Orchestras: The Elite Eleven

ORCHESTRAS The Elite Eleven

When the Ford Foundation awarded an $85 million grant to U.S. orchestras five months ago, it was paying tribute to the nation's richest and most underrated cultural asset. The symphony orchestra has long been a mighty factor in the creative life of U.S. communities, but most Americans, cowed by a self-consciousness about European culture, have never acknowledged it.

Actually, when it comes to making symphony music, the Old World is not only inferior to the U.S., it isn't even old. The New York Philharmonic, for example, was founded in 1842, is 40 years older than the Berlin Philharmonic; the St. Louis Symphony (1885) predates both Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra and the London Symphony. Indeed, by most any yardstick, U.S. orchestras outstrip their counterparts on the Continent. Last season the Vienna Philharmonic performed 50 concerts and the London Symphony 32, while the Philadelphia Orchestra played 179 and the Boston Symphony 206. Of the world's 2,000 orchestras, the U.S. claims 1,401, including 25 that rank as major. France, by contrast, has only two professional symphony orchestras outside Paris, Britain only six outside London.

What is more, the quality of the top U.S. orchestras has developed to such a marked degree in the past few years that the Big Five—Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Philadelphia —are being crowded for honors by numerous other contenders. The first to surface was the Pittsburgh Symphony under Conductor William Steinberg. Through unstinting musicianship and an easygoing charm, Steinberg has molded his orchestra into a precision instrument of the highest caliber (TIME, Sept. 11, 1964). Moving west, there are no fewer than five more orchestras which, by the outstanding efforts of their masterbuilder conductors, now merit room at the top with the Big Five and Pittsburgh, comprising, in all, what might be called the Elite Eleven.

> DETROIT SYMPHONY operates under the successful "Detroit Plan," which this season accounted for contributions of $275,000 from 185 corporations, and a broad base of individual support to back its proud claim of being "everybody's orchestra." Sweden's Sixten Ehr-ling, 48, who replaced the venerable Paul Paray as conductor in 1962, has tempered the heavily romantic repertory favored by "Papa Paray" with stiff doses of modern music, has sharpened the ensemble playing into machine-tooled precision, and has added a velvety sheen to the orchestra's sound with the addition of 23 new musicians this year. Intense, sharp-featured Ehrling has brought a dashing and vigorous new image to the Detroit podium.

> HOUSTON SYMPHONY has come a long way from the days when it played Old Black Joe for encores and accompanied a wrestling match at a war-bond rally. The secret of the Houston's success today is Sir John Barbirolli, 66, whose solid musicianship, gained during a long career as conductor of such ensembles as the New York Philharmonic and Britain's Hallé Orchestra, compensates mightily for the lack of depth in his players. Mindful that attendance had skidded with the modernist programming of Leopold Stokowski (1955-61), Barbirolli plays it safe and sticks close to the classics, out of which he produces a sound as fresh and breezy as the Southwest itself.