Youth takes another podium, in NYC

It's a family story. A homecoming. And he's an American.

To read and hear about the appointment of Alan Gilbert yesterday as the new music director of the New York Philharmonic, you had to marvel at his story's packaging.

A few years ago when the philharmonic was aiming to fill the job with an elder statesman, Gilbert, 40, seemed unlikely music director material. But now look: He grew up in New York; in fact, he grew up in the philharmonic, where his parents were both violinists. Suddenly his appointment sounds inevitable.

The force of destiny aside, the philharmonic now joins its Los Angeles counterpart in taking risks.

Hiring a 40-year-old (Gilbert will be a tad older when he takes over in 2009) who has led just six programs highlights the awkward place several American orchestras find themselves in at the moment. The senior-citizen conductors to whom most orchestras feel comfortable entrusting their podiums are saying no, forcing a little gambling. Will Philadelphia be next?

The New York Times recognized Gilbert's potential at his philharmonic debut in 2001, when critic Anne Midgette wrote that he was the "real thing: a deeply musical conductor with the authority to deal with this orchestra."

And now he will, mostly. If you do the math, New York is tempering youth with some sage experience. Gilbert, the chief conductor of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra who honed his skills at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Juilliard School not that long ago, is expected to conduct 12 weeks each season, while Riccardo Muti has apparently agreed to materialize for as many as eight. Not a huge difference, especially if Muti actually shows up to fulfill the duties of his unnamed position.

Youth was not seen as a liability decades ago. Eugene Ormandy became music director in Philadelphia at 38; Muti took the title at just a shade older. But orchestras today are pathologically conservative. When the Los Angeles Philharmonic recently named 26-year-old Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel its next leader, it seemed almost subversive.

The Philadelphia Orchestra has, for now, quieted public discussion about its music-director search by putting in place a temporary caretaker, Charles Dutoit, 70, while it looks - not surprisingly - to much younger talent.

Orchestras should have been cultivating the next generation of leaders a lot earlier - well before being forced. Regardless of their motivations now, it's probably efficacious that they're looking at younger conductors, especially since it comes with a re-examination of what the job has become.

Should music directors just direct music? Or should they also be fund-raisers? Should they hire guest artists and program repertoire while considering box-office appeal, or should they make such decisions sequestered in an atmosphere of artistic purity? This country has seen all kinds of models - from Ormandy's year-round, full-time dual office-and-podium presence, to the current jet-setting standard that leaves administrative matters to administrators.

While it's tempting to think that a new job description will apply to all, and perhaps that the path to orchestral prosperity lies in younger hands, the truth is that each orchestra in this country has a unique mission, and McOrchestrazation is an idea no more viable today than it was 50 or 100 years ago.

Los Angeles and New York may be in need of youth right now, while the players of Philadelphia and Boston find better chemistry with veterans. The job has been reinvented so that players are given greater power and the music director less. But I suspect that in the end, orchestras will remember that their energy and purpose flow directly from the music director - a more authoritarian concept than one usually finds in democratic society.

It's certainly the case in Philadelphia, where musical credibility is the source of all order. While many refuse to believe it, the factor that has undermined Christoph Eschenbach's tenure is not personality. He's a lovely guy; he and the players have a cordial off-stage relationship. The problem is the music. If 80 percent of the musicians leave concerts angry - as Eschenbach told players that president James Undercofler had told him - that's corrosive to the music and the institution.

In Philadelphia, it didn't matter that Eschenbach was a nice guy, a great fund-raiser or even a marvelous pianist. In New York, it won't matter if Gilbert's parents were musical insiders if it turns out players and audiences don't like his Brahms (one of several mainstream composers he has not led with New York).

Philadelphia is smart in waiting for the affirmation of great chemistry. There are some promising leads, one in particular. And if Philadelphia does its job right, the choice will seem not only inevitable, but inevitable for the right reason. Musical.

Inquirer music critic and culture writer Peter Dobrin's blog, "ArtsWatch," tells you who's making news, noise and splash in the Philadelphia arts world and beyond. Read "ArtsWatch" at http:// go.philly.com/artswatch.EndText