This may come as a surprise to the happy patrons of the San Francisco Symphony, but there is a well-orchestrated campaign to set up Michael Tilson Thomas as the next music director of the New York Philharmonic. That has been the word on the “street” (in the east and the music industry) for some time. Recent developments have simply strengthened that idea. It is a well-financed operation — and guess what: SF Symphony patrons are paying for it.

It’s no secret that Loren Maazel, who turns 72 in 11 days, is not viewed as a long-term music director for the Philharmonic, not past his contracted four years. Influential critics properly keep pressing for a conductor who is younger in spirit and outlook, one who can draw more vital and active and, of course, younger listeners to Avery Fisher Hall. While the Philharmonic is by all accounts playing well — Kurt Masur accomplished a lot with that group — it’s going to take a fresher breeze than anything Maazel can stir up to bring that institution into the 21st century. Hence the big spread on MTT in the New York Times of Sunday, February 10, the author, critic and editor James Oestreich coming out to San Francisco in advance to prepare his arm spread welcome to the city’s conductor and orchestra for their two concerts in Carnegie Hall last Wednesday and Thursday.

These were just what the doctor ordered for chestnut-stuffed Gothamites, the Schoenberg/Mahler (Das Lied von der Erde) program and the Berlioz/American hymns/Ives Fourth program, the sequence repeated in the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium last Friday and Saturday. For these two engagements, Carnegie and Hill Auditorium, the SF Symphony spent a lot of money, transporting something like 125 people and the instruments and miscellaneous equipment, the insurance, the hotel costs (first class as the contract requires), per diem, and what all.

In the old days of the big record contracts, touring was “written off” as essential to record sales, an argument that never really washed — the folks in Berlin or Paris were going to rush out and buy thousands of SF Symphony recordings after their smash concerts there? Nonsense. P.R. for the City? Worth the millions it has cost to underwrite, according to the Symphony’s own summary, “the sixth American Tour by Tilson Thomas and the SFS, and their tenth touring collaboration overall” including the “European tours with Tilson Thomas in 1996, 1999 and 2000, a tour of Asia in 1997, as well as five U.S. tours in the last five years?”

I believe that the music director’s contract requires this touring. It’s to showcase him as much as the orchestra, part of his price negotiated by his management, above the actual salary. Is such touring money spent as productively as it might be if it were invested in activities in the orchestra’s own region. The orchestra could be touring in its own state, reducing or keeping down admission costs, making possible more performances for audiences unable to pay anything like the going ticket prices. If the executive director, Brent Assink, has any original vision for the Symphony, any point of view or ideas beyond doing more of the same and better, beyond operating smoothly and in the black, it is not apparent.

There is no end of original, productive and creative activity possible for a symphony orchestra as successful and financially secure as the San Francisco Symphony. Citing the Association’s $47 million budget, the NY Times article revealed the endowment of $140 million, possibly the largest of any American orchestra or certainly among the top two. That endowment figure, by the way, was not previously made public here.

With the release two weeks ago of its Mahler Sixth Symphony CD, the orchestra has, for the first time, launched its own recording project, Mahler’s Nine Symphonies and the Tenth Symphony Adagio, on its SFS Media label. It is being supervised by Andreas Neubronner of Tritonus Music Production who was in charge of the Symphony’s recordings during its RCA Victor Red Seal past. That’s fine and welcome. The fact remains however, that while almost all other major orchestras have celebrated and memorialized their former great performers and performances, with up to twenty and thirty CDs going back to the earliest days of recording, the San Francisco Symphony continues to concentrate all interest in its Michael Tilson Thomas present.

The idea of historical reissues of the great Pierre Monteux performances seems just to be ignored, along with other outstanding San Francisco Symphony performances as far as back as those under Alfred Hertz. There are recordings from his day, including an excellent rendition of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer’s Night Dream Overture. There may even be recordings of the very young Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern with the Symphony from the Standard Hour Broadcasts. And then there are the significant achievements of the other music directors who served between Monteux and Tilson Thomas, preserved on broadcast tapes. Now let me see, who were they again?

The San Francisco Symphony management and board show no interest in its history, the tradition that has everything to do with its current success and achievements. While most other major orchestras have archivists on staff, there is none in Davies Hall, management being content to pay a modest annual fee to the independent Performing Arts Library and Museum for the maintenance of a portion of its archives. It’s all about today and tomorrow.

Tomorrow in fact, the Symphony announces its 2002-2003 season and that will tell a great deal, particularly in the repertory Tilson Thomas has chosen. Tilson Thomas and his Symphony carry big reputation for innovation and, in Oestreich’s words, “adventurous programming,” placing no end of emphasis on the “mavericks” thing Tilson Thomas has developed. Indeed, as MTT himself put it, he has “brought a lot of conservative members of the public into a greater state of appreciation of what new music of various kinds has to offer.”

The phrase “various kinds” must be qualified however, for it has been more various than real in substance. Everyone in his audiences is now familiar with the innovative composers who struck out boldly during the early decades of the century. But what of today and here? What of the twenty or more excellent composers who have lived here or are resident currently? Not a note from them is played by Tilson Thomas’ orchestra, save for the music of Lou Harrison and John Adams. No one else here counts or merits any consideration, not even those whom the SF Symphony has played successfully under previous music directors.

Will tomorrow’s season announcement recognize a broader new music life here today than the past seasons have, recognize composers well presented by the region’s several new music ensembles? Will the San Francisco Symphony pay back into the critical creative component of its own musical community? Will Tilson Thomas stand up, not just for old “mavericks” but for new creations of music that have the power to stir and move the listener, to be accepted into the repertory, to be welcomed back and survive. Not just “innovation,” not just catchy music with busy, entertaining surfaces or rock-derived rhythm, not just predictable note spinning and color wheels, but musical substance. Outstanding performance, yes, and that must always be there to sustain the high standards that Tilson Thomas has achieved. But crucial at this point in his career and this orchestra’s existence must be the introduction and advocacy of a work or works with which the conductor can look us in the eye and say, “I believe this is a masterpiece.” The establishment of that is the measure of a conductor’s achievement.

___________________________By Robert Commanday