FINANCIAL TIMES
October 11, 2002

Celebrations in the city that never sleeps
by Richard Fairman

In the midst of its world tour, Richard Fairman joined the London Philharmonic for its 70th birthday party at Carnegie Hall in New York

The champagne was being kept on ice. For different reasons, Monday night's concert at Carnegie Hall in New York was an important symbolic date both for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and its principal conductor, Kurt Masur, but the orchestra's schedule did not allow for celebrations at this point on its world tour.

The itinerary started with a five-centre visit to the US. They opened with concerts in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston. "We had several standing ovations" says Serge Dorny, the orchestra's chief executive and artistic director, "and I don't remember many of those over here". Two nights at Carnegie Hall followed, where the orchestra celebrated its 70th birthday. Then it repeated one programme in Newark before flying off to Asia

For Masur, the return to New York must have aroused conflicting emotions. This is the city where he gave some of the best years of his life, serving for 11 years from 1991 as music director of the New York Philharmonic. But mid-way through his tenure, the atmosphere started to turn sour and the orchestra announced it would not renew his contract – an event that shook the musical world at the time. A late rally in public opinion and the press on his behalf suggests that only then did the city realise what it was losing.

Masur is said to have found "turning the page" on his New York period difficult, but now he has left all that behind, and was arriving in the city with his new orchestra. The reception at Carnegie Hall was very warm – not the return of a hero maybe, but certainly of a dear friend.

This first of the orchestra's pair of concerts at Carnegie Hall showed off different sides of Masur's musical personality. Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony was given a delightfully nonchalant performance, lit with wry humour. Walton's Viola Concerto, with Yury Bashmet as soloist, showed the keenness that Masur still has at 75 for investigating new repertoire (when the orchestra recently suggested commissioning a new work from a young British composer, he is said to have happily set off home with a pile of sample CDs). Then Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel found him relaxed and affectionate, as only a native German steeped in the musical tradition could be.

So often the London orchestras give their best overseas. Cynics will say it is because they rehearse move for an important tour, but isn't there also something else at work? We are used to hearing the LPO at Royal Festival Hall, where the acoustics do them no favours. Here, enjoying the splendid Carnegie Hall ambience, the orchestra sounded superb – warm, subtly blended, as cultivated as any of the historic European orchestras, such as Amsterdam or Leipzig, where Masur reigned for so long.

Their second programme included Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, which they had already performed with great success in London, Washington and Boston. As the music critic of the Boston Globe remarked, the LPO is arguably the best suited of the London orchestras to Bruckner, thanks to its tradition of chief conductors specialising in the German romantics – Bernard Haitink, Klaus Tennstedt, Franz Welser-Möst and Masur – covering about 30 years.

History was in the air at Monday's concert, which marked 70 years to the day since Sir Thomas Beecham founded the orchestra on 7 October 1932. Over its lifetime, the LPO has faced some extreme swings in its fortunes – up in the 1930s with Beecham, down in the post-war years when it became a self-governing orchestra and almost went bankrupt, up again to two decades of success with Haitink in the 1970s and Tennstedt in the 1980s, then an abrupt downward plunge at the beginning of the 1990s.

This was like the moment on the big dipper when everybody screams. The finances, the politics, the artistic direction, everything seemed to spin out of control. When Serge Dorny arrived in January 1996, the orchestra was fighting for survival. "Wherever I looked, I saw deficits – an audience deficit, a financial deficit, a morale deficit," says Dorny. There was not even a principal conductor, as Welser-Möst, who had hung on through a barrage of bad press, was about to leave and no successor had been appointed.

Dorny smiles these days when he is asked why he wanted the job. "I treasured the periods of Haitink and Tennstedt when I had been most familiar with the orchestra. From a continental perspective, we saw how the best orchestras were spread around the world, with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic in Russia, the Berlin Philharmonic in Germany, in France nothing really of world class – whereas London had this concentration of first-rate orchestras. I think the very competitive environment here is the reason why there is still so much potential. You're only as good as your last concert. That's what I saw from abroad and I wanted to participate in that."

Dorny says the most important thing on this 70th birthday is that it marks the orchestra's return to good health. The financial deficit has gone, partly as a result of the Arts Council’s stabilisation scheme. Audience figures in London have risen more than 80 per cent, maintained over the past two years. Masur looks settled and his contract runs until 2005.

There has also been a concerted effort to position the orchestra for the future. "Society is changing so much, so we've tried to structure series of concerts that will appeal to different groups of people – the International Series for regular concert-goers, family concerts, Silver Screen Classics for film music and the Roots concerts where classical and world-music are mixed." While the media have been sniffy, wondering how many reggae-lovers have converted to Bruckner symphonies, the extra 20 per cent on the attendance figures must have come from somewhere.

After more than five years in the post, Dorny is due to leave at the end of this year to go to the Opéra national de Lyon. His successor is expected to be announced next month. Meanwhile, Masur and the LPO have left New York for Singapore, where they will be inaugurating the eagerly-awaited $340m Esplanade arts centre on Monday. That promises to be a prestigious end to the tour and the good news is that the champagne will definitely be flowing.