Long Beach: And Then There Was One

At the Long Beach Symphony, which last week announced the hiring of JoAnn Falletta as its music director for the next two years, the head of the 21-member committee that recommended her over four other candidates described the 15-month selection process that reduced a field of 200 candidates to a single winner.

“We worked for more than a year--first identifying and finding candidates, then presenting five of them to our board and audience,” said Margie Masterson, the veteran Symphony board member who chaired the search committee.

The first phase was sending out the call for qualified conductors. Then, when a list of 200 possible candidates was made, Masterson recalled, “we showed the list to the orchestra and invited their comments.”

The search commitee was looking for more than just musical talent, according to the job description. There were such administrative skills as fund raising and promotion, outreach and educational activities and, of course, board relations. Thirteen candidates were visited, observed and interviewed.

More than a year later, five finalists were evaluated by members of the orchestra after a guest appearance. The players filled out a final evaluation this month.

“The players had a huge input on this process,” commented Ray Bisso, a member of the search committee and a longtime symphony supporter. “They didn’t just vote yes or no on each candidate, they rated them in detail.”

Masterson said Falletta’s candidacy encountered no resistance “once she got to town (a week before her April 8 concert with the orchestra), though her being a woman had been a concern with some people in our audience at the time we announced the guest conductors.

“But, as we told members of our audience, there was no point in prejudging any of the candidates. Once they arrived, any questions about them could be addressed.”

Masterson said each conductor went through the same process:

“They arrived a week before their appearance, attended meetings with several committees, met a number of our subscribers at informal and social occasions, rehearsed the orchestra and gave a concert.”

Bisso observed that “All five of the conductors were first-rate candidates. But, when it came down to it, (Falletta) just seemed to be the right one. She blended best with Southern California.

“Some of the others may have been more authoritarian--and she really is soft-spoken. But she knows what she wants, she communicates it well, and in rehearsal she’s very specific. Then, when she got to the concert, it all worked. The orchestra played marvelously for her.”

Falletta will begin her tenure in Long Beach when the new season opens on Sept. 16.

DIRECTORIAL CHAIRS: British director Ian Judge becomes the third stage director for Los Angeles Music Center Opera’s new production of “Tosca,” to occupy the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for six nights, Sept. 6-18. Opening the company’s fourth season, this “Tosca,” conducted by Placido Domingo (artistic consultant of LAMCO), will have sets by John Gunther, costumes by Liz da Costa, and a lighting schemed devised by the company’s resident lighting designer, Marie Barrett.

Judge has credits at English National Opera and Opera North and will make his U.S. debut.

The originally announced stage director, Sir Peter Hall, bowed out several months ago, at the time he and Maria Ewing--who will sing “Tosca” here--announced their divorce. Elijah Moshinsky, subsequently announced to stage Puccini’s melodrama, dropped out recently, according to a company spokesman, when opening night for the play Moshinky will direct in London in the fall was moved forward.

The principals remain the same: Ewing as Tosca, Neil Shicoff as Cavaradossi, Justino Diaz as Scarpia, and Michael Gallup (Sacristan), Louis Lebherz (Angelotti) and John Atkins (Sciarrone).

ANOTHER INSTITUTE: For the second summer, cellist Lynn Harrell will again serve as artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, one of the more visible educational arms of the orchestra. On the faculty for 1989 will be conductors Yuri Temirkanov, David Zinman, the Swiss musician Mario Venzago Neeme Jarvi, Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski (who will conduct a program of his own music at UCLA) and the Emerson Quartet.

Ernest Fleischmann, managing director of the Philharmonic and founder of the Institute, told The Times that chamber ensembles made up of Institute orchestra players will again give public concerts at a number of venues around the city. And, besides its three scheduled Hollywood Bowl appearances (July 16 and 30, and Aug. 13), the 100-member LAPO Institute Orchestra will perform four concerts in Royce Hall at UCLA.

REMEMBERING: A concert on the UC Santa Barbara Artists series next Sunday night will memorialize musicologist Karl Geiringer, who died Jan. 10. Geiringer, a native of Vienna, came to this country in 1940 and began teaching at Boston University the following year. In 1962 he moved West to join the UCSB faculty, from which he retired formally 10 years later. In his long and productive career, Geiringer wrote books on the Bach family, biographies of Haydn, Brahms and J.S. Bach and a book of memoirs. During World War II, he wrote more than 100 entries for Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. The concert next Sunday will take place at 8 p.m. in Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall on the Goleta campus.