Names that once inspired skepticism on the Philadelphia Orchestra's Mann Center programs - Russian conductor Andrey Boreyko, for one - have handily graduated to the orchestra's Center City season. Thursday night's unknown commodity is French conductor Ludovic Morlot, whose main U.S. credit is assistant conductor to James Levine in Boston. There must be some reason why Philadelphia and the New York Philharmonic are hiring him for their 2007 summer seasons. Why don't we already know what it is?
The decentralization of the recording industry means that a carefully calculated succession of the major-label CDs and DVDs - otherwise known as career oxygen - are awarded to very few. Among the few thusly anointed in recent years is the brilliant Gustavo Dudamel, 26, who enjoyed one such rollout from Deutsche Grammophon last year, prior to his Los Angeles Philharmonic appointment. Recordings continue to be made, but coherent electronic calling cards have been replaced by scattershot appearances in a variety of labels, big, small, and so local as to be almost invisible.
Once the omnipotent gods of the recording industry, conductors now must choose standard repertoire in marginal places or marginal repertoire in visible places that may not show off what they can do. Or opera - a great place to hide a conductor in plain sight. Though Honeck is capable of a fine Mahler Symphony No. 1 (heard on a BBC Music Magazine free CD from years back), you can't get a fix on him from the Deutsche Grammophon DVD of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at the Salzburg Festival. With a starry cast and high-velocity production, the conductor facilitates rather than leads - a laudable task with opera on this level but not a rewarding one.
