Even in an age of diminished expectations one looks for faintly flickering signs that, no matter how hopeless things may appear, a better day is just around the corner. On the lumpen end of American culture, it explains why millions of TV soap-opera viewers gladly watch, week after week, the sleazy vicissitudes of the Carrington and Ewing clans, or why Cubs loyalists perhaps too eagerly proclaim, ”Wait till next year.”
It applies to serious art, too, as witness the 96th season of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which begins Wednesday night with a soldout benefit performance of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, conducted by Georg Solti.
It is very much a transition season, one that closes the books on the John S. Edwards era while offering hints of the artistic directions in which the orchestra can be expected to move under the administration of Henry Fogel, Edwards` successor as executive director. Most of the programs and guest artists result from contracts signed during the troubled final months of Edwards` tenure, and, as such, do not necessarily reflect the tastes or philosophies of the present management.
For the last year Fogel has been charged with turning around a $1 million deficit, and although we will have to wait until after the annual meeting of the Orchestral Association on Oct. 8 to learn the specifics, indications are that the news will be favorable.
That in itself should reassure CSO observers who believe that, given management`s preoccupation with fiscal survival, the orchestra has surrendered its traditional leadership role in Chicago music, dimming the bright artistic vision that made the early Solti seasons so full of the promise of discovery. If you asked me to name the most artistically venturesome of the major Chicago musical institutions at the moment, I would cite the Lyric Opera and Chamber Music Chicago. Save for a handful of concerts, the Chicago Symphony is not the organization to which I would turn for really stimulating or innovative programs in the 1986-7 season.
Of course, neither the opera company nor the chamber-music producer gives performances year-round as does the CSO, nor are their support needs as complex. But the point stands: An orchestra esteemed in many quarters as the greatest in the world should be exercising more creative muscle in what it performs, not just how.
Right now I can see somebody leaping up from the back row and saying,
”All right, wise guy, what is it that other domestic orchestras are doing that ours isn`t?”
Lots of things. For example:
— In the nine years I have been covering the Chicago classical beat, the CSO has never had a resident composer; this season the orchestras of New York City, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and San Francisco, among others, are engaging their second resident composers through the national Composer-in-Residence program administered by Meet the Composer, Inc.
— Because both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra have, in the words of an AT&T spokesman, given ”artistic priority to advancing the performance of contemporary American music,” both orchestras were selected to launch the AT&T Foundation`s new ”American Encore” program this fall. The idea of the two-year program is to secure repeat performances of 20th-Century American works deserving of wider exposure. Given its recent track record, it`s hard to imagine the CSO qualifying for admittance into the program.
— Many major, regional and metropolitan orchestras around the nation have developed systems whereby patrons may endow the chairs of symphony personnel. To date the Cleveland Orchestra has received underwriting for 21 endowed chairs, including all 17 of the principal players` chairs and three conductors` positions. The CSO has announced no such endowments here.
— Both the San Francisco and San Diego symphonies present new-music series as adjuncts to their regular subscription series, and the Indianapolis Symphony recently was chosen as one of 10 major orchestras to participate in the American Symphony Orchestra League`s New Music Reading Project, whereby up to seven scores by living American composers are performed by each ensemble. The previous CSO management has shown no interest in instituting or taking part in such activities.
— During 1986-87 the New York Philharmonic is planning to present four world premieres, the Philadelphia Orchestra three, the Los Angeles
Philharmonic two. The Chicago Symphony has only one, Donald Erb`s Concerto for Brass Section and Orchestra, which Leonard Slatkin will conduct in April.
Given the interest that Fogel has expressed in doing more contemporary music and helping talented young performers, it is reasonable to assume that the CSO eventually will institute similar projects. Eventually. . . .
The executive director already has said that as of the 1987-8 season the CSO will perform at least two world premieres each season. Also, the fact that the orchestra this year has joined the Exxon/Arts Endowment conducting program may be taken as an important sign that the CSO really does care about helping the careers of promising young conductors.
As for this year`s podium situation, it is clear that the CSO is banking on the same combination of musical expertise and familiar names that has served it successfully in the past.
Besides Solti, the leading lights for the new season are Claudio Abbado, Lorin Maazel, Erich Leinsdorf, Michael Tilson Thomas, Klaus Tennstedt and Slatkin. Thomas and Slatkin will offer American works by Charles Wuorinen and Joan Tower, while Tennstedt will concentrate on Brahms and Mahler. Leinsdorf will present an unusual program of orchestral concertos. Of special interest is the belated CSO debut of Zubin Mehta, who will conduct the two Brahms piano concertos at a pension-fund concert, with Daniel Barenboim as soloist.
Below that level the situation promises to be more variable. Former artistic administrator Peter Jonas` British bias is reflected in the appearances of English conductors Mark Elder, Charles Mackerras and Christopher Hogwood, who has been unaccountably favored with two weeks of subscription concerts.
Much is expected of the Fogel appointees Kenneth Jean, who replaces Henry Mazer as associate conductor, and Michael Morgan, who has assumed the post of Exxon/Arts Endowment assistant conductor. Even so, their work this first season will be evident only to patrons of the Civic Orchestra, as their names are absent from the main CSO series. Fogel says that both staff conductors will direct subscription programs in 1987-8.
Absent from the podium roster are such venerated figures of the older generation as Carlo Maria Giulini and Rafael Kubelik, both unavailable for health reasons (Giulini`s wife remains seriously ill and Kubelik has a heart condition). Bernard Haitink and Colin Davis rarely conduct in the U.S. these days. Missing, too, is Leonard Bernstein, whom Fogel is actively attempting to woo. Barenboim will appear this season only as pianist.
Those local pundits who speak of Solti`s domination of our orchestra in the past tense are going to have to eat their hasty words. For his 18th season as music director, Solti will conduct 11 subscription programs in addition to leading a three-week tour of western and southwestern cities in January and February; he will also take the Symphony next May to New York and Washington. That gives him roughly 14 weeks with the CSO in 1986-87, perhaps the longest time-commitment he has made to the ensemble thus far.
The CSO remains very much Solti`s orchestra in terms of the big German-Romantic repertory that is his specialty, and the innate German-Romantic sound in which he swaddles that repertory. Still, this begs the question of where the needed musical breadth and depth are coming from. Solti blockbusters such as the Bach St. Matthew Passion, Mahler Ninth Symphony and Strauss
”Heldenleben” may validate the conductor`s stature as an interpreter of these works, and our orchestra`s ability to play them more brilliantly and powerfully than perhaps any other. But how do these blockbuster performances advance the CSO as a major, progressive force in an intellectually vital musical culture?
Some trends can be discerned in the tea leaves of the new Symphony season. The conductor pool known as the ”Gang of Four” has been dissolved, even though its members–Solti, Abbado, Leinsdorf and Slatkin–all will appear this season. Slatkin`s stock appears to be falling around Orchestra Hall, while Thomas` is rising.
New and returning (in addition to some of those mentioned above)
conductors whom Chicago is likely to hear in upcoming CSO seasons include Esa- Pekka Salonen, Semyon Bychkov, Gunther Wand, Herbert Blomstedt, Neeme Jarvi, David Zinman and Gunther Herbig.
Big question marks surround the CSO futures of Abbado and Barenboim, the former because of his heavy commitment to the Vienna State Opera, the latter because of his Bayreuth ”Ring” involvement for 1988.
In the meantime, Solti has been suggesting privately that if his health remains good–he will turn 74 on Oct. 21–he could be persuaded to extend his contract one or two years beyond the orchestra`s centennial season, 1990-91, when he said he would accept an emeritus position.
So don`t start laying down any bets on the Royal Succession, at least for the next couple of seasons. In an era of reduced expectations any such speculation is bound to be considered naive, idealistic and, worst of all, unfashionable.
