“Conducting has become the profession of a traveling salesman… A conductor has to stay put to educate an orchestra.” – William Steinberg (1899-1978) former music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Boston Symphony Orchestra
As I was researching conductors of the past for my recent post about Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, I came across this little tidbit on Wikipedia:
“In 1963, Georg Solti was invited to become music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Solti told the representatives of the orchestra that his commitments at Covent Garden made it impossible to give Chicago the eight months a year they sought. He suggested giving them three and a half months (or 14 weeks) a year and inviting Carlo Maria Giulini to take charge for a similar length of time. The orchestra declined… When Solti accepted the orchestra’s second invitation in 1967 – on his terms – they agreed that Giulini should be appointed to share the conducting.” (Solti would eventually reduce his commitment to 10 weeks.)
Solti’s arrangement wasn’t without precedent. In 1964, Leonard Bernstein, then 46, asked the NY Philharmonic to curtail his already-limited commitment as music director from 16 to 12 weeks – not including tours, Young People’s Concerts or TV appearances – to allow more time for him to compose and guest conduct. According to public records, Bernstein’s 1960 salary was $62,000, or $675,000 in 2026 dollars; he presumably took a paycut after his schedule was reduced. Again, these were meant to be exceptions: the standard music director contract at the time was for 30-34 weeks, which remains the case at most regional orchestras.
Fast forward to 2024, and the announcement that Klaus Mäkelä, who just turned 30 last month, will become the next music director of the Chicago Symphony. According to his contract, Mäkelä “will conduct the CSO for 14 weeks per season, including 10 weeks of subscription concerts in Chicago and 4 weeks of touring.” Mäkelä’s starting salary will reportedly be $1.5 million, roughly three times what Bernstein made (adjusted) for 6 less weeks of work. Which leaves Mäkelä free to simultaneously serve as chief conductor of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, one of the top orchestras in the world, alongside guest conducting and “emeritus” appearances with the two orchestras he currently leads, the Oslo Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris.
It wasn’t always this way. When Arthur Nikisch was music director of the Boston Symphony (1889-1893), he led 388 of the orchestra’s 398 subscription concerts, including 196 on tour. Theodore Thomas, founder and first music director of the Chicago Symphony, had a contract that read in part:
“The music director is to determine the character and standard of all performances by the Association, and to that end make all programs, select all soloists, and take the initiative for arranging all choral and festival performances, the intention…being to lodge in the hands of the director the power and responsibility for the attainment of the highest standard of artistic excellence in all performances given by the Association.”
The same was true for Thomas’ successor, Frederick Stock, who was the CSO’s music director for 37 seasons. Both lived in Chicago; neither held any other directorships. (Of course, this was in the days before air travel, when it wasn’t practical to hold more than one position at a time.)
To be fair, Mäkelä’s contract is no different from that of his predecessor, the venerable maestro Riccardo Muti, who was reportedly pulling in $3.5 million for 10 weeks of work when his contract ended in 2023. (Muti is now the CSO’s “Music Director Emeritus for Life.”) But, Muti, 84, has been at the top of the orchestra world for more than 50 years, with renowned tenures at the head of the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and La Scala, not to mention one of the favored conductors of the Vienna Philharmonic. As impressive and as knowledgeable as Mäkelä is, he would be the first to say that he can’t possibly match Muti’s decades of experience on the podium. Nor is there any indication that his conducting élan will translate into the leadership (i.e., Fundraising) required of an American music director.
The concept of a “music director” is a peculiarly American one. In Europe and elsewhere, orchestras are led by what are referred to as “chief conductors”, leaders who have some say in personnel hires and repertoire, but are mostly just there to conduct. (As such, their compensation is significantly lower than in the U.S.) By contrast, music directors have a good deal more responsibility, at least on paper. As the face of the orchestra, music directors are expected to do press engagements, community outreach, and fundraising, which can often take up a majority of their time. For some, the rewards aren’t worth it: Muti’s predecessor in Chicago, Daniel Barenboim, cited “increasing administrative, fundraising and promotional demands placed on the music director of an American symphony orchestra” as his chief reasons for stepping down in 2006.
On a 2023 NPR podcast, longtime New Yorker music critic Alex Ross – who’s been vocal about his distaste for peripatetic conductors – had this to say:
“For a music director to carry off an ambitious project, you have to be there. You have to be on the scene, persuading people, interacting with them, listening to their ideas. You cannot do that as effectively if you’re flying in for two or three weeks, and another couple of weeks in the winter, and another two weeks in the spring. I find it a bit outrageous that music directors are so highly paid to begin with for one job – and then you find them holding a second or even a third position with exorbitant salaries in those places as well. This, of all things, is something the orchestra world should really be thinking about: drastically revising our idea of who a music director is, what their job entails.”
Not all music directors are so mercenary. In Cleveland, Franz Welser-Möst will step down next season after 25 years cultivating what many consider to be the best orchestra in the country. Two hours south, Manfred Honeck is now in his 18th season as head of the Pittsburgh Symphony – second only to William Steinberg, who was music director for 24 years – where he is widely credited with revitalizing that ensemble as evidenced through a string of celebrated recordings and a wildly successful December appearance at Carnegie Hall. When he was named music director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas bought a house in town and lived there with his husband Joshua throughout his 25 year tenure. It’s worth noting that neither Welser-Möst nor Honeck currently hold any other directorships, and MTT’s only other post was as music director of Miami’s New World Symphony, which he co-founded in 1987.
On the other hand, we have Andris Nelsons, who presaged Mäkelä’s doubling up by agreeing to become Kapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra after he’d already been named music director of the BSO, requiring a fair amount of juggling on both sides of the Atlantic. (Besides both Boston and Leipzig, Nelsons is currently preparing to lead the Vienna Philharmonic on tour, including their appearances at Carnegie Hall later this month.) And don’t forget the ubiquitous Yannick Nézet-Seguin, who leads both the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Metropolitan Opera, in addition to his hometown Orchestre Métropolitain de Montreal – not to mention regular guest gigs with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics and his job teaching at the Curtis Institute. The issue isn’t that these conductors aren’t supremely talented – both Andris and Yannick are superb interpreters across a wide range of repertoire, including opera. The concern is that they’re spreading themselves way too thin to do any of these individual positions justice. (In one particularly vexing instance of scheduling legerdemain, earlier this season Yannick found himself conducting both the Met and the Philadelphia Orchestra on the same day (Oct. 25).
What about Gustavo Dudamel, incoming music director of the NY Phil and one of the orchestra world’s biggest superstars? As if to forestall (for now) the temptation to take on any additional directorships beyond his long-term association with the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, the Phil secured the largest single donation in its history – $40M – from Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang to cover Dudamel’s salary (he’s currently making around $3.5M in his final season at the LA Phil) as well as his yet-to-be announced music education program that will most likely resemble the YOLA initiative he founded in LA. Along with enhanced programming that will include opera performances at Carnegie Hall, Dudamel’s ambitions seem to be on a scale we haven’t seen in New York since the days of Lenny; one would hope that would be enough to keep his focus here. We’ll find out more when the Phil announces its plans for Dudamel’s inaugural season in a few weeks.
Unfortunately, not everywhere has the same deep-pocketed, enlightened patrons that we have in NYC. As MTT’s successor in San Francisco, Esa-Pekka Salonen was assembling “the most sophisticated programs of any American orchestra,” according to critic and former orchestra manager Joe Horowitz until the board pulled the plug on it all two years ago, blaming the exorbitant cost. (Soon thereafter, Salonen said he would step down at the end of his contract, which expired last season.) Other orchestras experiencing declining – and graying – audiences have resorted to the usual crutches, such as an ever-increasing number of movie nights and crossover concerts, at the expense of traditional programming. These things need not be mutually exclusive – just look at the Colorado Symphony’s success last weekend, with a pair of sold-out concerts at Radio City, followed by a terrific performance at Carnegie with Itzhak Perlman (also sold out). But, it takes patience – and vision – to strike the right balance.
It also takes leadership, with a music director willing to put in the time and effort to create a distinct identity that mirrors the community in which the musicians – and ideally, they themselves – live. Some music directors currently doing this include Teddy Abrams at the Louisville Orchestra and Delta David Gier at the South Dakota Symphony, though they’re rare exceptions. When your music director is constantly flying to or from their other engagements around the globe, it’s nearly impossible to make any kind of lasting impact.
Maybe it’s time to try something different, like longer weekly commitments that would preclude multiple appointments and encourage a deeper relationship with both orchestra and community. And, while we’re at it, it wouldn’t hurt to have some more diversity at the top: artistic hubris has always been a typically male problem. Unless we’re talking about Tàr.
- If you want a preview of what we can expect from Mäkelä in a couple of years, he and the CSO will be at Carnegie Hall on Wednesday 2/25, in a promising program of Sibelius and Strauss.
- Dudamel returns to conduct the Phil on March 12 in a program that includes a newly orchestrated version of Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” and Beethoven’s “Eroica” symphony.
- In addition to his concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic (2/27-3/1), Nelsons brings the BSO to Carnegie April 9-10 with a pair of concerts featuring music by John Adams, Dvořák, Grieg and Sibelius
- Along with performances by the Philadelphia (3/10) and Met Orchestras (6/11), Yannick leads a gala concert on May 5 celebrating the 50th anniversary of the so-called “Concert of the Century.” And, oh yeah, Tristan and Kavalier and Clay at the Met.
- Finally, for those in Pittsburgh, Manfred Honeck is in the middle of a 5-week stretch of concerts – dubbed “Manfred Fest” by the PSO’s marketing gurus – highlighted by three performances of Bruckner’s mighty 8th symphony (Feb 20-22); I’ll be there.