Editorial: LA regrets a misfit
mainWe have been here before.
At the end of Ernest Fleischmann’s inspirational 28-year leadership in 1997, the organisation appointed a Dutchman, Willem Wijnbergen, who had been running the Concertgebouw. Wijnbergen, it was clear from the outset, was unsuited. In the most open-shirted of cities, he was uncommunicative and withdrawn. Walt Disney Hall ran into a building crisis. The Dutchman had no solutions. He was gone inside a year, replaced by Deborah Borda, who was plucked from the New York Philharmonic to put the LA Phil back on track.
Over the next 17 years, Borda brought the hall to a triumphant opening and signed the most exciting conductor available in Gustavo Dudamel. She changed the dynamic of the organisation, made the players the best paid in the US and spread a feelgood atmosphere.
When she left in 2017 to return to the NY Phil, the board learned nothing from history. Looking no further than the West Coast, it hired the effective though unimposing manager of the Seattle Symphony and expected him to fill large shoes. Today, we learned, that didn’t work.
Borda’s shadow was too long and Dudamel’s needs too insistent to give a successor much chance of success. The true causes of Woods’s departure may emerge in the coming weeks, but the immediate suspicion is that he was miscast in the role through no fault of his own.
What next?
Allison Vulgamore.
Yes– finish off LAP once and for all!
Deborah Borda did not make Disney Hall happen. She arrived after all the major hurdles had been overcome and completion was inevitable.
Yes, she was a fund-raising dynamo and worked beautifully with the Board and the two maestros. But let’s not rewrite history, whose timeline is amply documented in the archives of the Los Angeles Times.
But she was very talented to make things happen, and therefore Jaap van Zweden lured her back to New York. Anyone invited to fill Borda’s very large shoe size should learn from what she has done and work along comparable lines. These things are not exclusively personality-bound but management skills.
At this time it looks like you are the one who is “rewriting”: the post says nothing about “making it happen”, but states quite accurately that DB “brought the hall to a triumphant opening”.
Fleischmann was inspirational? Oh yeah, so inspirational that Andre Previn abruptly quit the LA Phil in a huff.
Because unlike EF, AP wasn’t.
The jury is still very much out as to Borda’s impact in NY, I mean, so far, her biggest act is to downsize NY’s ambitions to totally renovate its hall (i.e., can’t raise the money). Maybe the next resignation is…
It seems that NY has to clean-up the result of a number of years of problems, so of course you economize, nothign wrong with that, just common sense. Something has to be built-up again, and the more carefully that is done the better. NY is a special place concerning classical music, because the art form is somehow the opposite of what the city represents, as a cultural symbol:
http://subterraneanreview.blogspot.com/2016/01/ny-phils-predicament.html
Oh Lord, not Allison Vulga(rize)more. She practically wanted to turn the Philadelphia Orchestra into a pops outfit, playing movie music and having the orchestra backing brainless pop singers.
plus shes a Hitch
What are the odds that Broda and Woods left for the same reason (Dudamel)?
Non-existent.
Borda spread a feelgood atmosphere in LA? Please. It’s a snakepit.
I sincerely hope your pen name is not the result of LA being a snakepit.;-)
Clearly you have no real knowledge of the LAPO.