It's a hoary, silly, irreverent joke. But it's fraught with meaning.
A long line clogs the entrance to the Pearly Gates. St. Peter stalks the newcomers nervously, asking loudly if anyone happens to be a psychiatrist. A grizzled gentleman at the rear steps forward. Much relieved, St. Peter ushers him to the head of the line. "Thank you," responds the shrink, "but why am I getting special treatment?"
"It's God," St. Peter explains. "He thinks he's Herbert von Karajan."
I first heard the bemusing jape many years ago when I was a kid visiting Tanglewood. The punchline at the time involved the all-powerful Serge Koussevitsky. I've since heard it climactically identifying Arturo Toscanini, Georg Solti, Fritz Reiner and George Szell, among other inspired and inspiring autocrats of the baton. It's an equal-opportunity putdown. Just plug in the name of your favorite — or unfavorite — egomaniac who happens to make great music. It's easy. It's fun. It's probably unfair.
If anyone's telling the joke these days in Montreal, the confused deity would no doubt suffer the delusion that he's Charles Dutoit. But if anyone's telling the joke in Montreal, it's doubtful that anyone's laughing.
The nasty brouhaha became a public issue in early April when the union that represents players in the Montreal Symphony issued a public denunciation of their maestro. The charges included an "abusive and arbitrary rehearsal style." The diatribe apparently was designed to save a couple of players whose employment was in jeopardy, and to humiliate Dutoit in the process. Dutoit, not incidentally, had served the fine Canadian orchestra as its controversial but suitably charismatic music director since 1977.
According to reliable reports, Dutoit never was a man of the orchestral masses. Like many a successful conductor before him, he stood above the players. For better or worse, he made the essential decisions. He gave decisive orders off the podium as well as on. He refused to turn preparation sessions into mutual-admiration parties, and he tended to ignore some of the refinements of democratic discourse, not to mention common politesse. He did, however, manage to raise artistic standards drastically, along with the public image of his not-so-merry band. And back in 1998, he actually broke with the tradition of neutrality in matters pertaining to labor disputes, siding with his players in a crucial strike.
Note that I wrote his players. They were grateful for Dutoit's influential support, but that was four years ago. There's been a lot of Beethoven and a lot of bitterness under the bridge in the interim.
Offended by this extraordinary public challenge — make that the affront — to his authority and to his ego, Dutoit bade Montreal an instant, abrupt adieu. "It is with great sadness," he stated, "that following hostile declarations made by the president of the Quebec Musicians' Guild, shared by a majority of the musicians, I see no other choice but to announce my resignation as artistic director of the MSO, effective immediately." Exit Dutoit, scowling.
The exit has had something of a polarizing effect on communities far beyond Montreal. Musicians long weary, also wary, of what they regard as conductorial mistreatment hail Dutoit's departure as a symbolic step forward. They insist that the players deserve more power, more control. They say the age of the autocratic leader is past. Music-making needs to be a harmonious process. Unhappy birds don't sing. The rules that now apply to fairness in ordinary workplaces must apply to the concert hall as well. The antiquated procedures in force a generation or two ago don't necessarily adhere to the strictures of political correctness, as opposed to musical correctness.
That's all very well, very idealistic, very Utopian, counters the opposing camp. But art creates its own rules. Inspiration can't be legislated. No one wants unpleasant working conditions, and no one wants to see anyone humiliated. Still, forced adherence to the niceties of the democratic process could be counterproductive, even destructive, in the fragile world of creative culture.
So where's the truth? Of course there is no such thing in this complex context. Success in the irrational world of orchestras and opera companies is as fickle as Verdi's mobile donna. Persuasion simply depends on who is doing what to whom. Standards change from case to case, and so do problems.
Sometimes an orchestra actually triumphs despite its leader, not because of him. Anyone recall Leopold Stokowski faking his picturesque way through Turandot at the old Met, conducting the audience more than the participants? Sometimes the players know their job better than a fashionable (or inexpensive) dilettante on the podium knows his. Sometimes good music is mustered while the should-be conductor searches for his place in the score or bumbles over crucial cues. The orchestra seldom gets the credit it deserves on nasty occasions like this, and symphonic salvage operations seem to have become more frequent with each passing season.
A conductor may be loved by his players, but that doesn't mean they will play beautifully or even precisely for him. Nor does it mean they will be inspired to probe for messages hidden behind the notes, or stretch for stylistic illumination. Dimitri Mitropoulos was undeniably popular with the New York Philharmonic, but that difficult orchestra seldom played for him as if he really commanded respect. Although history has whitewashed many memories, the same New Yorkers often played sloppily and superficially for their beloved, hyper-emotive Lenny Bernstein. The Los Angeles Philharmonic professed unbridled adoration for Zubin Mehta — as their New York counterparts subsequently did — but performances under him were often bombastic and superficial.
Conversely, the vaunted Toscanini may have ruffled some orchestral feathers in his stubborn quest for precision. Wilhelm Furtwängler may have annoyed some of his instrumental players with his demand for expressive detail and broad tempos. Fritz Reiner endured the reputation of a martinet, and George Szell was feared as an often abrasive taskmaster. Yet, each in his different, undemocratic way, these tyrants made music. Glorious music.
It may have been easier in their day. Seasons were shorter. Without jet planes, conductors stayed home more. Unions, if they existed, exerted limited power. The system was designed to grant authority to the man at the top.
In rare instances, inspired results could even be attained without the pain of fastidious preparation. Hans Knappertsbusch was a giant among the mighty German Romantics. Orchestras in Munich, Vienna and Bayreuth worshipped him. And they played for him as they played for virtually no one else. They breathed with Knappertsbusch, no matter how slow he took a particular passage. They produced a special sheen in the string sound, and their massed tones took on unique solidity or transparency, depending on this conductor's whim. That whim, not incidentally, often changed from performance to performance. Ensemble attacks resembled massive unison gestures, stern, powerful and clean. And yet "Kna" — that's what nearly everyone called him — hated to rehearse. He achieved his results with personal magnetism.
While a student in Munich during the early 1960s, I managed to sneak into a morning rehearsal for a Rosenkavalier performance under Knappertsbusch. His appearances were rare events in those days, much anticipated in the pit and out front. The maestro, tall and gaunt, strode into the pit punctually at 10, looked around and ignored the eager applause and tapping of bows that greeted him. Quietly, he addressed the orchestra. "Ladies and gentlemen, you know the piece. I know it too. See you tonight." The rehearsal was over. He was gone.
The performance that night was perhaps the finest I ever heard — the most original, the most climactic, the most overwhelming, the best focused and most concentrated, the warmest, the grandest yet the most intimate.
On the simplest, most simplistic of levels, orchestras may not always need conductors. The NBC Symphony became the Symphony of the Air after Toscanini's death, and bravely gave a few concerts without following any leader. The musicians listened carefully to each other, and they remembered what their master had taught them. It soon became clear that they could reproduce the correct notes in the correct places alone. Unfortunately, they couldn't approximate spontaneity or flexibility. They couldn't fabricate interpretive insights. They couldn't grow.
Sometimes musical success is just a matter of aesthetic alchemy. It can't be governed by a committee or protected by a union. The business of art may be both complicated and fragile, but art cannot be managed as if it were a business. Nor should it function as a popularity contest. It is said that the players of the New York Philharmonic cast the decisive vote that elected the flashy Lorin Maazel as successor to the pedantic Kurt Masur. All change may not be for the good.
There are, of course, many conductors who savor power without abusing it, who genuinely like to rehearse and do it well, who enjoy popularity with their players and who ultimately deal in revelations. Most observers regarded Bruno Walter as such a model, and, closer to our time, members of the Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic still speak with awe of Carlo Maria Giulini. Contrary to the unpopular image, being a good conductor and being a good human being need not be mutually exclusive.
The ideal conductor, if such a paragon exists, would command the magnetism of a perfect father, the imagination of a poet, the memory of a historian, the patience of a saint, the intellect of a genius, the technique of a virtuoso and the ambition of a salesman. All this plus the friendly manner of the little guy next door. So far, so bad. Survival in music, like survival everywhere else, depends on enlightened compromises.
If you would like to respond to this
essay, please write to letters@andante.com.
