MUSIC: ORCHESTRATING A REVIVAL

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The city of Washington may be the epitome of political sophistication, but the capital has never quite shed its reputation as a cultural cow town. The opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1971 was supposed to change that. It gave the city an imposing performance space to rival New York City's best and the hope that greater visibility would soon follow. But bricks and mortar can do only so much. The Kennedy Center, which houses an opera house, a concert hall and theaters, did score some coups, including a dazzling visit by the Berlin Opera in 1975 and a now legendary Fidelio conducted by Leonard Bernstein in 1979. Still, the also-ran image persisted; not even the appointment of the respected cellist Mstislav Rostropovich to head the National Symphony Orchestra in 1977 gave the town's homegrown musical institutions a wider visibility.

Now Washington is trying a new approach: star power. This season, two of the classical world's most renowned musicians have been recruited to revive the city's symphony and opera. Leonard Slatkin, the internationally acclaimed conductor of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, has been named to lead the 66-year-old National Symphony, while Placido Domingo, one-third of the international franchise known as the Three Tenors, has become the new artistic director of the 41-year-old Washington Opera. "To have two such major names take up residence raises the level substantially," says Richard Hancock, executive director of the National Symphony. "Clearly it is an exciting time for Washington."

And for the maestros too. After 17 years as music director in St. Louis, during which he transformed a regional orchestra into one of the finest in the country and established himself as a leading proponent of American music, Slatkin, 52, has gained the bully pulpit he has long both desired and deserved. As for the 56-year-old Domingo, an able conductor and pianist, the move to Washington offers an opportunity to prepare for the future as his singing career winds down over the next seven or eight years. Both men have moved quickly to reinvigorate their companies and to reach out to new audiences, particularly children.

Slatkin, a baseball fan since childhood whose greatest sacrifice in moving to Washington has been giving up his St. Louis Cardinals season tickets, pointedly devoted his entire opening concert to music by such American composers as Bernstein, Howard Hanson and the Washington-born jazz icon Duke Ellington. "Because you are called the National Symphony," he says, "you have an obligation, not just out of a sense of duty but out of real love, to present the music of your own country. We should be thinking of our own repertoire in the same way that the Austrians view Mozart and the Germans look at Brahms."

This play-American attitude is precisely why he was hired. "When we sought a music director for the orchestra, we specifically wanted an American who loved American music, who would support American artists and American composers and musicians," says Lawrence J. Wilker, president of the Kennedy Center. "We think that it is very appropriate having the pre-eminent American conductor be our music director here at the nation's capital of the performing arts."