San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

Wilkins times final cadence with finesse




By Mike Greenberg

from the San Antonio Express News 7/4/99



One of Christopher Wilkins' hallmarks as a conductor is his sense of rhythm, his timing.

"Change well-timed is a healthy thing for everybody," Wilkins said in an interview sevral months ago, telegraphing his decision to vacate his post as music director of the San Antonio Symphony at the end of the 2000-01 season. He is to remain on board as musical adviser for one season after that.

The announcement last week came as a shock but not a surprise. It was inevitable, sooner rather than later.

In 2001, he will have e completed 10 years at the helm, pretty much the norm for major orchestras these days.

Doubtless Wilkins will be happy to avoid the fate of Seiji Ozawa, music director of the Boston Symphony since 1973. When Ozawa announced last month that he would leave Boston in 2002, it was widely said his departure is overdue.

It would be difficult to overestimate Wilkins' achievements in San Antonio,especially in comparison to his predecessors, Zdenek Macal and Lawrence Leighton Smith.

From the first few seconds of his first appearance here as a guest conductor in 1990, it was clear that Wilkins was a remarkable talent. He had a sense of form, line and - above all - rhythm. The music came into focus.

It was exciting, but not n the flashy, wrong-headed way that Macal's concerts were sometimes exciting, and not in the seat-of-your-pants manner of Smith. Wilkins, young as he was, knew his stuff.

He was signed as music director designate late that same year, immediately after a second guest appearance.

Since then, the orchestra has risen steadily in its performance standards - thanks in part to the replacement of many veterans by exceptional young players - and in its national stature.

Wilkins proved to be a brilliant programmer. The old formula - overture, concerto and symphony - became a thing of the past. He expanded the concert format to include semistaged operas, dance and classic plays with incidental music.

Whie keeping the standard European repertoire at the center, Wilkins also sought to give his orchestra its own personality rooted in the city's geography and culture. He explored the music of Mexican composers, and he engaged Latino composers-in-residence with local roots.

He greatly inproved the orchestra's relationships with the local community and with other arts organizations, and he was a first-rate educator.

Admirable as his record has been, Wilkins and the orchestra both are poised for a change.

Increasingly, some musicians have hungered for a more-intuitive, go-all-the-way expressivity than they've seen in Wilkins. Whether or not the complaints are just, after 10 years any orchestra needs the refreshment and challenge of a new point of view, a different style.

And Wilkins, still young but no longer an ingenue at 42, needs to think about his career and his own musical development.

Although he has shown little evidence of overweening ambition for fame and fortune, he does want a situation in which he can concentrate on the art of music.

In San Antonio, where the survival of the orchestra was in question more often than not, the stresses and extramusical demands of his job have been too great of a distraction.

Wilkins will have time in the next few years to seek other opportunities.

As for his successor, there are many fine possibilities out there, including some guest already booked for the coming season.

But the search will not be easy. Wilkins has set a very high standard.



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