SF Symphony: James Gaffigan with Ray Chen

James Gaffigan

Photo copyright Miguel Lorenzo / courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

James Gaffigan, once an associate conductor of San Francisco Symphony, currently music director of the Komische Oper, Berlin, was back this week, leading a program of, really, pretty standard stuff and also chatting with Iris Kwok of SFCV. I went to the second of three performances last night, and you bet I was surprised: I was mostly bored.

What didn't bore me at all was the first work on the program, Missy Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), which was about ten minutes of purely gorgeous sound, rotating slowly around the orchestra and with a remarkable concluding sonority that included a bunch of harmonicas. Looking at the instrumentation, which called for one member of several sections to play harmonicas, I'll note that, perhaps respecting the sheer size of Davies, two members of each section played harmonicas.

I do not really get people's love for the Barber Violin Concerto, here well-played by Ray Chen. It is kinda dull, with pretty moments. The last movement is extremely perky and ends abruptly. I was expecting something resembling a development and didn't get it. Back to the drawing board, Sam! Or maybe not; he's long gone. Chen's Bach encore was imaginatively and flexibly played; he's good.

The Prokofiev Fifth Symphony came across as noisy, musically incoherent (the composer's fault, I'd guess), and uninteresting (the conductor's fault, because I can certainly imagine it working a lot better in someone else's hands).

I'd definitely encourage you to read the interview with Iris Kwok, in which Gaffigan some interesting things and others that maybe he could have thought through a bit. Here he's talking, generally, about SFS's music director search (a job I'd guess he would be interested in):

This could be dangerous for an institution because then you’re just checking off boxes — we want an old European conductor, we want a young female conductor, or we want a person of color. Those things have nothing to do with what the institution needs artistically. For me, I don’t care what gender, what color skin, what nationality you are — you have to fit the mold as a musician first and foremost for the institution, and you need to have the same values and mission statement as the institution.

He's not wrong about having the same values and mission (a severe divergence is why we're losing Salonen) but also: representation does matter. It would have been wild if the Oakland Symphony had hired a white guy to succeed Michael Morgan, for example. 

I must also note that Gaffigan is very clear that it's easy to find worthy music by women:

In Missy Mazzoli’s case, she’s a dreamer, and her music is always filled with fantasy. Her piece is abstract: about orbits, space, the way things come around and meet with one another again, how things get faster and accelerate with time. She just writes great stuff, whether it’s five or 10 minutes or a [longer] symphonic piece. As a conductor, I’m always looking for modern music. The funny thing is, all the artistic administrations are always like, “We need more female composers.” And I’m like, “There’s no problem finding them. There’s so many great female composers.” She got to the top very quickly because she’s a natural.

He's got some rightfully pointed things to say about American orchestras and their apparent love for European conductors versus Americans, and how he felt he had to have European credentials to eventually land a music director job here. I'm with him all the way on this: he doesn't say "this is ridiculous," because he can't, but it is. 

There is a lot of conducting talent in the United States, but how many of the major (and major-ish) orchestras are currently or recently led by U.S.-born music directors? The Baltimore Symphony (Jonathon Heyward, previously Marin Alsop); Buffalo Philharmonic (JoAnn Falletta; previously MTT); Metropolitan Opera (previously James Levine); SFS (previously MTT); Boston Symphony (previously James Levine); NY Philharmonic (previously Alan Gilbert, previously Lorin Maazel); St. Louis SO (previously David Robertson). How many others? The article I link to below lists a few, but note that Carl St. Clair is retiring, and will be replaced at the Pacific Symphony by a British.

I'm reminded that last March, the NY Times ran an article (gift link) about why Americans have such a hard time getting hired at orchestras here. Mostly, they talked with, or were only able to quote, conductors! For crying out loud: talk to orchestra boards and CEOs about this. They're the ones hiring music directors. 

Elsewhere:

• Rebecca Wishnia, SFCV/Chronicle, who dismisses the Prokofiev in just a couple of sentences, like me.
• DB at Kalimac's Corner
• Michael Strickland, SF Civic Center
• Joshua Kosman, On a Pacific Aisle
• Previously, Joshua Kosman on MTT's Prokofiev 5. 

Even More Conductor Updates

I wasn't expecting another installment of this so soon, but needs must. 

• Joseph Young to leave the Berkeley Symphony at the end of the 2024-25 season. The announcement didn't include anything about whether he has a new appointment.
• Martin Pearlman will be retiring from Boston Baroque, which he founded, at the end of the 2024-25 season. He founded the group 52 years ago.
• Adam Hickox becomes chief conductor of the Trondheim Symphony next year. He's the son of the late Richard Hickox. Did I mention children of conductors recently?
• Jaap van Zweden will be music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.
• Jaap van Zweden lands another position, as artist in residence at the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan.
• Philippe Jordan appointed chief conductor of the Orchestre National de France, succeeding Cristian Mačelaru. Did I mention children of conductors recently?
• Markus Poschner is the new music director of the Utah Symphony.
• Mark Wigglesworth recently began his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, succeeding Kirill Karabits. The appointment was announced some time ago, but apparently I missed it.

Open positions:

• Boston Baroque, when Martin Pearlman leaves.
• Berkeley Symphony, when Joseph Young leaves.
• Milwaukee Symphony, when Ken-David Masur leaves.
• New Jersey Symphony, when Xian Zhang leaves at the end of the 2027-28 season.
• Ulster Orchestra, when Daniele Rustioni leaves
• Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, when Daniel Harding leaves
• Oslo Philharmonic, when Klaus Makela moves on in 2027
• Orchestre de Paris, when Klaus Makela moves on in 2027
• Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, when Santu-Matias Rouvali leaves in 2025
• Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra because of the departure of Lorenzo Viotti in 2025
• Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, because of the departure of Lorenzo Viotti in 2025
• Dutch National Opera, because of the departure of Lorenzo Viotti in 2025
• English National Opera
• Bergen Philharmonic
• LA. Opera, at the end of 2025-26
• San Francisco Symphony, at the end of 2024-25
• Phoenix Symphony
• Cleveland Orchestra, as of June, 2027.
• Lahti Symphony, when Dalia Stasevka leaves.
• Antwerp Symphony, with the departure of Elim Chan.
• Paris Opera is currently without a music director.
• Nashville Symphony, when Giancarlo Guerrero leaves.
• Deutsche Oper Berlin, when Donald Runnicles leaves.
• Rottedam Philharmonic, when Lahav Shani leaves.
• Los Angeles Philharmonic, as of 2026-27, when Gustavo Dudamel leaves for NY.
• Teatro Regio Turin: Open now with departure of Gianandrea Noseda. The Teatro Regio has not named a new music director.
• Marin Symphony, at the end of 2022-23.
• Vienna Staatsoper, when Philippe Jordan leaves at the end of 2025.

Conductors looking for jobs (that is, as of the near future, or now, they do not have a posting). The big mystery, to me, is why an orchestra hasn't snapped up Susanna Mälkki. Slightly lesser mystery: Henrik Nanasi, whose superb Cosi fan tutte is still lingering in my ears.

• Ken-David Masur
• Marc Albrecht
• Markus Stenz
• Esa-Pekka Salonen, if he wants such a position again
• James Conlon, if he wants such a position again.
• Dalia Stasevska (though her contract at Lahti has been extended by a year)
• Elim Chan
• Kirill Karabits
• Tito Muñoz 
• Andrey Boreyko
• Osmo Vänskä
• Susanna Mälkki, who left the Helsinki Philharmonic at the end of 2022-23.
• MGT (apparently does not want a full-time job, as of early 2022)
• Miguel Harth-Bedoya (seems settled in at Baylor)
• Sian Edwards
• Ingo Metzmacher
• Jac van Steen
• Ilan Volkov
• Aleksandr Markovic
• Lothar Koenigs
• Henrik Nanasi
• Philippe Jordan, eventually
• Franz Welser-Möst, if he wants such a job

And closed:

• Utah Symphony, with the appointment of Markus Poschner.
• Bournemouth Symphony appoints Mark Wigglesworth as Chief Conductor (some time ago).
• Colorado Symphony appoints Peter Oundjian, effective with the 2025-26 season.
• Pacific Symphony appoints Alexander Shelley to succeed Carl St. Clair, starting with the 2026-27 season.
• Milwaukee Symphony, when Ken-David Masur leaves at the end of 2025-26.
• Seattle Symphony, with the appointment of Xian Zhang as of the 2025-26 season.
• Edward Gardner starts as music director of Norwegian National Opera this season,
• Sarasota Orchestra: Giancarlo Guerrero has been named music director, as of 2025.
• Hong Kong Philharmonic: Tarmo Peltokoski becomes music director in 2026.
• Tokyo Symphony, with the appointment of Lorenzo Viotti.
• Oakland Symphony, where Kedrick Armstrong succeeds the late Michael Morgan.
• Minnesota Opera: closed with the appointment of Christopher Franklin.
• The Chicago Symphony Orchestra gets to share Klaus Mäkelä with the Concertgebouw.
• The Hallé Orchestra's next conductor will be Kahchun Wong.
• Marin Alsop becomes principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, I believe succeeding Nathalie Stutzmann.
• Simon Rattle becomes principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic.
• John Storgards will becomes chief conductor of the Turku Philharmonic.
• Update and correction: San Francisco Chamber Orchestra was unable to hire Cosette Justo Valdés. Instead, Jory Fankuchen, a violinist in the orchestra, has been named Principal Conductor and will lead this season's programs.
• Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra: Cristian Mačelaru becomes music director in 2025.
• Indianapolis Symphony hires Jun Markel, effective September 1, 2024.
• Andris Nelsons renewed his contract with the Boston Symphony. He's now on an evergreen rolling contract, which will continue as long as he and the orchestra are happy with each other. MTT had one of these at SFS.
• Shanghai Symphony, with the appointment of Long Yu.
• Virginia Symphony, with the appointment of Eric Jacobsen.
• Warsaw Philharmonic, with the appointment of Krzysztof Urbański.
• Bern Symphony, with the appointment of Krzysztof Urbański.
• Berlin State Opera, with the appointment of Christian Thielemann.
• Dresden Philharmonic, with the appointment of Donald Runnicles.
• New York Philharmonic, with the appointment of Gustavo Dudamel. Note that Jaap van Zweden leaves in 2024 and there will be a two-season gap before Dudamel arrives.
• Helsinki Philharmonic: Jukka-Pekka Saraste to succeed Susanna Mälkki.
• Staatskapelle Dresden, with the appointment of Daniele Gatti.
• Seoul Philharmonic appoints Jaap van Zweden.
• Royal Opera appoints Jakub Hrůša to succeed Antonio Pappano.

 

Klaus Mäkelä, Here and There

Klaus Mäkelä leading the Oslo Philharmonic

Photo copyright Marco Borggreve

courtesy of Mäkelä's web site

There's been an enormous amount of ink spilled in the last few days over the appointment of Klaus Mäkelä, 28, to the post of music director for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, starting with the 2027-28 season. He is currently the music director of the Orchestre de Paris and the Oslo Philharmonic, posts he will leave before the 2027-28 season. 

He is also the incoming music director of the Concertgebouw. So, in three years, at 31, he'll be leading two of the world's great orchestras.

I've got two objections to this, one of which might or might not be connected to his age:

• Nobody should be the music director of more than one major orchestra.
• He was....good, not great, in his single appearance at San Francisco Symphony.

As to the first point above, I've been saying this for a few years. Big organizations deserve the more or less full attention of their music directors, who in the United States are responsible for working with the artistic administrator on programming, leading a substantial number of concerts, building the orchestra, both through consistent work with them and through hiring new musicians*, working with the board and administration on publicity and fundraising, and ideally being involved with the local community in some ways. 

That last item is complicated: it might entail working with youth orchestras, working with young musicians, bringing the orchestra or a subset of the musicians out into the community, and so on. Conductors really do vary a lot in how much they do this. Locally, the late Michael Morgan, conductor of the Oakland Symphony for decades, was the exemplar, not Esa-Pekka Salonen, not MTT, not Herbert Blomstedt at San Francisco Symphony. I understand that Gustavo Dudamel, who came out of Venezuela's Sistema, has done a lot of community-oriented work in LA.

And I realize that a conductor can lead just one orchestra and still not be around as much as you'd like. Salonen isn't the music director anywhere except SFS, but he teaches conducting at the Colburn School in LA (possibly putting a lot of mileage on the Prius I see parked in his spot in Lake Louise). In a typical year he has guest conducting engagements all over the United States and in Europe.

It'd be interesting to ask the Metropolitan Opera how it worked out when James Levine was the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as the Met - okay, we know his health problems had a lot to do with his problems at both organizations - and how it's working out now to have YN-S at the Met, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal. Not that I think you'll get an honest answer, if there are any issues. And neither the BSO nor the Leipzig Gewandhaus will tell you whether it's a problem that Andris Nelsons is the music director of both.

But, you know, there is a gigantic pool of conducting talent out there. I know this because of the great performances I've heard the last few years just at SFS, from conductors as diverse as Dalia Stasevska, Elim Chan, Giancarlo Guerrero, Ruth Reinhardt, Nathalie Stutzmann, Krzysztof Urbański, Susanna Mälkki, Osmo Vänskä, and, of course, MTT and Salonen. Elsewhere, I've heard excellent work from Cristian Macerlaru at the Cabrillo Festival and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla in SF with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

As to the second - well, see the above. All of the conductors I list have been more memorable and interesting than Mäkelä, who has gotten mixed reviews from Joshua Kosman, Alex Ross, and (on record) David Allen. Balancing this, he got a great review from Justin Davidson for a recent Carnegie Hall program with the Orchestre de Paris. I trust the ears and judgement of all of these writers, and also my own. 

Certainly there's room for growth for every young musician. The LA Phil has a history of hiring surprisingly young and untried conductors, including Zubin Mehta, Gustavo Dudamel, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. By and large those were good appointments, in different ways. Maybe Mäkelä will be as good as Salonen one of these days, and I note that I have friends who still wince at some of Salonen's work in the, uh, core Germanic repertory in the 1990s. (His Beethoven here has been spectacularly good.)

Here are various Mäkelä-related articles that I've read over the last week and even earlier:

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chron, SFS review
• David Bratman, SFCV, SFS review
• Joshua Kosman on young performers in general
• Alex Ross, The New Yorker, Conductors Had One Job. Now They Have Three or Four
• Zachary Wolfe, NY Times, The Era of Klaus Mäkelä, Conducting Phenom, Begins in Chicago (gift link)
• Javier C. Hernandez, NY Times, Klaus Mäkelä, 28-Year-Old Finnish Conductor, to Lead Chicago Symphony
• David Mermelstein, WSJ, Klaus Mäkelä Breezes Into the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (gift link)
• Jens Laurson, Ionarts, Thoughts on Thoughts on Klaus Mäkelä
• Ari Shapiro and Tom Huizinga, NPR All Things Considered, 28-year-old conductor Klaus Mäkelä will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
• John Axelrod, Is Mäkelä Really That Good?
• Comments to one of my music director update posts.

There's a Bay Area Conductor Who Eats Very, Very Well.

???

• Bon Appetite follows a conductor around for a while, posts some personal financial info in the process.
• Joshua Kosman reports, skeptically, owing to the conductor's purported annual income of $950,000/year. Hey, the conductor says he has 94 performances; if he gets $10,000/per, well?

Young Composers and Performers

You'll want to read a few other articles before you read what I have to say about this; I'm also taking this opportunity to ride a related hobby horse of mine.

• Joshua Kosman, SF Chron, This composer is about to conduct her own opera for the first time. She’s 17 years old.
• Alex Ross, The New Yorker, Looking Past the Celebrity Conductor (This appeared in my feed reader as "Stick Figures".)
• Joshua Kosman, SF Chron, Young musicians keep showing up on concert stages. It’s not clear they’re ready.

So. There've been a couple of opportunities locally to hear works by Alma Deutscher, the talented 17-year-old whom Joshua Kosman interviewed in November. Her opera Cinderella is the opera she conducted las month, at Opera San José. I thought about going, but ultimately did not. I'm not sure whether I can sort out the reasons: I am not a fan of Rossini's famous operatic treatment of the story (La Cenerentola); Deutscher's opera is definitely geared toward young listeners, which I have absolutely no problem with, but it is a long schlep to San José; I am somewhat wary of music by widely-publicized young people. You might remember Jay Greenberg, the early-21st-century over-publicized prodigy, but have you heard any of his music lately?

I didn't blog about the Deutscher interview at the time it was published. For one thing, the composer has clearly had an unusually sheltered upbringing, one that was isolated by home schooling and perhaps by her own and her parents' inclination. It's not clear what range of music she was exposed to growing up. For another, now that she's living and studying in Vienna, she might be hearing a wider range than previously. (On second reading, I find myself wondering why the whole family moved to Vienna: I went off to college at 17 without being accompanied by my family. This is typical of middle-class Americans unless they're living at home during college.)

Lastly, it seems as though, with age and greater experience, some of the opinions she expresses in the interview could very well change! (I certainly remember saying a few things at 17 that I regret, in retrospect.)  I don't need to repeat her views and I don't feel any need to comment on them. I'm more curious about what she'll think (and compose) when she's 30 (or even 25).  And I read the interview with great appreciation of Joshua Kosman's respect and care for Deutscher and her views.

Alex Ross's article focuses on Klaus Mäkelä, the talented young (26) Finnish conductor who is now music director of the Oslo Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris and who will become the chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 2027. 

People, this is ridiculous. To start with, no conductor really needs to be leading more than one full-time orchestra. It's better for institutions to get as much attention as possible from one person. And there are many, many talented conductors who aren't getting an equal chance at full-time or more prestigious orchestras. (To be clear, I think that the dynamics are somewhat different when you're considering regional orchestras that give one or two concerts a month, versus full-time orchestras presenting four programs and up to 15 concerts/month. Esa-Pekka Salonen's job at SFS is different in scale from, say, the late Michael Morgan's at the Oakland Symphony.)

And, you know, I've heard Mäkelä. He is good, and from the TNY article and others I've read, he clearly has a great gift for working with orchestras. But he didn't stand out much from the wide range of excellent conductors we've had as guests at SFS in the last few years. Among the younger set, Krzysztof Urbański's programs were absolutely sensational, indicative of a truly huge talent. Mirga  Gržinytė-Tyla, who was in SF recently with the CBSO, was also exceptionally impressive, among the younger conductors. But the older hands were also great, with Nathalie Stutzmann and Simone Young making particularly good impressions and leaving me wanting to hear them again.

Did all of this rush to youth - if there is one - start with Gustavo Dudamel's appointment at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, succeeding Esa-Pekka Salonen? I know that Dudamel is popular; I think that he sells tickets; various friends who've heard him over time have varied opinions about his conducting. I did not like his guest appearance with SFS earlier this year. (And by the way, he's going to have two jobs himself soon, and they're 5,000 miles apart. The other is at the Paris Opera, even though....he doesn't have all that much opera experience. Maybe he really will follow Deborah Borda to NY, which will shorten his commute to Paris by 50%.)

Anyway, my conclusions are two. One, young musicians deserve the chance to mature without ridiculous expectations placed on them.  Two, there are lots of good reasons for conductors to stick with one job and some guest conducting. Gosh, these look so self-evident when stated like that....but apparently they're not.

Domingo at Bayreuth?

So it's been reported that next year, Plácido Domingo will conduct Die Walküre at the Bayreuth Wagner Festival, the holy of holies for Wagner devotees.

All I can say is, why? Are they having that much trouble selling tickets to the famously (not necessarily correctly) hard-to-get-into Festival? Has anyone from the Festival heard him conduct?

He is a terrible conductor! I mean, he is minimally competent; knows how to keep time, knows how to cue an entry, knows the operas (I presume). However, if you listen to the musical line and details, well...he is a terrible judge of tempo and structure. I watched a good chunk of his Operalia contest one year, with him conducting, and it was just embarrassing. He got to be front and center and get as much attention as those young singers, while they had to deal with a celebrity conductor with, at best, mediocre skills. I felt very, very sorry for them; they deserved to be working with excellent conductors, not a tenor who picked up conducting to extend his career as far as possible.

When I was at Bayreuth two years ago, I heard a significant range of conductors, from the puzzling Kirill Petrenko to the excellent Alain Altinoglu and Axel Kober to the incandescent genius of Christian Thielemann. You would think that Bayreuth has its choice of good to great conductors, so you have to wonder WTF is going on here.

Los Angeles Philharmonic, 2017-18

Walt Disney Concert Hall, October 2007

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

OMG, the LA Phil's 2017-18 season!!!

A friend in LA very kindly passed along some information to me about five minutes after the season went live around midnight, and OMG I wish I could work from LA for the year. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

Here's a very brief rundown, and note that the repertory must include the Green Umbrella New Music concerts. That's okay; all of this is happening under the aegis of an American orchestra. Nearly every other orchestra whose programming I've seen pales in comparison to this. (As previously noted, I'm very impressed by the adventurous programming of the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, nearly all of whose concerts involve the new or unusual.)

There are 81 (EIGHTY-ONE) composers on the season. Of these, 31 are alive. That's right, the LA Phil and its associated programs have a season on which more than one-third of the composers are alive. Not only that, a significant further number composed entirely or primarily in the 20th c. These include Varese, R. Strauss, Eastman, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Sibelius, Zimmerman, Weinberg, Vaughan Williams, Bernstein, Bacewicz, Berg, Debussy, Holst, Martirano, Messiaen, and Shostakovich. (Eastman is JULIUS EASTMAN!!)

They're performing music by nine (9) women, 8 of whom are alive (see Bacewicz, whose music i don't know at all). There's one Asian woman (Chen Yi), one deceased African American man (Eastman), and a number of Mexican and other Latin American composers (one Brazilian man, one Cuban-American woman). There is a festival of music by living Mexican composers, looks like. There are also several living Italians, not all male. There are several works by Esa-Pekka Salonen. There are 23 commissions, 22 world premieres, 6 US premieres, and 2 west coast premieres.

Four women are conducting during the season: Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Susanna Malkki, Emmanuelle Haim and  Xian Zhang, all of whom have multiple concerts assigned.

I must note that there's no lack of 18th and 19th c. classics. There's Brahms, Mozart, and Beethoven. There's Bach. There's a nice heap of Schumann, including Das Paradies und die Peri and some symphonies. The 18th c. composers are nicely chosen and include Galuppi and Charpentier.

It is an astonishing season. See you at WDCH.

Joana Carneiro Withdraws from Berkeley Symphony Opening

The conductor is presently suffering from medical conditions that preclude air travel. She'll be replaced next week by Gerard Schwarz, former music director of the Seattle Symphony and Mostly Mozart Festival.

If You Were Gilbert Kaplan...

....what would your monomania be? What piece of music would you study, to the exclusion of all others, and, if you had the bucks, as he does, donate or buy your way into conducting with major orchestras?

Post here in the comments, or on your own blog; if the latter, post a link here!

[If you're behind on this, read Dan Wakin's story in the Times and the blog posting that gave rise to the fuss. Me, I'll have some thoughts on the matter and the larger questions it involves in a day or so, I hope.]

Not Soon Enough

Gerard Schwarz will "step down" from his position as music director of the Seattle Symphony - but only at the end of the 2010-11 season. He then assumes the lifetime title of Conductor Laureate and will direct the symphony for "several weeks each year."

What a shame. I had hopes that the Board of Directors would act like directors and let him go a bit sooner. Seriously, folks, pay him his full salary for the next three years and shoo him out the door now.

The announcement isn't up on the Seattle Symphony's web site yet - you can find it at Kirshbaum & Demler, a publicity firm. This is a particularly juicy bit:

Schwarz’s history, success and contribution to the life of symphonic music throughout the world, means we must work very hard together to find an individual with the same commitment who will continue to lead the Seattle Symphony in the manner to which it has grown accustomed,” commented Executive Director Thomas Philion as he and Board Chair Susan Hutchison joined Schwarz for the announcement.   “But, happily, we have three concert seasons to celebrate the many contributions Gerard Schwarz has made and will continue to make to this institution, as we look ahead with great excitement to what the future holds for the Seattle Symphony.

"Continue to lead the Seattle Symphony in the manner to which is has grown accustomed," right. I'm sure they want another conductor who brings in the lawsuits and fosters continued artistic mediocrity, who inspires votes of 61 to 8 in favor of new artistic leadership. (See a previous blog posting and the Times article it was based on for details.)

Any ambitious conductor want to take over the most demoralized major orchestra in the country? I bet there are many of you out there who are more interesting conductors than Schwarz and who treat their players with an appropriate level of professional respect.

Update: Dan Wakin reports. He fits in plenty of references to the article he co-authored last year. I like this quotation:

Mr. Schwarz and orchestra officials asserted that the criticism played no part in his decision.

“There are those musicians who dislike their leader in any orchestra in the world,” Mr. Schwarz said. “That’s just the way it is.” He acknowledged that it was natural that some members would be happy with his departure.

Yes, probably about 87% of the players will be happy, based on last year's numbers.