I suppose the time comes in every orchestra's life when it gets tired of its music director.
Despite denials, it happened in Philadelphia with Eugene Ormandy. It happened all too visibly in Berlin with Herbert von Karajan. And although no one talks much about it these days, it even happened here with Maurice Abravanel.Now it appears to be happening with Joseph Silverstein.
Oh, there've been rumblings before, murmurs of discontent over programming and/or a failure to consistently inspire his players to their very best. But never have I heard so many complaints as in the Utah Symphony season just past.
Indeed the murmurs grew to something like a chorus the weekend of the James DePreist concert, when that conductor galvanized the orchestra once again in the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony. "Here's the conductor we should have picked," several of the musicians said to me, recalling that DePreist was one of the candidates passed over for music director when the symphony board elected to go with Varujan Kojian in 1980.
That cry was even taken up by members of the audience. Which is all very well until one remembers that no one seemed to be saying that then. Nor were they saying it, at least where I could hear, in the wake of DePreist's return in 1986, his third engagement with this orchestra.
So what has happened? Well, after nine years I don't imagine there's much in Silverstein's bag of tricks the Utah Symphony hasn't seen. They know he is a superb violinist, with an ear for string sound perhaps no other conductor has brought to this podium.
They also know he has a remarkable grasp of classical style. Even among DePreist's admirers, most were willing to admit his Mozart wasn't a patch on "Joey's." Similarly, various members of the Utah Symphony Chorus - an organization that hasn't always appreciated Silverstein's seemingly unending run of Beethoven Ninths - acknowledged that, despite a noticeable miscue, it was an uplifting experience to sing Haydn under his direction, in this instance "The Creation."
On the other hand, no one was saying that about his Vaughan Williams earlier this season, either in or out of the Tabernacle ("A Song of Thanksgiving" and "Dona Nobis Pacem," respectively). Nor, despite his apparent willingness to begin and end the year with showpieces like "The Pines of Rome" (Respighi) and "Ein Heldenleben" (Strauss), did anyone seem to feel his heart was really in it.
(By all accounts the Strauss was further compromised by the conductor having been ill the week of the performances.)
In short, now that they are used to his strengths - which are considerable - many members of the orchestra are growing less and less tolerant of his weaknesses.
Too much Mozart. Too little Mahler. No really adventurous choral works. Nothing new here - I've been hearing this refrain in one form or another for five or six years now. Which is to say it isn't all a function of the Mozart bicentenary.
It's ironic that it should come, however, in the midst of a season that not only brought us perhaps the most interesting lineup of guest conductors this orchestra has seen in a while (in addition to DePreist, positive contributions were made by Christof Perick, Roger Nierenberg, Gerard Schwarz and especially Raymond Leppard) but also the most enterprising in terms of new music.
OK, so not everyone liked Morris Rosenzweig's determinedly modernistic "Concord" when it was unveiled here in December. But even the audience was ignited four months later by the Joan Tower Violin Concerto, a major premiere by any standard. Were that not enough, only his paragliding accident prevented the season from being capped by yet another new piece from Ricklen Nobis.
So I do not believe Silverstein is slacking his duty there. Nor, despite a tendency toward interpretive heaviness, do I think his work this season was noticeably lower-voltage than it has been in the past.
After nine years, though, I wouldn't be surprised if he is beginning to feel a little tired, if not a little discouraged. At this point the economy seems to have pretty much shot down his plans to expand the orchestra. Ditto the reaction of Utah audiences to some of his more imaginative programming ideas.
More serious, perhaps, is the lack of any long-range vision regarding the Utah Symphony in general, at least beyond the obvious one of keeping it alive.
Maybe I'm missing something, but on the face of it an orchestra with no major tours in the works, no long-range recording plans and no broadcasts other than local hardly seems concerned with enhancing its reputation outside the state of Utah. Which, as history has shown, usually has the effect of enhancing its reputation within the state.
The result is that the biggest international press the Utah Symphony is getting these days mostly involves the reissue of its recordings from the Abravanel era. I'm not denying that's a good thing, but with few exceptions the orchestra plays better now than it did then, if not always with the same transcendency. Clearly something needs to happen to reawaken its members to that fact, and maybe the rest of the world as well.