Which U.S. Orchestras Are Best?

By Michael Walsh

Rising standards outside the Big Five create a new elite

Their players are highly skilled specialists, prized for their uncommon physical abilities and welded into a team by a strong figure of authority. Their seasons are long, routinely lasting from early fall to late spring and often extending into the summer. Their budgets run into the millions of dollars; their fans are numerous. Heard on radio and seen on television, they have become symbols of their cities, sources of local pride and the subject of endless arguments over which is best.

The Washington Redskins, Dallas Cowboys and their fellow gridiron gladiators? No, far less violent. The Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees and the rest of the major leagues? No, even more sophisticated and spiritually uplifting. These are the major symphony orchestras of America, a group of 20 or so crack ensembles that are flourishing artistically as never before. In unprecedented numbers, they are setting new standards of excellence in performance. In the process, they are changing the face of the country's traditional orchestral establishment. Declares Sir Georg Solti, music director of the Chicago Symphony: "American orchestras are undoubtedly superior to any, except one or two European orchestras. The standard of orchestral playing in America, all over the country, is amazing."

For years it was commonly agreed that there was a Big Five among U.S. orchestras: in alphabetical order, the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. For the most part, they were the orchestras with the biggest annual budgets and, partly as a result, the best musicians. They had lucrative recording contracts and the most eminent conductors. They were all located in important cities, with access to large populations, wealth and influential critics, whose regular attention enhanced their reputations.

Today the idea of a Big Five has generally lost its validity. "On any given night, one can hear a concert of excellent quality," says Stephen Sell, executive director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. "There probably hasn't been a Big Five for half a decade." Agrees John Edwards, executive vice president and general manager of the Chicago Symphony and, at 70, the dean of U.S. orchestra administrators: "Basically, the concept of a Big Five is outmoded." Determined by the musicians' technical command, the conductor's leadership and the intangible element of inspiration, excellence is no longer quite so exclusive. A current ranking of the country's best orchestras, in order of achievement:

The Chicago Symphony. Winner and still champion, Solti's virtuosic ensemble has been the finest in the U.S. for more than a decade, and was often close to the top under earlier music directors like Fritz Reiner (1953-62). The orchestra's strengths are its burnished brass and taut, lean, precise string section, which give its performances a crispness and vitality that are the despair of its rivals. "I have never had a better-spirited orchestra than this one," says Solti, 70. "If they have a conductor they respect, they will go through hell for him." The Chicago spirit is evident both in music of the classical period, like Mozart's, and in the great romantic works: Mahler and Bruckner symphonies and Strauss tone poems. Last week's dazzling performance under Solti of Wagner's complete opera Das Rheingold matched an orchestra at the top of its form with a conductor at the height of his interpretive prowess.

The St. Louis Symphony. Founded in 1880, this orchestra is the country's second oldest (after the 140-year-old New York Philharmonic) but is still youthful by virtue of its many young players. Building on the legacy of sober, European conductors like Vladimir Golschmann and Walter Susskind, St. Louis has come into its own as a tightly disciplined ensemble under the impressively gifted American conductor Leonard Slatkin, 38. Like the Chicago Symphony, which it resembles in style and flair, the St. Louis Symphony is at its best in big pieces, but of a more recent vintage: Rachmaninoff's orchestral music, Shostakovich and Prokofiev symphonies. Good as the orchestra is, its fortunes remain closely tied to Slatkin's.

The Boston Symphony. The patrician Boston Symphony is the quintessential major orchestra: old (101) and wealthy, with a comfortable home in the acoustically excellent Symphony Hall and a bucolic summer retreat at Tanglewood, in the Berkshires. A11 this would not be worth much, though, if the orchestra did not play so consistently well: under music directors as disparate in taste and talents as Serge Koussevitzky, Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf and, now, Seiji Ozawa, 47, it has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to adapt to almost any type of music conductorial style. Boston's full strings, warm winds and elegant brass are always in bloom.

The Philadelphia Orchestra. During their 44 years under Conductor Eugene Ormandy, the Philadelphians became known for their exceptionally rich string tone, at least partly produced by compensating for the dry acoustics in their home, the Academy of Music; curiously, the "Philadelphia sound" could not be fully appreciated in Philadelphia, but only in a sympathetic environment like New York's Carnegie Hall. Under Riccardo Muti, 41, the Italian conductor who succeeded Ormandy in the 1980-81 season, the sound is losing its sometimes overripe fullness and becoming leaner, with greater prominence being given to the winds and brass. The adjustment, though, is not being accomplished without some temporary loss of stature; and Muti so far is more convincing in opera than in orchestral music.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic. With a conductor like Carlo Maria Giulini, 68, an annual budget of $17 million and record appearances on Deutsche Grammophon, the Los Angeles Philharmonic has the credentials for membership in the elect. Its sound is far from the brilliance of Chicago or St. Louis; Giulini, the eminent Italian conductor, has based the sonority he wants on the lower strings, giving the orchestra a deep, dark tone. Instead of the flashy, glittery ensemble one might expect to find in Los Angeles, the Philharmonic is a sober, serious orchestra. Like Giulini, it is at its best in the romantic era.

The Cleveland Orchestra. Under the late George Szell, the Clevelanders were honed into an ensemble of breathtaking precision, eminently suited to the music of Mozart. During the regime of Conductor Lorin Maazel (1972-82), Szell's high technical standards were maintained, but the sound of the orchestra became fuller, richer and more flexible, and thus up to the challenge of the romantic repertory; by the end of Maazel's tenure, the Cleveland Orchestra was the best-sounding band in the land. Today, standards have unavoidably slipped a bit as the orchestra awaits the arrival in 1984-85 of Maazel's German-born successor, Christoph von Dohnanyi, 53.

The New York Philharmonic. The problem child among orchestras, the Philharmonic is like the little girl with the curl. Plagued by a reputation as a temperamental aggregation, it sometimes lives up to it, as it did last year on the occasion of its 10,000th concert when it delivered a ragged account of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Yet under Music Director Zubin Mehta, 46, it can also deliver a blistering performance of something as difficult as Schoenberg's expressionist opera Erwartung, as it did recently with Soprano Hildegarde Behrens. Among other distinctions, the Philharmonic is the most unpredictable orchestra in America.

The San Francisco Symphony. Another West Coast success story is the San Francisco Symphony's rise to prominence, not as spectacular as that of the Los Angeles Philharmonic but no less sure. Dutch Conductor Edo de Waart, 41, is no match for Giulini in glamour, and in a city still carrying a torch for De Waart's splashy predecessor, Ozawa, De Waart is often criticized for not being exciting enough. But his tireless work with his orchestra since the 1977-78 season has paid off in an alert, responsive ensemble, and the results show up handsomely in music close to De Waart's heart, such as Mozart and the Rachmaninoff symphonies.

The Pittsburgh Symphony. With Andre Previn, 54, at its helm, the Pittsburgh Symphony achieved a high profile, thanks to the PBS television series Previn and the Pittsburgh. Similar in sound to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony is a dark-toned ensemble that is especially good in the romantic showpieces and in the music of English composers like Elgar and Vaughan Williams, a passion of the England-based Previn.

The blurring of the distinction between the former Big Five and other U.S. orchestras has been due not to a serious decline at the top, but to a striking improvement in other ensembles in the country. Even the nine elite listed above are distinguished from the next level of orchestras by the equivalent of no more than a few hemidemisemiquavers.

The Minnesota Orchestra, for example, needs only for Conductor Neville Marriner to become more at home in the large-orchestra repertory for it to be a serious contender. The Dallas Symphony has one of the finest string sections in the country, but is interpretatively hampered by its prosaic conductor, Eduardo Mata. Washington's National Symphony, another orchestra with the capacity to rise, may yet regret its Faustian bargain with Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, the ebullient master cellist who gives it great media attention and a passionate commitment to Russian music but otherwise generally undistinguished musical leadership. Still more able orchestras can be found in Cincinnati, Houston, Rochester, Baltimore, Detroit and Atlanta.

Because the turnover in the old Big Five is so low, America's crop of young, conservatory-trained symphonic players--by common consent the best in the world--have flooded the ranks of the second-tier orchestras. A noteworthy result is that groups like the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Denver Symphony or the Utah Symphony often can play contemporary music better than some of the top-ranked ensembles; what these musicians may lack in individual instrumental richness they more than make up for in their ability to sight-read the most fearsome modern score with ease.

Like a championship team, a great orchestra executes its tasks with precision, elan and grace. String sections attack and release a note together, blending their sounds to form a single smooth line. Woodwinds have a distinctive character that lets them stand out against the full orchestra, yet merge back into it when necessary. Brass players keep their often recalcitrant instruments under beguilingly complete control; when a trumpeter reaches for a high note, there is no uncertainty that it will come out right. Overseeing all this is the music director, who balances the orchestra's component parts and gives the ensemble character. He breathes a unified spirit into an aggregation that may number more than 100. "It is the artistic vision of the conductor that impels everyone forward," says Kenneth Haas, Cleveland's general manager. "Without someone of great vision, great ears, great interpretations, great depth, you can have the greatest musicians on the face of the earth and you still won't have a great orchestra."

An acoustically sympathetic environment is almost as important. Although a good hall cannot make an orchestra sound better than it really is, it can allow it to reach its potential unhindered. San Francisco's artistic emergence has been closely related to its 1980 move from the dry War Memorial Opera House to the more resonant Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. Some of the steady improvement in the Minnesota Orchestra is attributable to the lively Orchestra Hall, its home since 1974. The Utah Symphony's warm, responsive Symphony Hall in Salt Lake City, built in 1979, is the most impressive of all. The work of Acoustician Cyril Harris, it is as good as Boston's Symphony Hall, long considered the ideal. "A hall is both an inspiration and a challenge to an orchestra," says Richard Cisek, president of the Minnesota Orchestral Association. "A bad hall finds an orchestra trying to compensate for it, whereas a good hall lets the musicians very quickly know how well they're performing."

Money is also a critical element, for the best orchestras have tended to be the richest. Boston's annual budget, for example, is $20 million, and Chicago's $16 million. "There isn't a one-to-one correlation between money and having a great orchestra," says Richard Bibler, president of the promising Milwaukee Symphony, which gets by on a budget of about $5 million a year, "but there is a gross correlation." Says Patricia Corbett, who, like her husband J. Ralph Corbett, is a prominent Cincinnati philanthropist: "An orchestra can be anything you want it to be if you are willing to pay the budget."

Others disagree with this notion, however, saying that tradition is equally important. "You can't simply buy a great orchestra," says Boston's Morris. "You have to build a tradition, and preserve it." Lukas Foss, Milwaukee's conductor, puts it bluntly: "Money makes you famous, not great."

While patrician orchestras such as Boston, Cleveland and Philadelphia, with their large subscriber lists and potent fund-raising capabilities, continue to operate without a financial loss, others are almost perennially troubled. The Buffalo Philharmonic, nearly $1 million in debt, scaled back its season last year from 48 to 40 weeks; the Detroit Symphony, suffering along with its city from the recession, has an accumulated deficit of nearly $2.7 million. Despite Rostropovich's name value, the National Symphony showed a $2.2 million loss last year.

Such economic disparity leads some to call for increased governmental support for the arts, to supplement the important financial contributions already being made by individuals, foundations and corporations. In the U.S., federal, state and local aid does not compare with artistic subsidies in most European countries. The separation of arts and state has had one beneficial side effect, though: because American orchestras are rarely very far from the brink, they are forced to make their product appeal to as wide an audience as possible. On the other hand, fiscal constraints often force conservatism in choice of repertory, with unfamiliar or contemporary music slighted so as not to offend those concertgoers principally attracted by the Beethoven symphonies.

No matter how accomplished orchestras become, there will always be differences of opinion among music lovers as to which is best. Once technical mastery is achieved, variations in sound and style become purely matters of taste. As conductors and personnel change, relative rankings will also change. Observes Solti: "Someone once said, 'To arrive at the top is difficult, but not impossible. To stay there is damned hard.' " But within the grouping at the top, the world-class orchestras can be counted on to show consistency and staying power, essential elements of their greatness. As the Cincinnati Symphony's general manager, Steven Monder, puts it, "I don't think an orchestra has a good concert or a good season or a good couple of seasons and all of a sudden it is one of the foremost orchestras in the world. It takes years and years of a strong tradition, of building and experience." --By Michael Walsh. Reported by Lee Griggs/Chicago and James Shepherd/London

With reporting by Lee Griggs/Chicago and James Shepherd/ London This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.