The Philadelphia Orchestra’s final Vienna concert

At least one major conductor — Riccardo Muti, who led the Philadelphia Orchestra through the 1980s — apparently agrees. Star Turns and Cameo Appearances, Bernard Jacobson’s delightful and insightful new memoir of his life in music, including Jacobson’s eight-year tenure as the Philadelphia Orchestra’s program annotator as well as Muti’s general musical aide-de-camp, recounts a conversation with Muti shortly after the maestro announced his resignation in 1992.

“I know you think I’ve failed in my responsibility by not firing some players who are clearly past their best,” Muti told Jacobson, according to the latter’s recollection. “But you have to remember that I have to make music, and I have to make it with people who want to make music with me. And if I were to fire X or Y, even though the rest of the players would know that the decision was the right one, they would still close ranks in support of their colleagues. So I realized that I simply have to program around the weaknesses.”

Deadpan pianist

But how exactly does good chemistry manifest itself in an orchestra? And how exactly do 100 or so gifted musicians keep their blades sharp when they’ve played together year after year, often performing the same classic works over and over? The Philadelphia Orchestra’s final concert in its Music of Vienna series this past weekend suggested some answers.

One was the seamless tapestry that the orchestra achieved in the Brahms Symphony No. 2, a familiar work if ever there was one. Another was the gorgeous palette of colors that the orchestra brought out in Webern’s Im Sommerwind. A third was the drama inherent in playing with an exciting guest soloist, in this case, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.

Andsnes began Schumann’s second piano concerto tentatively but gradually gathered steam. By the third movement I had tears in my eyes — presumably Schumann’s intended effect — blown away not only by Schumann’s score but also by the amount of feeling this deadpan Nordic pianist could convey musically without any showy gestures or facial expressions.

Human chain

But I was also blown away by the chronological diversity of the musicians behind him. In the cello section, for example, more than a generation separated Yumi Kendall (who joined the Orchestra in 2004) from the cellist seated beside her (Richard Harlow, who arrived in 1976) and the cellist immediately behind her (Gloria dePasquale, who arrived as Gloria Johns in 1976 — about the time Yannick Nézet-Séguin was learning to walk — and who subsequently married the orchestra’s late associate concertmaster, William dePasquale).

These musicians are no replaceable ice cubes in a refrigerator tray, but neither do they comprise a static ensemble. They’re more like links in a gradually evolving musical chain that stretches backward to Muti and Eugene Ormandy and Leopold Stokowski and, through them, to Beethoven and Mozart and all the other composers whose works persist to this day. That’s the chemistry that — when it gels, as it did Saturday night — continues to bring audiences to their feet even for works they’ve heard more times than they can count.

Insipid promotion

Contrary to the orchestra’s official party line, good chemistry among supremely talented musicians is a highly fragile commodity. In 2005 the orchestra produced an insipid promotional film, Music from the Inside Out, in which its musicians dutifully proclaimed their love for music, the orchestra, and their colleagues (for a sample, click here). Not a single player mentioned (as some have mentioned to me) the frustrations involved in forsaking possible stardom to become a faceless team member. For that reason, the very best orchestras are often hotbeds of resentments, might-have-beens, and petty jealousies — where do you think the term “second fiddle” originated? (That negative atmosphere caused late Joseph Koplin of Philadelphia, who played first trumpet in the Rochester Philharmonic and at the Kennedy White House, to chuck the orchestral world altogether to become an accountant.) The orchestra itself is keenly aware of the need to massage its musicians’ egos by showcasing them in smaller groups, as it did this weekend with a free postlude chamber concert featuring four of its players.

The more I think about it, great orchestras resemble not so much football teams as old married couples who constantly find new ways to pump excitement into their marriages. Barack Obama, of all people, nailed the essence way back in 1996, when he was an obscure and newly married young Illinois State Senator being interviewed for an Esquire feature on marriage:

“Sometimes, when we're lying together, I look at her and I feel dizzy with the realization that here is another distinct person from me, who has memories, origins, thoughts, feelings that are different from my own,” the future president ruminated. “That tension between familiarity and mystery meshes something strong between us. Even if one builds a life together based on trust, attentiveness and mutual support, I think that it's important that a partner continues to surprise.”

Chemistry and mystery, familiarity and surprise. That’s what good marriages are all about. Great orchestras, too.

For Victor Schermer’s review of this concert, click here.

For Linda Holt's review of the January 21-22 concerts, click here.

For Victor L. Schermer’s review of the January 13-16 concerts, click here.

For Steve Cohen's overview of the festival as a whole, click here.