{ready for the upbea t }
that made the NSO take notice. “We are thrilled to know he will be helpful at fundraising,” says the Kennedy Center’s president, Michael Kaiser. The tricky part, however, comes
Left: as a young pianist, eschenbach, right, recorded Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 1 with conductor herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in late 1966. Above: eschenbach in 1944, at age 4.
pervising the hiring of new players. A music director also has a civic role.
An orchestra is a hugely expensive in- stitution (the NSO’s annual operating budget is about $30 million). In Eu- rope, orchestras rely on government subsidies; in the United States, they live on private donations. “As music direc- tor,” Eschenbach says, “you have to be father, psychologist, diplomat, politi- cian, fundraiser.” Eschenbach thrives on all of these
roles. He sends flowers when musicians are sick. He’s eager to mentor young players. And he embraces the non-musi- cal aspects of the job (which have driven other European-born conductors away from American music director posts). At the Houston Symphony, where he was music director from 1988 to 1999, he
to be father, psychologist, diplomat, politician, fundraiser.”
helped improve the struggling orches- tra’s finances with a capital campaign that raised $42 million. “It involved al- most every night to go to another dinner and tell people why music is so good, why is it so important to have an orches- tra in the city, and so on,” he says. He didn’t mind. And it was one of the things
“
ing. The creative process is not merely notes written on a page by a composer but the interpretation of those notes by living, breathing musicians. That’s what makes it exciting.” Not to everyone. After a few years,
the orchestra management polled the Philadelphia players and let Eschen-
with the music-making. In Houston, he was a hero, building the orchestra from a middle-of-the-road ensemble into a nationally regarded institution. The players adored his spontaneity. “We were constantly watching with almost a joyful curiosity where he was going to take this piece tonight,” said William VerMeulen, the Houston Symphony’s principal horn player, in 2008. But not every orchestra has re-
sponded quite so well to Eschenbach’s gentle, nontraditional style. “There’s a wealth that is transmitted,” says Richard Hirschl, a cellist with the CSO. “But he doesn’t force it out of you. It requires a certain generosity from you, too.” Some players don’t see why they should take the time. During Eschenbach’s troubled tenure as the head of the prestigious Philadelphia Orchestra, from 2003 to 2008, there was grousing about what players saw as technical shortcomings: lack of preparation, an unclear beat. “You could absolutely find Christoph
taking liberties with tempi,” said Joe Kluger, who was president of the Phil- adelphia Orchestra when Eschenbach was hired and is now an associate prin- cipal at the consulting firm Wolf Brown. “He would also feel no qualms about one approach on a Thursday night and a different one on a Saturday. For those people who say, ‘I want to hear it the same way every night’: Buy a record-
As music director, you have
bach know that the majority weren’t happy with his leadership. Eschenbach’s own view is that the management was influenced by a few malcontents and negative reviews from one of the Phila- delphia Inquirer’s classical music critics. “This was a mismanagement,” he says. “And now everybody knows.” Whatever happened, it led to Eschenbach’s second contract not being renewed. “The Philly problems shocked him,”
says Renaud Machard, the music critic for Le Monde. Machard observed Es- chenbach through the latter’s mixed tenure as music director of the Orches- tre de Paris, a post he held concurrently with his American roles from 2000 until this year. But Machard says the quality of performances there, too, fell off. After Philadelphia, Eschenbach said
he would never again accept a music di- rectorship. But the National Symphony Orchestra got him to change his mind. “It was the location in Washington,” he says now of his decision. “It was the NSO, which I knew from the ’90s,” when he had last conducted the ensemble. “It was the Kennedy Center.” Eschenbach’s new title is not only music director of the NSO but of the whole Kennedy Center, meaning he will have a wider role in programming than his predeces- sors. “Also the fact that there is a healthy management,” he emphasizes. The NSO offers the conductor a new
beginning. It could use some of the orchestra-building Eschenbach did in Houston. In Washington, Eschenbach will again get to be a big fish in a small pond. His intense and personal touch may hearken back to Mstislav Rostrop- ovich, the cellist-conductor of great personal warmth, if sometimes erratic technique, whose tenure from 1977 to 1994 represents the NSO’s glory years. Unlike Philadelphia, where players
bridled when his appointment was an- nounced, the NSO musicians are excited about Eschenbach. In 2008, the orches- tra played with Eschenbach for the first time since the 1990s. “It was a wonderful concert,” said Marissa Regni, a second violinist and co-chair of the orchestra’s search committee. “We really poured ourselves into it.” Eschenbach then met for several hours with the five players on
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