Symphonic merger hits a clinker

In the waning days of the ‘90s economic boom in New York, Lincoln Center had a dream. The aging performing arts center needed to bring itself up to date and wanted to spend $1.5 billion doing so. The New York Philharmonic was unhappy with its home of the last 40 years. Fine, tear it down and build another.

The light and space artist James Turrell recently told me that he had been approached to design lighting for one model. It might have been a modern beacon illuminating the landscape of Manhattan’s Upper West Side and providing the New York Philharmonic with a striking new image. Turrell said Lincoln Center proposed $600 million to replace Avery Fisher Hall, double the cost of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Those were the days.

After 9/11 and the economic downturn, such visions turned into pipe dreams. As the prospect of raising money became increasingly intimidating, Lincoln Center reconsidered costs. New architectural designs were sought for a Fisher replacement with a smaller, if still substantial, budget of $400 million. There was also the cheaper option of renovating a hall that has already been through a series of major and minor acoustical makeovers.

Finally, the New York Philharmonic gave up. Two weeks ago, it made the startling announcement that it would vacate the premises and return, in 2006, to Carnegie Hall, its home before Lincoln Center was built.

This is being hailed as a win-win situation by both the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall. The orchestra will get what it considers friendlier acoustics and a classier hall. Carnegie will inherit the Philharmonic’s subscription base. The Carnegie and Philharmonic endowments will combine into a $350-million pool. The boards of directors, who negotiated this merger in secrecy and haste, are acting proud at having astutely addressed their bottom lines in financially uncertain times for the arts.

But what is good for business isn’t necessarily good for art, the community or the country. This is a dire move, and its ramifications will be felt throughout America. At the heart of it are two important questions: Whom does an orchestra, or any major arts institution, serve? And what is its social responsibility?

The obvious loser in this deal is Lincoln Center. Much of the comment in the New York press has focused on where the Philharmonic’s move will leave Lincoln Center. Without the orchestra to help in fund-raising, building a new hall will be next to impossible, and even coming up with $100 million to $200 million to renovate Fisher will be a great challenge. Meanwhile, the center has to fill Fisher, which the Philharmonic now occupies four days a week during its nine-month season.

Many of the touring orchestras that have regularly appeared at Carnegie can take up the slack. But Fisher doesn’t have the same cachet as Carnegie, which could make it more difficult for financially hard-pressed orchestras to find sponsorship for New York trips. A New York appearance and good reviews can bolster an orchestra’s image and also its fund-raising at home.

The best spin on the new merger has been that Lincoln Center has been handed the opportunity to become more inventive. Already Lincoln Center Presents sponsors highly interesting theme programming and orchestra residencies, including an annual one by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Jane S. Moss, who runs the “Great Performers” and other series, is an imaginative programmer, and presumably she will now have a free hand. But will she have the budgetary support to turn her series into something grand enough to keep Fisher full?

*

A stimulating environment

At their best, performing arts centers offer the possibility of synergy, with different art forms interacting to produce something new. That is never easy at Lincoln Center, with its bickering constituents, including two opera companies. New York City Opera also expects to jump ship, if it can get a new theater built at ground zero. And the Philharmonic management must be saying, “Just think, we won’t have to contend with Joe Volpe,” the Metropolitan Opera’s pugnacious general manager.

Others, however, have risen above, or at least managed to cope with, Lincoln Center’s internecine fray. Besides Moss’ exemplary season, the campus plays host to the country’s most ambitious cross-disciplinary summer festival. This is exactly the arts environment in which an orchestra belongs if it cares to play a role in the future of the performing arts.

The Philharmonic appears arrogant not only in hampering Lincoln Center’s prospects, but also by placing severe limits on Carnegie as the international showcase for soloists and orchestras that it is today (and thus reducing the competition). Even the acoustics argument is problematic. The players prefer the genteel sonic glow of the Carnegie to the aggressive acoustics of Fisher. But the New York Philharmonic can, under the right circumstances, make an enormous impact in Fisher. Say what you will about the acoustics, the hall has a more modern sound. It is bright, loud and percussive, with lots of bass, which makes it attractive to younger, digitally inclined listeners.

New York’s loss could make L.A. look better. Unlike cautious New Yorkers yearning for their old home, the Los Angeles Philharmonic persevered, got Disney Hall built against tremendous obstacles and is honing its futuristic image. But our Music Center is also an aging facility that could use sprucing up. It too needs a Jane Moss to give it interesting programming. Lincoln Center is the model, but if it falters, will we have the nerve to take the lead?

One more dangerous precedent in the New York merger is the stealth with which the boards operated.

The New York Philharmonic did not negotiate with Lincoln Center. There was no public debate, no opportunity for audiences to express their views. Instead, two board chairmen -- the Philharmonic’s Paul B. Guenther and Carnegie’s Sanford I. Weill -- cooked up a secret deal as they might have a corporate merger.

As Citigroup chairman, Weill has been involved in recent stock market controversies. One of these led to a settlement with the office of New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer under which Weill agreed not to talk to his stock analysts without an outside observer present. Coincidentally, Spitzer’s office must approve the Philharmonic-Carnegie merger, but he told the New York Times that the previous case would not affect this deal. And no one seems worried. The finances are solid. It is only music that lacks safeguards.

*

Mark Swed is The Times’ music critic.