The announcement of Yannick Nézét-Seguin as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra is a high-risk, half-calculated strategy. No question of the young Canadian’s talent – he has demonstrated at Rotterdam and the London Philharmonic both the interpretative gift and the human skills to raise a fine orchestra several notches higher. I have been impressed ever since I heard a Bruckner seventh that ran without an audible gear change, a wonderfully organic performance that seemed to have been conceived in a single breath.

At 36, he is inexperienced but full of idealism and unlikely to get worn down by world-weary professors in the front desks who have seen it all before. As Peter Dobrin has reported, the players liked him more than any other guest conductor in the past couple of years.

So why the high risk and the half-calculation? Because talent is never enough. An artist at Yannick’s stage needs a partner in management who can shield and guide him in the way that Ernest Fleischmann nurtured Esa-Pekka Salonen at Los Angeles and Alexander Pereira handled Franz Welser-Möst in Zurich. At Philadelphia he will work with Allison Vulgamore, a recent arrival from Stlanta, who is fighting fires on all fronts – financial, artistic, demographic and strategic. It’s going to be tough for Yannick, from day one.

And that’s why the calculation is no more than a halfway guess. The decline of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the past decade has been a sorry spectacle of indecision, misjudgement and overweening pride. That kind of rot does not stop overnight. The next year is going to be crucial for the orchestra. Win or lose, a conductor can always walk away.  

The announcement of Yannick Nézét-Seguin as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra is a high-risk, half-calculated strategy. No question of the young Canadian’s talent – he has demonstrated at Rotterdam and the London Philharmonic both the interpretative gift and the human skills to raise a fine orchestra several notches higher. I have been impressed ever since I heard a Bruckner seventh that ran without an audible gear change, a wonderfully organic performance that seemed to have been conceived in a single breath.

At 36, he is inexperienced but full of idealism and unlikely to get worn down by world-weary professors in the front desks who have seen it all before. As Peter Dobrin has reported, the players liked him more than any other guest conductor in the past couple of years.

So why the high risk and the half-calculation? Because talent is never enough. An artist at Yannick’s stage needs a partner in management who can shield and guide him in the way that Ernest Fleischmann nurtured Esa-Pekka Salonen at Los Angeles and Alexander Pereira handled Franz Welser-Möst in Zurich. At Philadelphia he will work with Allison Vulgamore, a recent arrival from Stlanta, who is fighting fires on all fronts – financial, artistic, demographic and strategic. It’s going to be tough for Yannick, from day one.

And that’s why the calculation is no more than a halfway guess. The decline of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the past decade has been a sorry spectacle of indecision, misjudgement and overweening pride. That kind of rot does not stop overnight. The next year is going to be crucial for the orchestra. Win or lose, a conductor can always walk away.  

Early appreciations of Ernest Fleischmann, who has died aged 85, have focussed rightly on the second half of his life when, as manager, he transformed the Los Angeles Philharmonic into a world-class orchestra and created a Frank Gehry Hall that will be a city landmark for the next 100 years. It was a phenomenal achievement. Safe to say that Ernest did more for orchestral life in America than any executive since Arthur Judson invented the Philadelphia brand with Leopold Stokowski during the First World War. 

But Ernest had another life, and it saddened him that it got downplayed. Before moving to the US in 1970, he had gone from being a conductor in South Africa – the last pupil of Albert Coates – to a talent spotter and career maker. Appointed manager of the player-owned London Symphony Orchestra, he retrieved Jascha Horenstein and Pierre Monteux from the discard pile and rocket-boosted their late careers.

Andre Previn and Claudio Abbado were two of his proteges, followed (much later) by Esa-Pekka Salonen. His eye and ear for conductors led to deep and lasting personal relationships with Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Carlo-Maria Giulini and Kurt Sanderling.

It was Ernest who established the London Symphony Orchestra’s pre-eminence in its city, a rank it has held almost unbroken ever since, and Ernest who – on the whiff of a Friday-afternoon City rumour – wrote the proposal that won the LSO its valued residency in the new Barbican Centre. He was deposed by a players’ putsch led by his closest friends and, though always quick to anger, he managed over the years to make his peace with most of them.

After the LSO he spent a year in the record business with CBS but Ernest was always a live wire. He lacked the Sitzfleisch for corporate meetings.

He was always open and forthcoming when I approached him for information and we often saw things from a similar angle. Passionate about new music, he introduced me to the extraordinary impresaria Betty Freeman, opening a three-way friendship. He was happy in LA, after his fashion, yet, in almost every conversation with me, Ernest would start chewing his lip and wondering why his London years had been written out of the record.

He had been a subtle catalyst of Swinging London in the 1960s, one of the backroom fixers who turned the town from deadening post-war austerity to a place where people came to have fun. For that, he deserved a knighthood – more than most conductors do.

Early appreciations of Ernest Fleischmann, who has died aged 85, have focussed rightly on the second half of his life when, as manager, he transformed the Los Angeles Philharmonic into a world-class orchestra and created a Frank Gehry Hall that will be a city landmark for the next 100 years. It was a phenomenal achievement. Safe to say that Ernest did more for orchestral life in America than any executive since Arthur Judson invented the Philadelphia brand with Leopold Stokowski during the First World War. 

But Ernest had another life, and it saddened him that it got downplayed. Before moving to the US in 1970, he had gone from being a conductor in South Africa – the last pupil of Albert Coates – to a talent spotter and career maker. Appointed manager of the player-owned London Symphony Orchestra, he retrieved Jascha Horenstein and Pierre Monteux from the discard pile and rocket-boosted their late careers.

Andre Previn and Claudio Abbado were two of his proteges, followed (much later) by Esa-Pekka Salonen. His eye and ear for conductors led to deep and lasting personal relationships with Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Carlo-Maria Giulini and Kurt Sanderling.

It was Ernest who established the London Symphony Orchestra’s pre-eminence in its city, a rank it has held almost unbroken ever since, and Ernest who – on the whiff of a Friday-afternoon City rumour – wrote the proposal that won the LSO its valued residency in the new Barbican Centre. He was deposed by a players’ putsch led by his closest friends and, though always quick to anger, he managed over the years to make his peace with most of them.

After the LSO he spent a year in the record business with CBS but Ernest was always a live wire. He lacked the Sitzfleisch for corporate meetings.

He was always open and forthcoming when I approached him for information and we often saw things from a similar angle. Passionate about new music, he introduced me to the extraordinary impresaria Betty Freeman, opening a three-way friendship. He was happy in LA, after his fashion, yet, in almost every conversation with me, Ernest would start chewing his lip and wondering why his London years had been written out of the record.

He had been a subtle catalyst of Swinging London in the 1960s, one of the backroom fixers who turned the town from deadening post-war austerity to a place where people came to have fun. For that, he deserved a knighthood – more than most conductors do.