The Overture

By this point, the committee had already decided to skip anyone who had never done a guest stint conducting the Orchestra. Everyone agreed that to choose otherwise would be like getting married on a blind date. Even though they were hiring someone for a job that started in three years, world-class conductors are booked far, far in advance. It was almost too late to get someone in for a guest appearance during the 1992-93 season — much less get a new music director for that season.

Finally, the committee examined the combined results of everyone’s five-name short list. Theoretically, five names each from 12 people could have added up to 60 names. But because so many members were thinking about the same potential candidates, there were only 16 names. And of those 16, there were five who got at least six votes each. In alphabetical order, they were:

• Sir Colin Davis, former music director of the Royal Opera in Covent Garden, now the director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and a globe-trotting guest conductor;
• Charles Dutoit;
• Bernard Haitink, former music director of the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, now director of the Royal Opera in Covent Garden;
• Simon Rattle, of the City of Birmingham Symphony;
• Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Haitink and Rattle’s names came as surprises, particularly since they’d never been guest conductors here. And Sawallisch was a surprise — to board members, at any rate. They didn’t know much about him. The discussion grew tense when several board members, citing his age and lack of public identity, questioned his qualifications. But the musicians defended Sawallisch, praising him effusively. Like Muti, they argued, Sawallisch was sure of his tastes and knew the music inside out. His rehearsal technique was marvelous, unlike some conductors who jumped around or talked too much. A music director doesn’t just stand there waving the baton, after all; he has an artistic vision of how every single passage must be played and inspires an orchestra to play it. And that was what the Orchestra members on the committee said they wanted — not somebody, for heaven’s sake, who would let them out of practice a half hour early.

By meeting’s end, there had been plenty of what diplomats call "frank discussion," but no outright confrontations, and in fact a consensus was forming. It was clear, first of all, that things were just not going to happen for Dutoit. Instead, three tasks loomed ahead: (1) the entire Orchestra needed to be polled to see if Sawallisch was really so widely admired; (2) the entire classical music business to be polled about Sawallisch — board members on the committee needed to be convinced that the musicians were objective; (3) someone had to approach Sawallisch himself.