Prelude To The Future

Recently the Los Angeles Philharmonic performed on a Friday afternoon at the Music Center downtown. It was a strange concert. The conductor was Mark Wigglesworth, a dashing young Brit beginning to make a name for himself. The program had an informal theme of rebirth. In one piece Mahler asked the ultimate question: Is there more to life than the suffering we endure on this planet? The concert ended with Richard Strauss conjuring up death and spiritual transformation.

The audience that afternoon symbolized the music. Because of the time of day, it was composed mainly of senior citizens and schoolchildren. But something wasn’t quite right. The message of the music hardly seemed to get through.

Ladies (and gentlemen) who lunch had come for pleasant diversion, and this wasn’t pleasant. The kids, generally clueless about classical music, didn’t quite know how to connect to music so distant in time and culture. So they squirmed as if in a dentist’s chair, and the adults, through their own restless clucking and complaining, expressed resentment at sharing the concert with them.

This matinee asked hard questions. What kind of an audience does, and should, an orchestra serve? Does the Los Angeles Philharmonic exist to promote a dying tradition for an aging audience, or should it continually reinvent itself? Can it ever mean much to a great city that so identifies with popular culture?

It is precisely the time for such questions. Today a new man enters our musical realm. Willem Wijnbergen has moved from Amsterdam to Los Angeles, from the Old World to the New, to succeed Ernest Fleischmann as managing director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It is a different sort of job from managing the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the post Wijnbergen left to head west.

In the Netherlands, the Concertgebouw, a dream of an orchestra, is a national treasure. It plays in a jewel of a concert hall of the same name (concertgebouw is Dutch for concert hall), and music lovers from all over the world make pilgrimages to Amsterdam. The Dutch themselves are phenomenally devoted to music, and the arts and the life of Amsterdam are one.

Despite this glowing picture, the Concertgebouw is weighed down with so much reverence for its tradition that the orchestra is ever in danger of becoming a dusty museum piece. And despite the glum atmosphere of the recent Music Center matinee, the Los Angeles Philharmonic is potentially the orchestra of the future. Its challenge is to play a civilizing and inspiring role in the entertainment capital of the world. Wijnbergen arrives at an opportune and optimistic moment: The 40-year-old Dutchman could help make it happen.

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The Philharmonic today is healthy at a time when classical music is talked about as if it were a terminal patient at Cedars-Sinai. The orchestra is increasingly viewed on the East Coast and in Europe as a fountainhead of new ideas for renewing classical music, be it refreshing the repertory or experimenting with film-music collaborations.

Esa-Pekka Salonen, the music director since 1992, has brought a youth and vitality to the organization that makes it special among the world’s most important orchestras. The Finnish conductor, who turns 40 in June, is a rarity in classical music, an intellectual and a charismatic podium presence. He is a technically superb conductor who has the Philharmonic playing as reliably, day in and day out, as any orchestra in America. He is devoted to the new. And if he is not as admired for his Beethoven as for his Stravinsky and Ligeti, Salonen appears on the verge of finding the key to making older classics fresh.

And the Philharmonic plays to impressive numbers. Each year more than half a million people hear its concerts at the Music Center and the Hollywood Bowl. The Bowl, moreover, is its own kind of tourist attraction, as much a symbol of the magical Southern California outdoors as the Concertgebouw is of cultivated Amsterdam.

Yet, for all that, the Los Angeles Philharmonic remains the best-kept secret in town, playing a too-small role in the consciousness of the city’s cultural life. Seldom do we see important arts figures, members of the entertainment industry or students at the Philharmonic. Meanwhile, Hollywood seems to remain blissfully unaware of the orchestra and its potential, even after a symphonic score, like James Horner’s for “Titanic,” enjoys enormous mass appeal.

Ultimately, then, the key problem for Wijnbergen is making the Philharmonic a local cultural sensation. If he can accomplish it, all else--particularly money--will follow.

But first he must improve the experience of actually hearing the Philharmonic, which isn’t very good. Both the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and the Hollywood Bowl are unacceptable. At neither venue does one have much sense of immediacy of the music. Without sonic impact, music loses some of its reason for existing.

Certainly the first priority for Wijnbergen is to get Disney Hall not just built but built right. By all accounts, the fund-raising has such momentum that we are told not to worry about the final $24 million still needed. With the acclaim for Disney Hall architect Frank O. Gehry’s design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, Los Angeles has finally realized that it simply cannot lose international face by failing to realize his concert hall.

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But Bilbao also changes the significance of Disney Hall. The two buildings have enough in common that the concert hall will no longer likely become a symbol for L.A., as it might have had it been completed years ago, as originally hoped. A city wants something unique for a symbol.

Instead, what will be unique is Disney Hall with the Philharmonic, and the two together could fuse into a joint symbol, the way one thinks of the Concertgebouw as both the orchestra and the hall.

But every aspect of the hall must be carefully attended to. No corners can be cut in the construction; the exterior look, the interior spaces and the acoustics have to be right, no matter cost or effort.

Furthermore, Wijnbergen needs to work at making downtown a place people want to come to. Parking must be easy and inexpensive. Something must be done about the inadequate restaurant situation. Connections need to be made with the Museum of Contemporary Art. Street life has to be encouraged.

These may not be traditional concerns of an orchestra, but Los Angeles is not a traditional city.

The Hollywood Bowl, on the other hand, is a place people like to go to, hideous as the parking situation can be for all but a fortunate few. But it is unclear just how much real musical benefit audiences get from being there. Improvements are being made. The sound system is now more lifelike than ever before. The next project, which falls into Wijnbergen’s hands, is to build a new shell so that the orchestra can hear itself better.

But the Bowl could also use some fresh ideas. The Philharmonic may present itself as forward-thinking, but in the summer it is as if the Southland sun has fried its brains, with the same overplayed repertory year after year. The rationale for this is that the orchestra lacks a proper endowment and the Bowl is essential in paying the bills. Playing it dull and ultra-safe seems to work. But making the Bowl more interesting is one way to make the Philharmonic matter, and the endowment will follow.

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Then there are the related areas of education and media. Although the board of directors has snipped away at Fleischmann’s breakthrough education programs to take the orchestra into the schools and the community, they are still in place and have never been more important.

At the least, we should be able to make the connection between recent studies that tell us how poorly American students are faring in math and science and the fact that studying music increases overall academic performance.

Without state support, music education becomes the Philharmonic’s job. The orchestra works actively with educators throughout the Southland. But more resources need to be made available.

In the quest to matter, the orchestra also must embrace the media. One area it has not much explored is video. It is expensive, but there are examples throughout Europe of what an interesting subject classical music can be on television in the hands of the right producers and directors. And Los Angeles is, after all, Media City.

All this is a lot to ask. But a thriving Philharmonic benefits the entire city. So welcome, Willem Wijnbergen. And good luck.