A Tempestuous Tenure and an Undeniable Legacy

Well, we’ll have another year to kick Ernest Fleischmann around. And he’ll have another year to test our patience and question our goodwill, among other commodities. Life marches on.

Fleischmann--who on Friday announced his impending retirement at the end of July, 1997, and his willingness to hang around part time thereafter--has been a major cultural force in our city for nearly three decades. He has been bracingly progressive, maddeningly eccentric, willfully egocentric, delightfully unpredictable, soberingly unrealistic and, yes, usefully cosmopolitan.

Those who have worked for him, or tried to, report that he is not an easy boss. Call that an understatement. Those who have done some degree of battle with him--a certain critic at a certain newspaper, for instance--know that he can be a formidable, tireless adversary, sometimes motivated more by hot passion than by cool reason.

To know Fleischmann may not be to love him. In many cases, however, to know him is to respect him.

Fleischmann may, on occasion, have acted a bit ruthlessly in quest of goals more idealistic than rational. His accomplishments often involved self-advancement in prominent step with artistic achievement. This man hasn’t minded treading on toes. Neither modesty nor discretion are counted among his strongest virtues.

Still, the Los Angeles Philharmonic that he leaves is a much healthier, much more stimulating, much more adventurous and much more sophisticated instrument than the one he found upon his arrival in 1969.

It may be worth remembering that Fleischmann got his job at the Music Center after he wrote a devastatingly tough, thoroughly negative, indisputably intelligent article about the contemporary crisis in music management. Conductors, he reported, had become too busy catching airplanes to mind their stores. Meanwhile, the non-musical impresarios left in charge didn’t seem to have sufficient knowledge, power or authority to keep aesthetic order as the home fires burned.

Unwittingly, no doubt, Fleischmann had written a job description and a job application at the same time. He had done so, moreover, with tremendous flair and in public. For better or worse, that always seemed to be his style.

The Philharmonic may not have risen to all the challenges he envisioned. Some of his ideas worked; others fizzled. Aesthetic ideals sometimes were reduced to publicity images. Even at his puffiest, however, Fleischmann dreamed good dreams.

If he doesn’t happen to like someone, he can be callous to a fault, and insulting too. But, when he wants to, he can be a real charmer.

He commands a dry wit, a questioning intellect and a healthy imagination. During his extended tenure, the Philharmonic has expanded its commitment to modern composition, explored much previously neglected repertory and introduced many extraordinary guest conductors and soloists long before they became household names. He even persuaded a few politicos that music could be more than decorative entertainment in the fabric of our lives.

Basically, an artistic director can only be as good as his music director. And, for all his muscle, the administrator must be something of a chameleon. And so it is with Fleischmann.

He arrived in the middle of the Zubin Mehta era, an era notable for flash and fury. The maestro on duty was a matinee idol, impure and simple. He also was brash and romantic. He wasn’t particularly effective in challenges requiring introspection or sensitivity, but he sold tickets, quickened a goodly number of pulses out front and helped make the Philharmonic seem important in the land of the plastic lotus. Fleischmann, an apologist par excellence, made the most of his inherited situation. He seconded every Mehta impulse--even such dubious ventures as a concert in a baseball stadium and an all too with-it crossover disaster called “The Switched-On Symphony.”

Those were the trendy days. When Mehta moved on, Fleischmann managed what may have been his biggest professional coup. He brought Carlo Maria Giulini to Los Angeles and, with the Italian maestro, he brought a dramatically different sense of values. Suddenly, the Philharmonic--Fleischmann’s Philharmonic--became an instrument of poetry.

The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion turned into a less happy place when Giulini abruptly resigned. Fleischmann, always supported by a cooperative board, replaced the Italian giant with Andre Previn. The results were always sane, usually safe, sometimes a bit pedantic. Previn apparently committed two unpardonable crimes: He specialized in conservative music, mostly British, that failed to excite the masses; and he didn’t curry much of Fleischmann’s favor. Clearly, his days were numbered.

Enter Esa-Pekka Salonen. The youthful Finn had mustered what the press agents like to call an overnight sensation as a late replacement for a much more famous colleague at a London concert. Within what seemed like minutes, he was on our podium--first as a visitor, then as lord of the musical manor.

Previn minced no words about the manner in which, he said, Fleischmann had forced him out. Fleischmann’s supporters, however, took comfort in the newfound excitement and adventure promised by Salonen’s appointment. Here, it was hoped, was a musician who could somehow fuse the pizazz of Zubin Mehta with the esoteric convictions of another musician who savored the importance of knowing Ernest: Pierre Boulez. Now Fleischmann really had a product to support and promote, a new talent to provoke and stretch.

Fleischmann’s job has never been easy. It entails long hours and endless frustrations. It must be especially difficult now, with arts funding in dire peril on civic, state and national levels. It may be significant that he has chosen to leave his post in an atmosphere of social and political hostility--at a time when the great dream of Disney Hall has turned into a nasty nightmare.

But is he really leaving? He announced his resignation once before, to take over leadership of the Paris Opera. Then, quite abruptly, he changed his mind. He could do so again.

In any case, he intends to continue for some time in an advisorial capacity. That may not make life particularly easy, or pleasant, for his successor. Actually, that may not make it easy for the Philharmonic to find a successor.

Ernest Fleischmann has always cast a long shadow.