Flying the Coop

Nobody really sees him. Nobody really hears him. He is the fellow in the frayed white tie and tails, the one buried seven rows back peering sourly through a cluster of elbows. He is the symphony musician -- bored, frustrated and anonymous. So he didn't become the second Heifetz as everybody back in Glen Falls said he would. There was nothing else to do but join a big-city symphony, file lock-step onto the stage -- no talking, please -- and, at the nod of the imperious maestro, saw away mechanically at the Brahms First for the 101st time.

Now, however, there is a happy alternative. Like songbirds discovering a hole in the cage, musicians are flying the cooped-up confines of the symphony and roosting in the refuge of the university.

Among the hardest-hit symphonies is the Philadelphia Orchestra, which recently filed suit to prevent three of its best string players -- Cellist Charles Brennand, Violinists Veda Reynolds and Irwin Eisenberg -- from joining the faculty of the University of Washing ton. The orchestra contends that the musicians handed in their resignations four months shy of the year's notice that their contracts call for. The three, plus Violist Alan Iglitzin, who was released from the orchestra four months ago, are scheduled to perform their first concert next week as the university's new resident string quartet. Meanwhile, the orchestra is wrestling with even bigger problems: at week's end, the 105 Philadelphia musicians were locked in a bitter strike over salaries, forcing the cancellation of the first six concerts of their season.

Artistic Identity. The troubles in Philadelphia are symptomatic of the unrest felt everywhere in the nation's leading orchestras. Two years ago, when the Philadelphia forbade its players to moonlight with any group larger than a sextet, Concertmaster Anshel Brusi-low angrily resigned, took one of the orchestra's musicians with him, and formed the 35-member Chamber Sym phony of Philadelphia.

Essentially, as Boston Symphony Conductor Erich Leinsdorf points out, the problem "is a loss of identity." Because they can offer an opportunity for more individual expression, he says, "the universities are our biggest competition."

To compensate, the progressive Bos ton management founded the Boston Symphony Chamber Players last year (TIME, March 18), encourages all of its players to take on as many solo engagements as they feel they can possibly handle. Says Leinsdorf: "This is very important for the morale of the players who want to keep, and have every right to keep, their artis tic identity."

After all, no string player invests roughly 20 years and $25,000 for training to sit in the hundred-headed obscurity of a symphony orchestra. In his heart, if not in the ear of his audience, he is a full-fledged virtuoso who, says Los Angeles Symphony Conductor Zubin Mehta, "joins a symphony only as a last resort, and then is frustrated." On the campus, however, he can assume the stature of a soloist, play largely what he wants (musicians' tastes rarely agree with those of a symphony audience) the way he wants to (instead of having interpretations dictated by a conductor).

Breath Catching. Stage center on campus does not mean an occasional chamber-music get-together in the faculty lounge, but frequent, fully promoted performances before large audiences in gleaming new theaters. In return, the schools gain status and expert faculty material. "Universities now realize that experience under fire is more important than an academic degree," says Pittsburgh Symphony Flutist Bernard Goldberg, who teaches part time at Duquesne University. "Musicians who have been required to perform consistently under high standards can impart information not ordinarily found in textbooks."

Thus, with endowment funds bulging, music-school enrollments soaring, and campus performing-arts centers shooting up like shopping centers, college recruiters are raiding orchestras with all the fervor of pro-football scouts. At Indiana University, for instance, the music department lists 40 teachers from top U.S. orchestras, including three former concertmasters and 15 first-desk players, and such internationally ranked soloists as Violist William Primrose and Cellist Janos Starker. Boasting five campus orchestras and the resident Berkshire String Quartet, Indiana last year sponsored 501 musical events. Snaring topflight musicians is easy, says Indiana's Dean Wilfred Bain (with some exaggeration), because "people who push brooms are treated better than symphony players." Beyond that, the lures of the campus include more security, fatter pensions, sabbatical leaves, tenure, and salaries that match and often surpass those offered by the orchestras. For many, the chief attraction of a university post is simply a chance to catch one's breath. Admits Pittsburgh Symphony Conductor William Steinberg: "Playing in a university string quartet is a vacation compared to the grueling work required of symphony musicians."

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