Features: The Sound of Muti

THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO TELL life stories. One is to race through the facts quickly: born in Naples in 1941, third of five sons, father a doctor, began taking violin at age 7, piano at 12. That, however, is not the Italian way, and it is certainly not Muti’s way. It would be far more appropriate to launch into a sampling of tales, the kind Muti relishes telling when he is able to find a minute away from music.

There is the story of how he began his career as a pianist, only to be diverted into conducting while attending college and the conservatory in Naples: "There were only two persons in the conducting class that year — a woman and a monk. Now at the that time, in 1962, there were not so many women who wanted to conduct and the monk … well, it didn’t seem very appropriate since the program had some Romantic music that required a certain . . . experience of life. I think that if the monk, by accident, had given a good performance he would have been pushed out of the monastery. So the director of the conservatorio asked me to try conducting, and the experiment was very successful. "

There is the story of the final exam in ten-year composition course at the Verdi Conservatory in Milan, the course Muti finished in five years, the course he took
because he felt the best way to be a conductor and bring the best out of music and musicians was to fully understand how music was written. It is the same exam they have given for more than 100 years, similar to the one Mozart himself took: "You are locked in a room in the conservatorio. You are like in jail. And they bring to the room the theme, and there is no way you could have heard the theme because it comes from Rome from the minister in sealed envelopes, which are sent to all the conservatories in Italy. At the same moment, 9 o’clock, they are opened and given to the students. You are locked in the room for 24 hours and in 24 hours you must write the first movement of a quartet, a contrapunto or a fugue with the theme. If you have to go to the bathroom you push a button and a red light goes on outside the door."

There is another story that reveals Muti’s stubborn streak when it comes to compromising standards: "When I started my career in 1967, my first engagement was in Genoa, and the director of the theater wanted me to do certain works that I didn’t want to do. It was my first engagement and he said to me, ‘You do these works or no engagement.’ And I said, ‘Thank you very much, no engagement.’ "

And there is the story of the fateful day in 1970 when Eugene Ormandy, on tour In Florence with the Philadelphia Orchestra happened to arrive early for a 1 rehearsal at the Teatro Comunale. "I was rehearsing my Maggio Musicale, [an orchestra in Florence] and Ormandy and some of his players were waiting behind the curtain. I didn’t know they were there, but I heard later that Ormandy told his players to keep my name in mind, that he wanted me to come to Philadelphia and conduct. I met Ormandy afterward and in 1972 I received an invitation."

Before Ormandy had spotted him, Muti was known mostly in Italy— he had won a prestigious conducting competition in 1967 and had followed it up with several operatic and symphonic successes. But after his 1972 debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Muti’s career took off internationally. He was asked to guest conduct at other major orchestras, and he returned to Philadelphia each season. London’s Philharmonia Orchestra appointed him music director (the music director makes musical policy for an orchestra, choosing the pieces to be played during the year, regardless of whether he or a guest will conduct them). His triumphs during the ’70s were split evenly between opera, which appeals more to European tastes, and orchestral work, which is the favorite in America. He recorded as well, signing an exclusive contract with EMI Records. In 1977, Muti was named principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, an intermediate step toward his succession of the man who had discovered him.

While Muti’s star kept gaining luster during this period, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s was slightly tarnishing. Ormandy’s age was becoming a problem — he was approaching 80 — but the Philadelphians also needed fresh leadership, a more modem approach to preserving the classics of music. "Ormandy was just going through the motions," flutist Murray Panitz now says. "We were perhaps inclined to get a little bit sloppy," says Norman Carol, "although the level never went below pretty darn good." The debate over whether, when and how Ormandy should be replaced was fierce and continued for years, but Muti was being groomed for the job as early as 1975. And even though the press and the audiences — for so long loyal to Ormandy, who was music director for 44 years made noise while the baton was slowly passed, the transition was remarkably easy within the orchestra. In fact, the players couldn’t wait to have Muti as music director. (They didn’t have to worry about being fired: they had their union and their own contracts with the orchestra association. Like the president’s selections to the Supreme Court, a new music director generally only gets to add his own players when someone retires or dies.)

Among the public, however, there were long discussions about Muti’s commitment to the orchestra — he could only fit ten weeks of conducting his new orchestra into his busy schedule the first year, 14 the second, and 15 the third. He didn’t plan to make Philadelphia his permanent home. (He still doesn’t.) This didn’t sit well with an audience used to seeing its conductor almost 20 weeks out of a 33 week season. (The summer seasons at the Mann Music Center and Saratoga aren’t part of the Orchestra Association’s contract with Muti.) What they didn’t realize was that times had changed. Virtually every other major American orchestra is faced with the situation of the part-time music director. During Ormandy’s long reign (he started in 1940), the international world of classical music shifted radically. Improved air travel made city-hopping realistic a player or conductor could move around to different orchestras and be challenged by the special qualities each symphonic group had to offer. The proliferation of the electronic media — especially the boom in the record business — turned symphonic and operatic music into big business. This musical star system, which began in earnest with Caruso, has constantly worried purists who think these interpreters have grown more important than the music.

And Muti has taken advantage of those changes more than most. He is still in demand all over the world; it is not uncommon for him to conduct or record in ten different cities in the course of a year.

Fortunately, Philadelphia seems to have made its peace with Muti. It has come to realize that he has not used the jet merely to further his career. He moves around, rather, so he can find places where he can program more obscure and ambitious works, as well as opera, in between the standard fare.

This is also his goal in recording. His records have done well — both critically and financially — although he hasn’t recorded anything that has sold as well as the three gold records Ormandy brought the orchestra. Tony Coronia, the EMI Records executive who handles Muti, says this is because the classical music buyer shops for the piece of the music first, the conductor second and the orchestra third — and Muti is sometimes reluctant to record many of the old favorites. "It’s not easy to get Riccardo to do things," admits Coronia, who has also become Muti’s friend over the years. "He’s very serious in his approach to music, very worried about his integrity. Ormandy was just one of those conductors who made a lot of recordings, appealed to a lot of tastes. He even did records of Christmas songs. Riccardo doesn’t want to be seen as only a pop conductor. So we get him to do Tchaikovsky symphonies or Scheherazade or Sleeping Beauty, and then we agree to do riskier things, like Mahler or the Gluck Orfeo."

Just as he seems to be able to balance ambitious recording projects with more popular sellers, Muti has juggled the demands of his part-time music director position better than many had expected. In fact, for all the criticism from Philadelphians (and orchestra members) who would like to see more of him, Muti conducts more often in Philadelphia than his counterparts at the Chicago, Boston and New York orchestras do in their home cities. There was some drama, however, when Muti’s first three-year contract with the orchestra came up for renewal in 1983. The players and the Orchestra Association — the corporate body that runs the orchestra and the Academy of Music, and hires the musical director, the guest Conductors, and orchestra members — feared that his commitment to Philadelphia wasn’t strong enough. He was still guest-conducting all over the world, and, with a wife and young children at his home in Ravenna, Italy, there were growing domestic demands as well. Muti relinquished command of the London Philharmonia in 1982, but almost immediately came news that he was being courted by London’s Covent Garden Opera. He turned them down, signed a new three-year pact with the Philadelphia Orchestra (at a salary reported by the New York Times to be $200,000), but then also agreed to begin as music director at Milan’s La Scala in the 1985-’86 season. Many worry that the La Scala move is a sign of some waning interest in Philadelphia, but Muti has contended just the opposite. By the time his La Scala duties begin, he plans to have I cut back drastically on his guest conducting appearances, leaving his time split between just two organizations — one mainly operatic and one symphonic. At La Scala, the music director only works on his own productions — in his first year Muti plans two operas there — leaving the rest of the season largely to the theater’s management. And, he says, since La Scala is so near his home in central Italy, the long commutes to Philadelphia won’t seem so bad.