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The Los Angeles Philharmonic. With a conductor like Carlo Maria Giulini, 68, an annual budget of $17 million and record appearances on Deutsche Grammophon, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has the credentials for membership in the elect. Its sound is far from the brilliance of Chicago or St. Louis; Giulini, the eminent Italian conductor, has based the sonority he wants on the lower strings, giving the orchestra a deep, dark tone. Instead of the flashy, glittery ensemble one might expect to find in Los Angeles, the Philharmonic is a sober, serious orchestra. Like Giulini, it is at its best in the romantic era.
The Cleveland Orchestra. Under the late George Szell, the Clevelanders were honed into an ensemble of breathtaking precision, eminently suited to the music of Mozart. During the regime of Conductor Lorin Maazel (1972-82), Szell's high technical standards were maintained, but the sound of the orchestra became fuller, richer and more flexible, and thus up to the challenge of the romantic repertory; by the end of Maazel's tenure, the Cleveland Orchestra was the best-sounding band in the land. Today, standards have unavoidably slipped a bit as the orchestra awaits the arrival in 1984-85 of Maazel's German-born successor, Christoph von Dohnányi, 53.
The New York Philharmonic. The problem child among orchestras, the Philharmonic is like the little girl with the curl. Plagued by a reputation as a temperamental aggregation, it sometimes lives up to it, as it did last year on the occasion of its 10,000th concert when it delivered a ragged account of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Yet under Music Director Zubin Mehta, 46, it can also deliver a blistering performance of something as difficult as Schoenberg's expressionist opera Erwartung, as it did recently with Soprano Hildegarde Behrens. Among other distinctions, the Philharmonic is the most unpredictable orchestra in America.
The San Francisco Symphony. Another West Coast success story is the San Francisco Symphony's rise to prominence, not as spectacular as that of the Los Angeles Philharmonic but no less sure. Dutch Conductor Edo de Waart, 41, is no match for Giulini in glamour, and in a city still carrying a torch for De Waart's splashy predecessor, Ozawa, De Waart is often criticized for not being exciting enough. But his tireless work with his orchestra since the 1977-78 season has paid off in an alert, responsive ensemble, and the results show up handsomely in music close to De Waart's heart, such as Mozart and the Rachmaninoff symphonies.
The Pittsburgh Symphony. With Andre Previn, 54, at its helm, the Pittsburgh Symphony achieved a high profile, thanks to the PBS television series Previn and the Pittsburgh. Similar in sound to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony is a dark-toned ensemble that is especially good in the romantic showpieces and in the music of English composers like Elgar and Vaughan Williams, a passion of the England-based Previn.
The blurring of the distinction between the former Big Five and other U.S. orchestras has been due not to a serious decline at the top, but to a striking improvement in other ensembles in the country. Even the nine elite listed above are distinguished from the next level of orchestras by the equivalent of no more than a few hemidemisemiquavers.