Harmony, Finally
The Charlotte Symphony hopes to appoint a new conductor -- or, as it's known in the biz, music director -- early next spring, chosen from a group of eight contenders who have each spent a short spell leading the symphony. We asked Peter Perret, conductor emeritus of the Winston-Salem Symphony and writer for the Classical Voice of North Carolina, to weigh in on who is most likely to take up the baton from among three leading candidates.
| Conductor | THIERRY FISCHER Principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales; chief conductor of the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra | JAMES GAFFIGAN Associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony | ANDREW GRAMS Former assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra; former resident conductor of the Florida Orchestra |
| Upside | "He shaped his phrases with great detail. …The orchestra played well for him, but I don't know if they played well despite him or because of him." | "He was able to pace tension and relaxation of each movement in relation to the whole. …He's a big-picture man. Young conductors [Gaffigan is twenty-nine; Grams is thirty-one] attract big audiences. And young conductors improve with age. …It is a tremendous advantage." | "He's a complete conductor. And he's not showy. He has more of a dose of subtlety. …I have the feeling the orchestra really wanted to play for Grams. That's like sexual attraction in a marriage, and that's awfully important. It's not the only thing—it's the answer, not the question." |
| Downside | Perret noted in his review that Fischer's unusual conducting style was "sometimes flailing exaggeratedly" and that "the audience grew tired of his histrionics." He added that "he seemed to do a lot just for show." | "I wrote at the time that ‘I was only slightly disappointed that the young maestro chose Brahms's tempo over Dvorák's at the end [of Dvorák's From the New World.]' It reveals maybe that he is a bit more traditionalist -- in the sense that he is not so interested in knowing what the real Dvorák was, but rather the one that everyone else uses." | "I don't remember anything negative." |
| Odds | 7:1 | 3:1 | "What's better than 2:1?" |
