Instead of the incumbent.
Or he's interested in music that's younger than the pyramids, that counts against him with the Berlin Phil...:lol:...I've got him doing some great Ives, Henze & Martinu, instead of those in Berlin he'd probably be doing, well, guess, it's not hard......Another free agent is Ingo Metzmacher - ...I don't know whether his track record would go against him - he seems a bit of a modernist.
I was wrong about Metmacher, partially. The Ives and Martinu recordings I have with him at the helm were done with other groups, but the Henze symphony I have was done with the Berlin Philharmonic. I guess that Metzmacher was guesting in that recording session with the BPO. In any case, Henze is virtually establishment now, much like guys like Hindemith became after the World War II. Henze after the Cold War, Hindemith after de-Nazification. So probably it's no big deal the BPO doing Henze, he's like in his eighties now, it's similar to von Karajan's posterboy Blacher, who was not really cutting edge by that time either....Maybe, Berliners should invite more conductors as Ingo Metzmacher...
It would be a waste, imo. The BPO is a straightjacket as far as I know. Maybe it is changing, as elgar's ghost says....Maybe some day Metzmacher will be their chief-conductor...
It's a chicken and egg thing. How do you know if they don't appreciate it if they don't know it. About 30 years ago, I doubt anybody knew Arvo Part's music here in Australia (I'm talking about listeners of classical music, of course). Now he's the most played composer here in live format and also on radio as far as contemporary music goes. Basically you have to be living under a rock if you don't know him, at least a couple or a few pieces of his, if you're into the classical. Now people know him but it's been like 30 years of his music being played live here, esp. in say the last 10 years. A thing kind of obscure here 30 years ago or maybe even 20 years ago, is now almost cliche. This is what I'm saying. If orchestras don't put less warhorsey things out there, it's like Rumsfeld's famous quote of "known knowns, unknown knowns, and unknown unknowns."...
Does it? You and I and many others may look forward to music that breaks outside of the confines of the symphonic warhorses from Mozart through Shostakovitch but a large majority of the audience doesn't appreciate the like ...
Well I'm not surprised, but to give them credit the BPO have done some newer things live and it was recorded for the cinemas in their HD series that came here, eg. Takemitsu & I think things like Nino Rota as well, if my memory is correct. But these things were more in-between tokens of the warhorses. If they're the worlds finest orchestra or whatever, why don't they play something like Carter's Concerto for Orchestra? Maybe on a program with older works in the genre, eg. by Bartok or Lutoslawski, that would be interesting programming. A similar thing happened here 20 years ago, but on the whole our flagship groups, as far as I can tell have gone predictable and conservative (I tuned out of the big name groups years back, I now support the smaller & groups with lower profile with my patronage, they do more interesting, imaginative and let's fact it BETTER programming, not just warhorses).There is a video of an open-air concert with Jansons and BPO. When they start playing Bartok's Suite from Miracleous Mandarin some members of the auditorium had facial expressions: "what's this?"...