COMMENT NO. 309,487 ON ALAN GILBERT

posted by James Reel

    Everybody this week in the classical-music world is talking/writing/blogging about the appointment of Alan Gilbert as music director of the New York Philharmonic. With all the chatter elsewhere, I haven’t found it necessary to toss in my possibly redundant comments, but I’d like to point you to the one post you should read if you’ve been overwhelmed by it all and have just skipped the topic entirely. Terry Teachout says much of what should be said here, and rightly criticizes the inanity and irrelevance of what little has come out about Gilbert (he’s 40, both his parents were members of the Philharmonic, blah blah blah). Terry’s a bit off base, though, with this comment:

Far more important, I suspect, will be whether Gilbert proves to be an effective communicator--and whether he can find new ways of getting his message out to a new generation of listeners that is largely indifferent to classical music.

    What’s most important, rather, is whether or not this guy is an imaginative interpretive artist. Hardly anybody has heard this guy's performances, and those who have seem quite reserved in their appreciation. The last thing a major orchestra like the New York Philharmonic needs is yet another dull Kappelmeister (like Kurt Masur and the post-L.A. Zubin Mehta). Why should anybody pay to hear a conductor leading a highly paid orchestra through sleepwalking exercises? The orchestra’s current music director, Lorin Maazel, has rightly been criticized for his staid programming, but wrongly criticized by the superabundance of dullards in the New York press for daring to have ideas about the music he leads, and for persuading the orchestra to express those ideas faithfully. Maazel’s performances can sometimes seem wrong-headed, but they’re always exceptionally interesting. The fact that the New York Times’ Anthony Tommasini, who has been one of Maazel’s noisiest detractors, has soiled himself over Gilbert’s announcement is not a good sign.