N.Y. Philharmonic Hands Its Baton to Lorin Maazel

After a three-year search for its next music director, the New York Philharmonic has finally settled on Lorin Maazel, who had not even been under consideration until several months ago.

Maazel, 70, one of the world’s most highly paid musicians, will step up to the podium in the fall of 2002, beginning a four-year contract. Financial terms have not yet been determined, a representative for the orchestra said.

Maazel is currently director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich. A former child prodigy who made his conducting debut at age 8, he also is an accomplished violinist.

Maazel will become the 24th music director of the 158-year-old orchestra, and the first American to lead it since Leonard Bernstein left in 1969.

“The New York Philharmonic is America’s first orchestra, so I consider it a coup that we were able to convince this great American conductor to accept the music directorship,” Zarin Mehta, the orchestra’s executive director, said Monday.

As part of the agreement, Maazel will conduct the philharmonic for 10 weeks in the first year and 14 weeks after that, and will lead the orchestra on national and international tours.

“The orchestra is superb, second to none, and New York is truly the world’s capital,” Maazel said in a statement. “I shall joyfully devote my energies to this music directorship, which allows me to be part of the philharmonic’s future in a city that I love.”

The process of finding a music director has been an agonized one. First, the orchestra set itself an artificial deadline by imposing a term limit on current music director Kurt Masur. Then, the philharmonic courted Riccardo Muti, who declined the job last summer. Mariss Jansons, another leading candidate, disappointed critics, musicians and board members in a one-night concert last November. Then Christoph Eschenbach, the clear favorite, chose the Philadelphia Orchestra instead.

The New York Philharmonic would have had to start from scratch had not Maazel entered the fray in November, conducting the orchestra for the first time in 23 years and leaving most of its musicians smitten.

“Those concerts were two of the most exhilarating weeks of my career,” principal oboist Joseph Robinson said Monday. “All of my preconceptions were dispelled in the face of his musical authority.”

Critics, however, have often been less enthralled, noting that while Maazel’s technique is impeccable, his interpretations can be chilly.

In appointing a maestro of global stature, and an American who led the Cleveland Orchestra in the 1970s and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from 1988 to 1996, the philharmonic will please several of its constituents. But many critics have felt that the orchestra missed an opportunity to inaugurate a more forward-looking era. Given Maazel’s age--he is Masur’s junior by only three years--some have interpreted the appointment as an interim solution, giving promising but relatively unseasoned conductors time to mature.