What New York can expect from its next music director

MacroV says:

While I haven’t heard the recording, I’d submit that one recording isn’t really an indicator of how a conductor will work out as music director for another orchestra (and I would note they have issued several other recordings, so perhaps one should listen to those before drawing any conclusions). And while Mr. Lebecht’s focus is on the conductor, it should be no surprise to anyone that the Dallas Symphony is capable of playing an outstanding Mahler 3.

A little off-topic, what I find really interesting in van Zweden’s move to New York is that it belies the frequent insistence on this blog and elsewhere that the U.S. “Big Five” is an obsolete term. He is leaving an orchestra with which he is having considerable success (some reports of imperious behavior notwithstanding) and where they presumably would have gladly extended his contract a few more years, and nobody finds it surprising, which says very clearly that there is an elite tier of U.S. orchestras and that Dallas, terrific an orchestra as it surely is, is still not one of them. It’s probably more about budget and the institution’s artistic ambition than it is about how the ensembles actually play, but the difference is there.