The post of Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra was offered to
Esa-Pekka Salonen, and he turned it down.  In Sunday's Plain Dealer, Music
Critic Donald Rosenberg offered the following comment.  Headline follows:

   Adventures Continue in Passing Baton

   What would life have been like with Esa-Pekka Salonen as music director
   of the Cleveland Orchestra? Provocative, adventurous and - possibly
   narrow, if his accomplishments with Lost Angeles Philharmonic are
   any indication.

   We'll never know.  In a curiously public turn of events, Salonen last
   week declined an offer to succeed Christoph von Dohnanyi in Cleveland.
   Dohnanyi's contract as music director expires in 2002, the year
   Salonen is up for renewal in Los Angeles.

   To show his commitment to his orchestra, Salonen donated $100,000
   toward construction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which the Los
   Angeles Philharmonic one day will call home.  The Finnish conductor
   did so to let his orchestra know that he had had turned down the
   beckoning from the Forest City and intended to stay put in the City
   of Angels.

   Conductor searches usually don't unfold this way.  The normal process
   involves top-secret negotiations and an announcement only when every
   delicate artistic and monetary detail has been worked out.  The
   analogy of smoke rising when a new pope is chosen is often invoked,
   accurately.

   So the news that Salonen had cast his lot for Los Angeles over
   Cleveland raises questions and answers a few.  Now that the world
   knows who might have been the first choice for Cleveland's music
   director, it is wondering who No.  2 (or No.  3 or 4) will be.

   Orchestras, of course, prefer that No.  2 isn't aware that he or she
   is No.  2.  Something to do with brides and bridesmaids.  But things
   don't always work out as planned.  Sometimes they end happily.  In
   the fall of 1981, for instance, Sir Colin Davis declined Cleveland's
   offer to become music director.  Several months later, a relatively
   unknown German conductor named Christoph von Dohnanyi made his debut
   at Severance Hall, and the rest is history.

   Recent and distant events confirm that even the greatest orchestras
   must go shopping to find a music director.  Two weeks ago, Sir Simon
   Rattle, wooed by just about every American orchestra in current need
   of a boss, told the Philadelphia Orchestra, in essence, "thanks, but
   no thanks." George Szell, powerfully entrenched in Cleveland in the
   1960s, turned down offers from the Chicago Symphony and New York
   Philharmonic.  The world did not come to an end in those cities.
   Philadelphia will survive.

   Here's the seeming odd part.  A top American orchestra would appear to
   be a dream destination for any conductor, even the most internationally
   anointed.  In terms of quality and stature, it is difficult to go higher
   than Cleveland or Philadelphia.  Many maestros would sell their artistic
   souls for such an opportunity.

   There must be very good reasons, then, to turn down such an attractive
   offer.  Davis stated that he wouldn't come to Cleveland in part
   because his wife refused to do so at the time.  Salonen is said to
   savor his musical and family situations in Los Angeles.  Life clearly
   exists beyond the hallowed halls of lofty orchestras.

   Cleveland has no cause to feel rejected, then or now.  We can only
   speculate how a Davis tenure would have developed.  The Dohnanyi
   era has been fruitful, compelling, occasionally stormy, ultimately
   distinguished.  From what Cleveland audiences have heard of Salonen,
   his choice to remain in Los Angeles appears to be shrewd.  In other
   words, the best for Los Angeles and the best for Cleveland.

   In guest appearances at Severance Hall, the Finnish conductor has
   presided over music from the 20th century - Messiaen, Debussy, Nielsen,
   Bartok.  Salonen is a fine conductor, and accomplished composer, who
   priorities clearly lie in recent and contemporary trends.  At 40, he
   has not delved deeply into classical and romantic repertoire.  When
   he does, his performances are not knmown to be particularly insightful
   or stylish.

   It could be argued that Salonen is just the kind of youthful,
   forward-looking maestro to take an orchestra into the 21st century,
   especially when younger audiences must be cultivated.  Survival
   depends on listeners and supporters who will see that an institution
   thrives.

   Yet Cleveland is a distinctive case.  The orchestra long has been
   renowned as a classical ensemble whose clarity and discipline are
   ideal in music extending from Mozart to the present.  We don't know
   how Salonen would deal with Cleveland in the core repertoire of
   Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and others.  The abilities required to
   conduct 20th-century fare don't necessarily suit music of earlier
   eras.  (Pierre Boulez is the most striking example in this regard:
   He is supreme from about 1900 onwards:  clinical in most 18th- and
   19th-century literature).

   By remaining in Los Angeles, Salonen is playing to his strengths.
   Cleveland is not the place to learn the repertoire that has garnered
   its orchestra almost unparalleled admiration.  The search for the
   next music director will go on, probably even more quietly than
   before, with no sensational solution on the horizon.

Mark