Conductors Music

Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya has canceled his appearances tonight and Thursday at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the orchestra announced Monday. He will be replaced by Mischa Santora, associate conductor of the Minnesota Symphony. Harth-Bedoya's wife, Mariza, who was expecting their third child, went into the hospital sooner than anticipated, and the former Philharmonic associate conductor, now music director of the Fort Worth Symphony, left Los Angeles to be with her.

Have baton, will travel. Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, a star in the classical music firmament, in demand by major orchestras around the world, returns to L.A. to conduct an old friend: the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which he served as associate conductor before decamping for Texas in 2000 to become music director of the Fort Worth Symphony. The Peruvian-born maestro will conduct the L.A. Phil in two diverse programs at the Hollywood Bowl this week.

Andrew Davis, Lyric Opera of Chicago's music director and principal conductor, will undergo leg surgery next week that will cause him to miss more than a month of performances, the Lyric announced Friday. Davis, 62, has had pain in his left leg for some time and the surgery, a femoral popliteal artery bypass, is intended to "increase his comfort and mobility," Lyric spokeswoman Magda Krance said. The surgery will keep Davis from conducting the Sept. 16 opening of the Lyric's 52nd season.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim will take on a prominent role at La Scala, more than a year after Riccardo Muti resigned as music director at the opera house in Milan, Italy, the theater said Wednesday. Barenboim will have "a long and continuous working relationship" but will not step into Muti's place as music director, said Carlo Maria Cella, a La Scala spokesman.

Vladimir Jurowski, a fast-rising 34-year-old conductor, has been appointed principal conductor of the London Philharmonic beginning in the 2007-08 season, succeeding Kurt Masur. The Russian maestro will be the orchestra's 12th principal conductor since it was formed in 1932, the company said. Jurowski said he was "thrilled" to gain a position previously held by Bernard Haitink, Sir Georg Solti, Klaus Tennstedt and Masur, who became principal conductor in the fall of 2000.

Paul Nadler was named Monday to replace ailing James Levine as the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera's revival of Beethoven's "Fidelio." The production opens March 20, the same day Levine likely will have surgery to repair a torn right rotator cuff, an injury sustained when he fell onstage at Boston's Symphony Hall on March 1. His estimated recovery time is three months.

ORCHESTRAL life in Germany has long been dominated by what happens in Berlin, Munich and Dresden, with Cologne and Leipzig to complete the picture. But more recently another city has made a case for being considered alongside them: Bamberg, famous for its medieval waterways and great cathedral, has become increasingly well known for its resident Bamberg Symphony, which has, over the past five years, emerged as what one newspaper has called "the model for what modern orchestras should be."

John Mauceri, the extroverted director of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, will step down at the end of the summer 2006 season, Los Angeles Philharmonic President Deborah Borda will announce today. The conductor, a protege of Leonard Bernstein who has conducted widely across the United States and Europe, will continue as founding director, she said Thursday, with an annual presence at the Bowl. "John has come to a kind of watershed in his career," said Borda.

The Third International Sibelius Conductors' Competition in Helsinki, Finland, came to a surprising end this week when the jury declined to name a winner in any of the top three categories. "The level of the competition was a disappointment," competition chairman and Los Angeles Philharmonic music director Esa-Pekka Salonen said.