2014/5/15 New York Philharmonic Faces Big Orchestra Hiring Decisions
Philharmonic Transformation, From Members to Mission
By MICHAEL COOPER MAY 14, 2014
The New York Philharmonic is playing musical chairs in reverse these days, as retirements and a couple of unexpected departures have left it with more seats than players- and the most turnover of principal players, or section leaders, since World War II.
The orchestra has begun the process of auditioning, hiring and breaking in five new principals, including a concertmaster to replace the retiring violinist Glenn Dicterow, who has helped shape its sound for more than three decades. It recently started by raiding its next-door neighbor: two Metropolitan Opera Orchestra principals, Timothy Cobb, a bass player, and Anthony McGill, a clarinetist, are joining the Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s music director, disclosed in a recent interview.
Mr. McGill, a rising star who played at President Obama’s inauguration and has performed as a soloist at concert halls around the country, will become the Philharmonic’s first African-American principal player when he starts there in the fall.
The changing roster of musicians is perhaps the most visible manifestation of the transformation underway at the Philharmonic, the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States. These days, the ensemble is learning to fill its hall one concert at a time as subscription sales fade; expanding its education role with partnerships in Shanghai and California; trying to end a run of deficits; featuring new music more prominently under Mr. Gilbert, introducing its first NY Phil Biennial late this month; and quietly moving forward with plans for the long-delayed renovation of its worn Lincoln Center home, Avery Fisher Hall.
Orchestras across the country are working to try to stay both solvent and culturally relevant in the 21st century. The Los Angeles Philharmonic has found success with its charismatic young music director, Gustavo Dudamel, and popular concert hall. The Cleveland Orchestra has started a series of residencies in Miami, Vienna, New York and Switzerland. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra has embarked on an ambitious program to stream live videos of many of its concerts at no charge on the web. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has thrived under Riccardo Muti, a maestro of the old school, while the Philadelphia Orchestra turned to a dynamic young conductor, Yannick Nezet-Seguin, to help guide it back to solvency after its 2011 bankruptcy. This year, the eyes of the music industry have been on the Minnesota Orchestra, which is trying to rebuild after a 16-month lockout.
The New York Philharmonic is looking to Mr. Gilbert, 47, a native New Yorker whose parents both played in the orchestra, to help it navigate the changed environment. In the interview, in his studio at Avery Fisher Hall, he said that hiring was his “biggest responsibility,” and that he was looking for players who would energize the ensemble while maintaining its traditions. He spoke of the way the orchestra continues to be influenced in some repertoire-he singled out Mahler-by music directors who led it decades ago, including Dimitri Mitropoulos and Leonard Bernstein.
“There are almost no players who were there back then,” Mr. Gilbert said. “But it’s like the old philosophical question: If you have a knife, and you break the blade and replace it, and then you break the handle and replace that, is it the same knife? There is a kind of knifeness about it that hasn’t changed, even though it’s all new parts. And that’s exactly what happens with an orchestra.”
Mr. Gilbert offered a few hints about what the revamped concert hall might look like. He said he does not favor designs that would surround the orchestra with the audience, as do Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Philharmonie in Berlin, preferring a more traditional shoe-box shape, which he said would offer acoustical advantages and allow the Philharmonic to present the multimedia events it is becoming known for, including films, projections, staged works, puppets and dancers.
He said the new space should be more intimate than the current hall, which seats 2,700. “The thing that I miss most is a real sense of connection with the audience,” he said. At Avery Fisher, “there are certain seats in the hall you feel you might as well be in the East Side, you’re so far away.”
With talk of renovations dragging on for more than a decade, there has been little effort to spruce up the hall in recent years. While the musically inclined have long complained of the hall’s acoustics, a more immediate problem may be its glamour deficit: Its brown carpeting and boxy look can make it feel more like a vast school auditorium than a temple of music. The excitement of a reinvented hall could help the Philharmonic lure concertgoers as it grows more reliant on single-ticket buyers. Although attendance has risen a bit, it says, only 40 percent of its audience were subscribers last season, down from 57 percent a decade ago.
But the renovation, which is being planned with Lincoln Center, poses serious challenges for the orchestra-not least the question of how it will be paid for. The Philharmonic has run deficits every year for the last decade, and last season it had its biggest yet: a $6.1 million shortfall on a $71 million budget. Its endowment was worth
$187 million at the end of last year, still not back to pre-recession levels, and efforts to shore it up for the long term could wind up competing with the fund-raising that will be needed to help pay for the renovations.
Then there is the question of how the orchestra will fare during the renovation, when it plans to present concerts elsewhere around the city- and whether Mr. Gilbert will remain at the helm to provide continuity during a time of upheaval. Officials have not yet said when the renovations might begin, and Mr. Gilbert, who is finishing his fifth season as the Philharmonic’s music director, is under contract through the end of the 2016-17 season. “I’d be very proud if it could happen on my watch,” he said.
Matthew VanBesien, the Philharmonic’s executive director, said that a new hall was “hugely important” for the organization as it seeks to adapt and refocus in the new century.
In another initiative, some of the ensemble’s musicians will fly to Shanghai in September to teach their first classes at the Shanghai Orchestral Academy, part of a four-year collaboration with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra that will see the entire Philharmonic go there next year for eight days of concerts and teaching.
The orchestra announced another partnership last month with the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, Calif., which calls for both teaching and performing. “I think it’s a time of change, but it’s a time of renewal,” Mr. VanBesien said.
In the short term, though, the most pressing issue besides the hall is rebuilding the orchestra. By next season, Mr. Gilbert will have appointed 17 of the orchestra’s 106 musicians.
Most of the musicians departing this year are retiring after decades with the orchestra. Mr. Dicterow has been with the ensemble for 34 years; Philip Smith, the principal trumpet, 36; and Marc Ginsberg, the principal second violin, 44.
But a couple of the departures were surprises.
Stephen Williamson, whom the Philharmonic lured away from the Chicago Symphony last year to be its new principal clarinet, announced this winter that he would return to Chicago. It was the second setback for the Philharmonic in filling the post recently. After its longtime principal clarinet player Stanley Drucker retired in 2009, the orchestra announced that it had hired a player from the Philadelphia Orchestra. But he backed out, citing “family reasons.”
Fora Baltacigil, who became the Philharmonic’s principal bass player in 2012 after stints with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Minnesota Orchestra, left this winter as well, exposing rifts in the bass section. In a recent email, Mr. Baltacigil said that he left the ensemble because he had not found the “harmony and peace” there that he had found in his previous orchestras.
Of those departures, Mr. Gilbert said only that “it didn’t work out.” He added that he could not be happier with his new hires from the Met: Mr. Cobb, who will become principal bass this month, and Mr. McGill, who said in a brief interview that he was excited about the opportunity to play new repertoire. They will both be considered “on leave” from the Met for their first year, as is common in orchestra hirings.
The most crucial appointment will be of a new concertmaster-the musician who helps mold the sound of the orchestra, performs key violin solos and helps transmit the conductor’s wishes to the players. Erin Keefe, the concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra, played two trial weeks with the Philharmonic this season. Mr. Gilbert said that she was “absolutely great,” but that, on principle, he did not want to appoint anyone until more players had tried out.
Mr. Gilbert said he enjoyed trying to identify the right musicians for the Philharmonic, from the auditions to the discussions with committees made up of members of the orchestra.
“The standard is so clear,” he said. “ ‘Maybe’ means no.”
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A version of this article appears in print on May 15, 2014, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Philharmonic Transformation, From Members to Mission .
New York Philharmonic Faces Big Orchestra Hiring Decisions
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