A Maestro Ready for His Baton

NEW YORK — Opening night was a week away, and Jaap van Zweden had just finished his first day as music director of the New York Philharmonic.

He and his wife, Aaltje, took a walk up Broadway from David Geffen Hall last Thursday evening. At a bus stop near 70th Street, they came to one of the “New York, Meet Jaap” posters the orchestra has plastered around the city.

Modi Tankara, a delivery man for Fresh Direct who was eating his dinner on the bench, did a double take and snapped a picture. Van Zweden cheerfully greeted him.

One down, 8 million to go.

Introducing van Zweden (pronounced Yahp van ZVAY-den), 57, to New Yorkers is the Philharmonic’s first order of business. The orchestra has mounted a publicity campaign with posters, TV spots and web ads; programmed premieres to add spice to his opening weeks; and planned performances for city workers and others in April, at which all tickets will cost $5.

But rolling out a new maestro is not easy in 2018. The city may be a classical music capital, but the art form rarely breaks through to the broader culture or even the local news. And the Philharmonic faces intense challenges as it greets him, most pressingly the much-delayed task of renovating its drab hall. So the stakes were high as the orchestra spent a week preparing to debut its new maestro Thursday.

Last Thursday, Galiya Valerio, van Zweden’s assistant, was still unpacking his things just before he arrived. Photographs of some of the titans who preceded him — Gustav Mahler, Leonard Bernstein — lined the walls. But van Zweden had brought personal items, too, including a collection of tiny Delft Blue houses, which KLM Royal Dutch Airlines gives to business class passengers and are easy for a jet-setting Dutch maestro to amass.

A glossy photograph of van Zweden in a black cowboy hat was a souvenir from his last post, as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He was credited with reinvigorating that ensemble, and it rewarded him by making him the best-paid conductor in America, giving him a record-setting $5.1 million in 2013.

Over his desk hung a historical photograph of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam; when van Zweden was just 19, that ensemble made him its concertmaster.

A small snapshot showed him with Bernstein, whom van Zweden credits with setting him on the road to conducting. Bernstein was conducting the Concertgebouw in the late 1980s when he asked van Zweden to briefly take over so he could check how things sounded from the seats.

“He said I was pretty bad,” van Zweden recalled. But Bernstein saw potential and urged him to pursue conducting. Now, van Zweden is stepping into the master’s old job.

Deborah Borda, the orchestra’s president and chief executive officer, bounded in. “Look at you, all in black,” she said. “You’re a New Yawker!” Van Zweden had some questions. “Any news on the hall construction?” he asked her. “Are we going to see plans shortly?”

Borda joked, “We’re going to rebuild it in two weeks!” before assuring him there was nothing yet. The long-delayed renovation plans were jump-started in 2015 with a $100 million gift from entertainment mogul David Geffen. But plans for a gut renovation were sent back to the drawing board last year amid concerns that it would cost far too much and leave the orchestra homeless for too long.

There was one more item of business: Borda told him about a change in the orchestra’s dress code.

“I have a news bulletin: The ladies may wear pants,” she said. The New York Times reported in June that the Philharmonic was the only major orchestra in country that still required women to wear long skirts or gowns for evening concerts.

Later that afternoon, van Zweden’s first official rehearsal was not with the players of the Philharmonic but with a group of avant-garde musician guests. His opening night will begin with the premiere of “Filament,” by Ashley Fure, which promises to be much more progressive than the typical gala fare.

Singers will spread through the hall, wielding megaphones. Lights will flash. And there will be a trio of amplified soloists, including a double bassist who plays at times with a credit card instead of a bow.

When van Zweden, who is best known for his work in the standard repertory, was tapped to lead the Philharmonic, some critics reacted coolly, questioning his commitment to new music.

He was taken aback, noting that he regularly conducted contemporary work, especially when he led the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic. It is intentional that his first weeks feature not just Stravinsky, Beethoven and Bruckner but also three premieres: Fure’s and others by young composer Conrad Tao and Dutch eminence Louis Andriessen. The next day, in an interview with Frank Waals, a Dutch journalist, van Zweden noted that from his office window he could see his old classrooms at the Juilliard School, where he came to study at the age of 16 after winning a violin competition, leaving his family behind in Amsterdam.

Then his publicist, Mary Lou Falcone, came in to strategize and show him his recent mentions in the press. Of particular note: a piece in a Dutch paper, de Volkskrant, speculating on who might become the next music director of the Royal Concertgebouw, whose conductor, Daniele Gatti, was forced out amid allegations of sexual misconduct (which he denied). First on the list of possible candidates? Van Zweden. If he were picked, the article noted, he would follow in the footsteps of Willem Mengelberg by leading the Philharmonic and the Concertgebouw at the same time, in the 1920s.

Van Zweden’s weekend did not go quite as planned. On Saturday he went to a New York Yankees game but felt a little ill and left early. And on Sunday the Philharmonic announced that it was moving to dismiss two key players — its principal oboist, Liang Wang, and its associate principal trumpet, Matthew Muckey — after an investigation into unspecified misconduct. (Both men denied wrongdoing through their lawyers.)

So there was an uncertain atmosphere when van Zweden arrived for his first rehearsal with the orchestra on Monday morning. He decided to address it, urging the players to focus on the music.

“That’s why we’re here,” he said.

Then it was back to business: “OK, so let’s start. ‘Rite of Spring!'” Judith LeClair, the orchestra’s principal bassoon, played Stravinsky’s eerie opening.

If Monday’s rehearsal was broad-brush, Tuesday was all detail work. Van Zweden can be a perfectionist. While some conductors can sound diffident asking for changes, Van Zweden has no shyness: He is polite but blunt.

When he was dissatisfied with a short trombone passage in “The Rite of Spring,” he had the players repeat it, singing the phrase back to them and urging them to accent the last two notes. He had them play it again. And again — eight times, until he was satisfied. “Perfect,” he finally said, and moved on, flashing a thumbs-up.

His brusque style led to some tensions in Dallas, where The Dallas Morning News reported that some players found him “abrasive.” But when he left the orchestra, many of its members said they were sad to see him go.

Looking down approvingly at the rehearsal from a box in the nearly empty auditorium was Oscar Schafer, the chairman of the Philharmonic’s board, who recently gave the orchestra a $25 million gift. As the orchestra wailed away at Stravinsky — it appeared that a cellist broke a string at one point — he smiled. “This is a perfect piece for him,” Schafer said.

At times, it has seemed like there has been more Dutch interest in van Zweden’s arrival than American. (“Van Zweden-mania in Big Apple” was a headline in the Dutch paper De Telegraaf.) But there were exceptions. When a crew from the CBS News program “60 Minutes” arrived Wednesday, on the eve of opening night, van Zweden greeted them warmly: “Look who are here!”

They had already visited him in Dallas and the Netherlands, where they visited the Papageno House, a home for young adults with autism built by a foundation the van Zwedens set up, inspired by their experience with one of their four children, who is autistic. As the crew unpacked, van Zweden gamely went next door for yet another interview. If he was nervous, he was not showing it.

“I’m fine,” he said, pausing for a moment in the whirlwind.