Catching up with the LA Phil: trying to fill empty chairs

It’s been an unexpectedly unruly past two weeks for yours truly.  I squeezed in a few concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, but unfortunately didn’t have any capacity to do much of anything else, including write, until now.

Time for me to start catching up.  Before we get into my views of the performances, let’s warm up with the matter of the Los Angeles Philharmonic trying to fill some open positions.  The orchestra recently had two open auditions for titled woodwind chairs:

• Associate Principal Clarinet:  this is essentially downgrading the Principal Clarinet chair previously held by the late Lorin Levee, continuing the orchestra’s move away from the two principal system in place between the 1960′s to the mid-1980′s
• Principal Flute:  the latest attempt to bring stability back to a position which, after two decades of  having the same two people hold the position, has been in constant flux.  If you count former principals Janet Ferguson (who stepped down in 2006) and Anne Diener Zentner (who retired shortly thereafter), four people have held the title in the past six years — the other two being Mathieu Dufour and David Buck.

So what happened at those two auditions?

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