Janos Gereben quoted Norman Lebrecht:

> [The failure of
> the Eschenbach test has confirmed who's paramount.]

I'm a little confused.  What was the "Eschenbach test?" Whether or not
the selection of a conductor over the players' objections could result
in a successful union?  Lebrecht speaks of mismatches between the conductor
and players, but I have to wonder what kind of orchestra _would_ be a
perfect match for him.  He garnered a lot of publicity and hype here in
Houston during his tenure here, and there certainly were people-- very
vocal people-- who seemed to be in awe of him; but speaking for myself,
I saw him as a person who had an excellent conducting technique, but who
mostly subordinated musical and orchestral interests for the sake of
showing off what a dandy conductor he was.  He also seemed to experiment
a lot with interpretations, one example being when he conducted the
introduction of the Brahms 2nd symphony at a very fast clip, and then
followed with the beautiful first main theme at an extremely slow pace.
(A friend referred to this as a "reductionist" interpretation-- if anyone
can explain this to me I'd be most appreciative.) On the other hand,
whenever he traveled outside Texas and I heard his broadcasts, such as
from Ravinia or Los Angeles, he was usually very conventional would
conduct to fine reviews.  But back here he continued to be very experimental,
usually with his tempos or the use of brass, and for me it became a major
point of resentment, because I began to strongly feel that he didn't
really care about the Houston audiences, and was just using Houston as
a stepping-stone to experiment and improve or show off his technique so
he could climb up to something better.  So, when word came that he was
moving to Philly, there was a lot of hand-wringing in the local press,
but I really wondered how long he would last over there.  And while I
have to admit I've perhaps only heard one or two Philly performances in
broadcast under Eschenbach, so that I'm not really in a good position
to judge how he performed there, it's my guess that Eschenbach's
over-inflated sense of self-importance didn't end when he left Houston,
and that the players in Philly saw right through that.

hector aguilar