Jon Johanning needles Denis Fodor's proposal that certain great orchestras
focus on their own genius loci:

>I am trying to think how this would apply to my favorite organization,
>the Phillies.  Would their tradition be, say, Rachmaninov, played with
>the Ormandy string sound? Rather limiting, I would say, if they were
>forced to stick with that.  Or Verdi, played a la Muti?

To repeat, the orchestras that I had in mind where those situated in
places that animated the greatest of classical music:  e.g.  Berlin,
Vienna, Milan, Paris, St.  Petersburg.  There, I felt, the precious anima
of the music deserved to be husbanded and cherished by musicians steeped
and drilled in the corresponding performance traditions.  The object of
the exercise would be to sustain with fidelity a canon of national or
regional music.  America's great orchestras including, of course, that
of Philadelphia, have no outstanding national canon of classical music to
sustain; nor, for that matter, do the British or the Dutch or the Spanish
or the Portuguese or the Poles (though maybe the Czechs and the Hungarians
do).  So, for the Phillies or,say, the Concertgebouw, the good news would
be that they're not typecast under the Fodor system.  They are free to
excel at whatever thing was of their choosing.

Denis Fodor                     Internet:[log in to unmask]