Stream of departures threatens orchestra's sound

An insidious drip has started at the Philadelphia Orchestra, and this one will be hard to stanch. Talent is leaving.

The latest case is David Bilger, the orchestra's stalwart and elegant principal trumpeter, who has accepted a two-year visiting professorship at the University of Georgia, starting this fall.

He isn't quitting his Philadelphia post - not yet - but instead is hedging his bets in a way that trenchantly underscores what's at stake for the orchestra. Bilger will cut back on his orchestra weeks here and commute between Philadelphia and Athens, Ga.

How will he eventually decide between the two?

"Of course UGA would like me full time," he wrote in an e-mail. "Let's talk once I see how much I like Athens, and where the orchestra is in a year. There are options. :-)"

One or two departures per year can be expected in any ensemble. But there have been more. Principal clarinetist Ricardo Morales is taking the same post with the New York Philharmonic, and cellist Efe Baltacigil is to become principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. José Maria Blumenschein, the orchestra's associate concertmaster, is the new co-concertmaster in the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, and violist Stephen Wyrczynski landed at Indiana University in a permanent tenured professorship. Five or six additional players plan to retire. Others are being courted.

Suddenly, everything is different. When the Philadelphia Orchestra returns for opening night in October, it will be something other than what it was in its final concert last season. It will have gone from being one of the world's most sonically homogeneous and sure-footed orchestras to that most precarious of musical beings: ensemble in transition.