New York Philharmonic

The conductor of the New York Philharmonic wielded his baton as an instrument of diplomacy Thursday. His words, however, weren't all sweet. "You've learned the rhythm wrong!" Alan Gilbert told students at the Hanoi Conservatory of Music as they struggled through a tough section of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. "It's just wrong!" The oldest orchestra in the United States performs in Vietnam for the first time this week as part of an Asian tour that has included stops in Tokyo and Seoul.

Life, even for rising orchestra conductors, can be unfair. Consider one response to Alan Gilbert, new music director of the New York Philharmonic, after he leads Mozart's "Jupiter" Symphony in a packed college auditorium in Queens to loud applause. In the intermission crowd, Linda Bergelson looks up and says: "We live half the year in San Diego, and Alan Gilbert just doesn't have that Dudamel spark." Bergelson also admits that she's just getting to know Gilbert. That's also true for many New Yorkers, as well as others around the classical music world who are barely acquainted with this quiet-mannered 42-year-old conductor who is the first native New Yorker to lead the Philharmonic.

As far as New York Philharmonic season-opening galas go, Alan Gilbert's Wednesday night in Avery Fisher Hall is said to have been daring. Nothing outrageous mind you, not that the relatively sober-seeming audience should have objected to a little musical hanky-panky. Many Wall Street chance-takers are New York Philharmonic patrons, and they were in attendance, to hear the AIG and other banking chit-chat. But Gilbert, 42 and a native New Yorker, son of two New York Philharmonic fiddlers (his mother still sits in the first violin section)

Last month, New York's public radio station WNYC hosted what it billed as a Los Angeles-versus-New York conductor "smackdown." On one side, a controversial British music critic went to bat for Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Philharmonic's effervescent 28-year-old music director. On the other, the producer of the New York Philharmonic's radio broadcasts defended her orchestra's measured, conscientious 42-year-old music director, Alan Gilbert. Norman Lebrecht praised Dudamel for driving orchestras into a kind of ferocity, in contrast with the "dull" Gilbert.

The New York Philharmonic will perform for the first time in Hanoi and Abu Dhabi next season. Alan Gilbert, in his debut season as music director of the nation's oldest orchestra, will lead the musicians in the three-week tour in October, the Philharmonic announced Monday. The orchestra, which made a historic trip to communist North Korea last winter, has performed in 59 countries but never in Vietnam or in Abu Dhabi, an oil-rich Middle Eastern emirate.