith that is the American symphony orchestra and to understand how that monolith has adapted and changed over the past fifty years. To a great extent, the programming canon of the symphony orchestra is bounded by the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart on one end and the works of Rachmaninoff on the other--with all the pillars being German music. Certainly French-oriented conductors like Pierre Monteux, Paul Paray, or Charles Munch can lead orchestras, but all had to have a grounding in "the classics" which meant the German classics: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms. Without that grounding, a conductor was fit only to be a traveling guest or a specialist.

Now, it was quickly evident that Boulez, whatever his strengths, had no great affinity for most of the "classic" repertory, and no affinity for Brahms at all. Even with the nineteenth-century composers he admired, such as Liszt, his conception of the music was filtered through a mesh of the later Stravinsky and Second Vienna School composers such as Webern.

The Boulez years, then, unmasked the limitations of his repertory and his indifference (in contrast to his predecessor) to reaching out to a subscription audience. Thus the tone of the concerts--reflected in Irving Kolodin's quip that "Boulez played Debussy's Iberia as if it were Siberia"--led to a diminishment of subscribers and audiences. Change again was necessary--in a different direction.