(Dimitri Mitropoulos, one of the greatest, and most underrated, conductors of all time. With the New York Philharmonic.)

A bit more than fifty years ago, there was a conductor who finally stood on the cusp of a superstardom that everyone had thought was his for the taking even thirty years before that. The Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in the mid 1920's. And when the pianist on Mitropoulos's debut program cancelled, the young conductor astonished the musical world by directing from the keyboard and playing the solo part Prokofiev's new 3rd piano concerto from memory. As a conductor, Mitropoulos had a repertoire of nearly a thousand works, all of which he could similarly conduct from memory. But musical Europe was exactly as xenophobic as the rest of Europe then was. And a Greek musician, even a great one, could not stand a chance when a good native musician was available. Mitropoulos came to America, where he spent a dozen years forming the Minneapolis Symphony (now the Minnesota Orchestra) into one of America's great ensembles. It was expected in all quarters that when Serge Koussevitzky retired from the Boston Symphony, Mitropoulos would take over. Instead, Boston stunned the musical world by selecting the French conductor, Charles Munch. Instead, Mitropoulos took over the New York Philharmonic. The Philharmonic, and the New York press, hounded him out within five years for playing too much uncommon music and taking too many risks in performance. He was replaced by his one-time protege, Leonard Bernstein. Within three years of leaving the Philharmonic, Mitropoulos was dead.

Mitropoulos was everything a mid-20th century conductor was not supposed to be. Conductors are pampered beasts by their very natures who used to hold the power of immediate dismissal in their hands. But while most other conductors of his time were known for their tyrannical manners, Mitropoulos was regarded as an unworldly saint who never raised his voice to musicians, even when the musicians agreed that it would have been deserved. While most other American-based maestros trained orchestras into well-oiled machines, Mitropoulos took very little interest in technical finesse (as many recordings attest), preferring instead to make sure that the musicians were communicating the spirit of the music as he felt it must be conveyed. Most conductors of his time were content to perform the same 50 pieces over and over again, but Mitropoulos used his eminent position to champion as many unknown works as his position would allow. Whereas other conductors kept their profligate (and usually hetero)sexual activities as hushed up as possible, Mitropoulos never denied his homosexuality and in doing so allowed his performances to be barraged in the New York Press with all sorts of euphemisms like 'Too sensitive,' and 'Not rugged enough.'



It's difficult to listen to an Eschenbach performance and not call Mitropoulos to mind. They share the same scarily versatile musicianship, the same vaguely religious air about them, the same courtesy to their colleagues, the same lack of concern for technical matters, the same penchant for unfamiliar repertoire, the same desire to play familiar music in unfamiliar ways, the same openly secret sexuality, and the same career trajectories.

Eschenbach spent a dozen years with the Houston Symphony. Before him, the Houston Symphony was regarded as a fine provincial orchestra where great conductors could make stopovers to earn a lot of money. Stokowski, Barbirolli, Fricsay and Previn all directed the Houston Symphony, but none of them viewed it as their most important appointment. Eschenbach was the first star conductor to throw himself unreservedly into the city's life, and Houston loved him for it. The Houston Symphony went on tours, struck up a relationship with NPR, and made more recordings than ever before in its history. It was never the most technically adept orchestra in America, but it played everything from Bruckner to Stephen Albert with the commitment of a great orchestra. When he left, it was thought that Eschenbach was ready to be 'promoted' and get an appointment with the 'Big Five' (traditionally considered the greatest orchestras in America: Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago).



But as it turned out, Cleveland didn't want him, and neither did New York. Philadelphia needed a music director to open its new hall, and management signed Eschenbach because Simon Rattle wasn't interested. Management signed Eschenbach without ever consulting the musicians. Eschenbach had not conducted in Philadelphia in five years, the reason being a lack of chemistry. Philadelphia is the virtuoso among American orchestras, priding itself for a century on possessing a technical elegance that can outstrip every other ensemble in America. The very virtues that made Eschenbach a star in Houston - the spontaneity, the warmth, the willingness to take risks - brought him down with the ultra-grizzled Philadelphia musicians. Their relationship was like a chemistry set made by Enrico Fermi. Reports from Paris tell that his simultaneous relationship with the Orchestre de Paris was similarly frought.

Now humbled and entering his seventies, Eschenbach has moved a step down the ladder and is taking on the National Symphony in our hometown. Eschenbach is not by nature a musician of the jet-set. He is not temperamentally suited to be the sort of musician who can fly from city to city, tell an orchestra exactly what he wants and then go elsewhere. He needs one place to base himself in order to thrive. Eschenbach is the sort of musician who naturally cultivates long-term relationships with musicians, and those relationships take time to reveal their potential. If nobody else were to speak up in his favor, Eschenbach could still rely on a steady stream of internationally renowned soloists who'd still line up to work with him. Renee Fleming and Lang Lang both consider him a mentors, and Eschenbach's working relationships with them continue unabated regardless of how great their stardom grows.



The appointment was considered paradoxically safe and controversial. Here is a star conductor, with more name-recognition, than anyone ever expected would ever come to Washington. Here is also a conductor in his seventies, with rampantly individualist ideas and only present for ten weeks of the year. Only time will tell if Eschenbach will be what's needed in at the NSO. But give him a chance, there's a better than usual chance he might be.