Conductors Play Musical Chairs

Conductors Play Musical Chairs
▪ 2004

      In recent years conductors have increasingly become the musical equivalents of professional athletes, parlaying their high-profile public personas and singular skills in a market that is driven by professional excellence and name value. Given that, 2003 was a particularly busy year for conductors, many of whom played their own version of musical chairs at orchestras across the world.

      One of the most prominent conductors, Mariss Jansons (see Biographies (Jansons, Mariss )), made his debut as the new music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra at a concert in Munich (Ger.) in October. Jansons, who planned to leave the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Symphony at the end of the 2003–04 season after having taken that orchestra to new critical heights, was also named principal conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, where he would take over in 2004.

      Among those making debuts at the helm of their new orchestras in 2003 were Yakov Kreizberg with the Vienna Symphony, Osmo Vänskä with the Minnesota Orchestra, and Leon Botstein with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. Composer-songwriter Marvin Hamlisch debuted as the principal pops conductor of the Buffalo (N.Y.) Philharmonic Orchestra during the summer, and Claudio Abbado led a new version of the Lucerne (Switz.) Festival Orchestra in August. Abbado re-created the orchestra, which had been founded by the legendary Arturo Toscanini in 1938 and disbanded in 1993.

      Other conductors signed contracts during the year that called for them to assume their new posts in 2004. Those included Marek Janowski, who was to take over as the music director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande; Andrey Boreyko, who was to become the principal conductor of the Hamburg (Ger.) Symphony; and Edo de Waart, who would take the helm at the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Also in 2004, Christian Thielemann would succeed James Levine as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic when the latter left to become the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

      As the year closed, so too did the tenure of Simone Young at Opera Australia. Young's contract was not extended following an acrimonious dispute during which both sides finally agreed that the company could not afford her artistic vision. She was subsequently named the next director of the Hamburg State Opera. Young would be succeeded by British conductor Richard Hickox, who was also the principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and music director of the City of London Sinfonia.

      Other agreements concluded in 2003 would also yield results on the horizon. Riccardo Chailly was slated to become the music director of the Leipzig (Ger.) Gewandhaus Orchestra and Leipzig Opera in 2005; and that same year, Ingo Metzmacher would take over as chief conductor of the Netherlands Opera. Kent Nagano, who had become a mainstay of Berlin's music scene as chief conductor and artistic director of the city's Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester, was set to become the general music director of Germany's Bavarian State Opera in 2006.

Harry Sumrall

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Universalium. 2010.

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