Migratory Conductors

Orchestra conductors, like the fork-tailed petrel, tend to be migratory in the spring. Among this season's notable migrations:

P: As a replacement for the late Eduard van Beinum, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced the appointment of Hungarian-born Georg Solti, 47, now musical director of the excellent Frankfurt Opera. Solti has guest-conducted most major U.S. orchestras, built a reputation in Europe as a fine interpreter of Mozart and Wagner, next season will make his debut at the Metropolitan Opera conducting a revival of Tannhaeuser. But his main enthusiasm, he has said, is symphonic conducting, particularly in the U.S. Says he: "This is the country of the future. And it has a growing music tradition. I like something that is building."

P: Leopold Stokowski, 78, closed out his fifth season as conductor of the Houston Symphony by praising Manager Thomas Johnson as "a man who can get along with a difficult conductor like me," then announced that he will leave his Texas podium next year. Generally liked in Houston, Stokowski was occasionally criticized, first for pushing too many modern works, then for moving in the opposite direction and pandering to the city's "roast beef appetite." Nevertheless, the city got a good financial return on Stokowski's reported $35,000 annual salary: ticket sales increased 86%. So far, no successor for Stokowski's job has been found; Sir John Barbirolli turned it down.

P: Antal Dorati, 54, decided to call it quits after eleven years with the Minneapolis Symphony, plans to spend the next two or three years as a freelance conductor, mostly in Europe. A vigorous orchestra builder (he virtually remade the Dallas Symphony between 1945 and 1948), Hungarian-born Dorati took over the Minneapolis from Dimitri Mitropoulos in 1948, extended the orchestra's repertory and season, but now feels that he can push the orchestra no further. Says Dorati blandly: "An artist of my caliber--and I am one of the best--must always be building." Replacing Dorati in Minneapolis is Polish Conductor-Composer Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (pronounced Sta-nis-waff Skro-vah-cheff-ski), whose name is giving his new home town so much trouble that even the press release announcing his appointment misspelled it. A onetime student of France's famed Nadia Boulanger, Conductor Skrowaczewski, 36, became prominent after the war as a vigorous champion of modern music, in rapid succession directed three of Poland's top orchestras, also found time to write four symphonies, a ballet, four string quartets and a score of smaller works. When he made his U.S. debut with the Cleveland Orchestra last season, he was generously cheered by audience, musicians and critics, one of whom reported that the guest conductor left him "spellbound, transfixed, electrified."

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