As senior director of artistic planning, he now makes decisions on programming, long-term planning and the engaging of conductors and soloists, a responsibility that requires him to wrestle with finances.
After Coates left, the orchestra reverted to its preferred practice of engaging numerous guest conductors rather than a single principal conductor.
(Woolfe) ★ New York Philharmonic (Friday, Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday) For his engaging Modern Beethoven series, the conductor David Zinman is pairing Beethoven symphonies with 20th-century concertos.
Leadership has gone from a symphony with a single conductor at the front engaging in visible, role-defined acts of leadership, to an improvisational jazz band where each individual musician takes turns leading and following, guiding and supporting, all while empowering their fellow bandmates.
Let's hope this marvellous conductor is signed up for a more engaging production soon.
Still, Haydn's fantastical "Orlando Paladino," which he called a heroic-comic drama, is clever and engaging, qualities that abound in the recording by the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt with a fine cast, including Patricia Petibon and Michael Schade, and the period-instrument orchestra Concentus Musicus Wien.
As he shuttles what can sometimes be fewer than a dozen passengers, this Transcendental Meditation instructor-turned-conductor has found a mobile community where his eccentricities and engaging nature can thrive.
Mr. Eschenbach is not the subtlest of conductors, but the music was so palpably important to him that the performance became in ways more engaging than it might have been from a more sophisticated reader.
If Albarn is a sort of conductor of this varied selection of artists, then he also proves capable of sweeping us along; the two-hour show flies by, is constantly engaging, bold, and with a lot of just great tunes.
