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The Minnesota Orchestra, for example, needs only for Conductor Neville Marriner to become more at home in the large-orchestra repertory for it to be a serious contender. The Dallas Symphony has one of the finest string sections in the country, but is interpretatively hampered by its prosaic conductor, Eduardo Mata. Washington's National Symphony, another orchestra with the capacity to rise, may yet regret its Faustian bargain with Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who gives it great media attention and a passionate commitment to Russian music but otherwise generally undistinguished musical leadership. Still more able orchestras can be found in Cincinnati, Houston, Rochester, Baltimore, Detroit and Atlanta.
Because the turnover in the old Big Five is so low, America's crop of young, conservatory-trained symphonic players—by common consent the best in the world—have flooded the ranks of the second-tier orchestras. A noteworthy result is that groups like the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Denver Symphony or the Utah Symphony often can play contemporary music better than some of the top-ranked ensembles; what these musicians may lack in individual instrumental richness they more than make up for in their ability to sight-read the most fearsome modern score with ease.
Like a championship team, a great orchestra executes its tasks with precision, élan and grace. String sections attack and release a note together, blending their sounds to form a single smooth line. Woodwinds have a distinctive character that lets them stand out against the full orchestra, yet merge back into it when necessary. Brass players keep their often recalcitrant instruments under beguilingly complete control; when a trumpeter reaches for a high note, there is no uncertainty that it will come out right. Overseeing all this is the music director, who balances the orchestra's component parts and gives the ensemble character. He breathes a unified spirit into an aggregation that may number more than 100. "It is the artistic vision of the conductor that impels everyone forward," says Kenneth Haas, Cleveland's general manager. "Without someone of great vision, great ears, great interpretations, great depth, you can have the greatest musicians on the face of the earth and you still won't have a great orchestra."
An acoustically sympathetic environment is almost as important. Although a good hall cannot make an orchestra sound better than it really is, it can allow it to reach its potential unhindered. San Francisco's artistic emergence has been closely related to its 1980 move from the dry War Memorial Opera House to the more resonant Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. Some of the steady improvement in the Minnesota Orchestra is attributable to the lively Orchestra Hall, its home since 1974. The Utah Symphony's warm, responsive Symphony Hall in Salt Lake City, built in 1979, is the most impressive of all. The work of Acoustician Cyril Harris, it is as good as Boston's Symphony Hall, long considered the ideal. "A hall is both an inspiration and a challenge to an orchestra," says Richard Cisek, president of the Minnesota Orchestral Association. "A bad hall finds an orchestra trying to compensate for it, whereas a good hall lets the musicians very quickly know how well they're performing."