Word: conductors
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...patriotic and inspirational way": Vegas Lounge Lizard Wayne Newton, who is in his element crooning before gamblers clutching highballs and waitresses. Such undesirable Beach Boys fans as George Bush, Michael Deaver and Nancy Reagan (a closet B.B. groupie) thought Watt was out of tune and touch. The Great Conductor himself, Ronald Reagan, called Watt into the Oval Office for a brief musical seminar. Then the President presented him with a plaster statue of a foot with a bullet hole in it, symbolic of where Watt had shot himself...