Now, A Grab for New Chairs

By Michael Walsh

Just last year Herbert von Karajan bravely declared, "As long as my arm can hold a baton I will remain, and as long as I live there will be no discussion about a successor." But last week the iron chancellor of the Berlin Philharmonic abruptly ended his distinguished 34-year tenure as conductor-for- life. With a curt, 17-line note to West Berlin's new culture minister Anke Martiny, the Salzburg-born Karajan, 81, severed his often troubled relationship with an orchestra widely regarded as the finest in the world. The reason given was ill health, but to an even greater extent Karajan was bowing to pressure from both his restive orchestra and the West Berlin senate.

A day later, halfway around the world, the courtly Andre Previn decided that the Los Angeles Philharmonic was not big enough for both him and the orchestra's strong-willed managing director Ernest Fleischmann, whose high- handed ways alienated Previn. "It has become obvious to me there is no room for a music director," said Previn. The startling announcements fueled a flurry of who-goes-where speculation that had already begun in Paris, where the new Opera de la Bastille is seeking an artistic director to replace the fired Daniel Barenboim (who has been named Sir Georg Solti's successor with the Chicago Symphony), and in Manhattan, where the New York Philharmonic must replace Zubin Mehta, 53, who has said he will leave in 1991.

Every few years the music stops and a handful of big-name box-office attractions make a grab for one another's chairs. It happened a few years ago when Previn left the Pittsburgh Symphony; Lorin Maazel quit the Vienna State Opera and landed in Pittsburgh; Riccardo Muti, 47, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, added the directorship of La Scala in Milan to his resume; La Scala's former leader, Claudio Abbado, 55, headed for Vienna. About the only one who did not go anywhere then was the New York Metropolitan Opera's James Levine, 45.

Now the musical merry-go-round is spinning again. Today Levine is the favorite to step into Karajan's shoes, thanks to his good working relationship with the self-governing ensemble during his regular guest-conducting stints. Other possible contenders: Maazel, the Boston Symphony's Seiji Ozawa, Philadelphia's Muti and, farther afield, Leonard Bernstein, now a freelance guest conductor. What marks the new sweepstakes is the increasing desperation with which orchestras pursue the same handful of podium personalities. It is | not that there are too few good conductors, but that there are so few who meet the economic requirements: a hefty recording contract, a telegenic personality and the ability to pull in a crowd both at home and on the road. In the U.S. a conductor must also subject himself (there are no women on the short list) to endless rounds of glad-handing and fund raising, while in Berlin he must have the political skills of a Franz von Papen to deal with a fractious orchestra and a powerful city bureaucracy.

"I'm afraid that the economics of the situation has much more to do with it than the music," says Gideon Toeplitz, vice president and managing director of the Pittsburgh Symphony. "The conductor needs sex appeal." Conductors themselves are well aware of the new realities. "Most orchestras today go for someone who is well before the public eye to assure ticket sales and recording contracts," says Leonard Slatkin, 44, who recently re-upped with the St. Louis Symphony but has not closed the door to a draft.

Behind Slatkin is a group of younger conductors seeking their break into the big leagues. Among them: Finland's Esa-Pekka Salonen, 30, principal conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony; England's Simon Rattle, 34, who leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Britain; and Russian-born Semyon Bychkov, 36, who this month will jump from the Buffalo Philharmonic to the Orchestre de Paris. All must wait until a death or a retirement creates an opening in the front ranks.

No matter who gets the job in Berlin, Karajan's successor will almost certainly not be offered the life appointment that Karajan enjoyed, although the new man will be expected to maintain the Philharmonic's highly lucrative recording income -- another factor that favors Levine. The New York Philharmonic, for its part, has suffered under Mehta's indifferent performances and low appeal to record buyers. It needs a conductor with fire in the belly like Bernstein; if Billy Martin can be hired by the Yankees five times, can't Lenny come back once? Los Angeles, where the orchestra plays second fiddle to the movies and the Lakers, needs a high-profile glamour boy willing, or indifferent enough, to share power with Fleischmann: Salonen, perhaps, or Rattle.

"The game isn't over yet," says Slatkin. "There will be other changes. These three changes will engender more." In the high-stakes game of musical chairs that got under way last week, the more things change, the more they will stay the same.

With reporting by Clive Freeman/Berlin and Nancy Newman/New York