Discordant notes for Berlin Philharmonic in quest for conductor

The renowned orchestra can’t decide on a successor to the likes of Karajan or Rattle.

Undated : Vladimir Jurowski

Over the years I must have attended dozens of concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic and I’ve yet to hear a dull one. This great orch­estra will have to hit new heights, however, if its music-making is to be as gripping as its offstage shenanigans.

It assembled last Tuesday to elect a new chief conductor. Popes get chosen with less palaver. All 123 members locked themselves inside a church building in a Berlin suburb. Mobile phones had to be left outside. A vow of secrecy was taken by all. Journalists were told they would get more leaks from a North Korean cabinet meeting.

From Vancouver to Vladivostok the orchestral world held its breath. Who would wear the crown that once adorned the heads of Wilhelm Furtwangler, Herbert von Karajan, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle?

And the emphatic answer was ... “Er, we can’t decide.” After 11 hours of discussion and six votes, the players deferred the decision until December. The rumour is that when they vote again the press won’t be told the date or location. Apparently, “media pressure” was one reason the players couldn’t agree.

Hmm. I’ll take that with a pinch of salz. For all its glorious unan­imity in performance, the Berlin Philharmonic is the most faction-riven of orchestras. Its selection of chief conductor has often been clouded by controversy.

Even Karajan, who held the job for 30 years, indulged in skulduggery in 1954 to get installed ahead of the maestro who had presided over the difficult postwar years, Romanian maverick Sergiu Celibidache. On getting the job, Karajan promptly had Celibidache’s name erased from the Philharmonic’s list of chief conductors.

When Karajan went, Lorin Maazel agitated for the post and was said to have been incandescent with rage when Abbado was appointed. The battle between Rattle and Daniel Barenboim in 1999 was less anguished, publicly at least. Even so, Barenboim, rejected by the Philharmonic, took delight in decamping down the road to the Staatsoper, turning its band into a top-class concert ensemble and declaring himself “not a candidate” for the Philharmonic job this time. “Why should I be interested?” he told me a few weeks ago. “I have a great orchestra in Berlin already.”

That’s the problem. The world’s best symphony orchestra believes it should have the best conductor, but the most credible candidates for that epithet have declared themselves unavailable.

Mariss Jansons, the peerless Latvian, has signed on for a few more years with his beloved Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, believing (with cause) that it is the perfect instrument for his alchemic interpretations.

Riccardo Chailly, who has worked miracles with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, has agreed, brave man, to be music director of La Scala, Milan, until 2022.

The Venezuelan whiz kid Gustavo Dudamel has just agreed to another five years in Los Angeles — and in any case would have been a gimmicky choice for the Berliners.

That leaves one top maestro, Vladimir Jurowski, who has hardly worked with the Philharmonic (though he lives in Berlin), and two others who, it is said, split the orchestra down the middle. Christian Thielemann reminds everybody of Karajan, which isn’t wholly good. He is a grandiloquent interpreter of German romantic music, but his qualities as a human being are not universally admired.

Then there is Andris Nelsons. A likable Latvian protege of Jansons, he has made a brilliant impression at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, which he quits this summer. (He has been snapped up by the Boston Symphony.) He could be great in Berlin but is 36. Does he have the experience to keep the world’s most characterful orchestral musicians fulfilled and at the top of their game? Rattle was 44 when he was appointed.

No wonder the Philharmonic dithered. Yet the Berliners are largely responsible for boxing themselves in. If a sizeable minority hadn’t made life so uncomfortable for Rattle, he probably would never have quit for the London Symphony Orchestra. Of course the Berliners’ arch rival, the Vienna Philharmonic, has never had a chief conductor. There’s a lot to be said for it.

The Times