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One reasonable ground for resistance to youth has been that that there are many more first-rate orchestras than brand-name conductors, and the competition for their services is fierce. "We have a great orchestra, and we owe it to them to get the best we can," says John Willan, managing director of the London Philharmonic, which is currently seeking a conductor. As a result, in London, in New York City -- where the New York Philharmonic is looking for a successor to Zubin Mehta -- and elsewhere, the usual suspects are consistently rounded up for the obligatory short list: Lorin Maazel (whose career began in Pittsburgh as a child prodigy), James Levine, master of the Metropolitan Opera, Seiji Ozawa of Boston, Riccardo Muti of Philadelphia and La Scala. Back in 1971 the New York Philharmonic surprised everyone by hiring French avant-garde composer Pierre Boulez as its conductor. A similarly bold stroke is called for now.
As welcome as all these recent appointments are, there is still cause for some concern. The fact that so many of the major players have held one another's posts -- Maazel was Abbado's predecessor in Vienna, Muti his successor at La Scala, and Abbado himself was considered a candidate to follow Mehta with the New York Philharmonic -- has inevitably contributed to a certain sonic sameness of the major ensembles: call it Euronoise. Salonen's tenure in California should be exciting, but once again a big American post has gone to a European with little feel for American music or culture. And for every Rattle, who stays where he is by choice, there are half a dozen Slatkins, who ought to be considered for top jobs but are often overlooked because of either their youth or their American accent.
Still, if mighty, tradition-bound Berlin can do it, then so can anybody. "One of the many reasons that the musicians in Berlin were so keen on Abbado, besides the fact that he is a great conductor, is that he has great sympathy for modern music," says Ernest Fleischmann, the executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. "Salonen is not known for exactly being conservative, either. There is a change coming all over the world. We are beginning to open up more to new things." It's about time.