Philadelphia Orchestra

Tuesday night, the Philadelphia Orchestra made its Walt Disney Concert Hall debut; Wednesday, its debut in the new Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall of Costa Mesa. These concerts were also the first Southern California appearances of the Fabulous -- at least when they want to be -- Philadelphians with their current music director, Christoph Eschenbach. The first and no doubt the last.

Charles Dutoit, former music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, has been named interim conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra while it searches for a new director. Beginning in September 2008, Dutoit, 70, will lead the orchestra in up to eight weeks of concerts per season in Philadelphia and on tour. He has a contract through the 2011-12 season. The orchestra announced in October that Christoph Eschenbach would be departing as musical director after a three-year run.

I was shocked and outraged at the insinuation that I have used conductor Christoph Eschenbach, the current conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, as "inspiration" in my current novel, "His Secret Little Wife" ["Critic's Notebook: A Classic Coup," Jan. 21]. The book is pure fiction. I have never seen or even heard of conductor Eschenbach, nor have I ever seen even a picture of him. The house described in the book that Mark Swed presumes is "too humiliatingly close to Eschenbach's for comfort" is the house where I and my family have lived, nor was I aware of any dissension in Philadelphia concerning the orchestra and the conductor since we haven't been living in Philadelphia for many years.

WE'VE heard a lot lately about the death of a tyrant. No, not that one. Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of the passing of Arturo Toscanini, one of the most famous conductors who ever lived. And, no, he wasn't that kind of a monster, either. We, in fact, revere him in part for his honorable political convictions, his refusal to remain in Mussolini's Italy or conduct in Hitler's Germany.

The Philadelphia Orchestra, which has lacked a regular presence on national radio for nearly a decade, will have a series of concerts on NPR. All or part of 26 previously recorded concerts from the orchestra's 2005-06 season will be broadcast on the programs "SymphonyCast" and "Performance Today." The one-year agreement is expected to be renewed. The broadcasts will be produced by NPR and Philadelphia-based WHYY-FM. The orchestra is now led by Music Director Christoph Eschenbach.

A 20-year-old woman has made it big with the Philadelphia Orchestra: She's been hired to be its tuba player, a job normally held by men in major orchestras. Carol Jantsch, a senior at the University of Michigan, beat out 194 others for the vacant tuba seat in Philadelphia. Orchestra officials said that, based on their research, she may be the first female tuba player in a major full-time American orchestra.

THE latest news about orchestras has been very good. And it has been not so good. A few Fridays ago, Marin Alsop was chosen person of the week by ABC News. That's not just good: A rising American conductor making the mainstream is practically unbelievable. But I wonder whether Alsop, the first woman to be appointed music director of a major American orchestra, would have been person of the anything had the Baltimore Symphony not botched the news of her appointment.

Philadelphia Orchestra officials and musicians agreed to extend a midnight Wednesday contract deadline until the end of the month after Mayor John Street called the two sides to City Hall. Street urged the two sides to keep negotiating and pledged to speak with Gov. Ed Rendell about finding more public funding for the world-renowned group, a spokeswoman said.

The Philadelphia Orchestra fired seven administrators last month to help bring a $4-million-plus deficit under control. But apparently that wasn't enough. According to a Philadelphia Inquirer report last week that an orchestra spokeswoman confirmed, officials are now asking Music Director Christoph Eschenbach to take a 10% cut in his annual compensation -- estimated to be between $1.3 million and $1.8 million -- or to contribute services of an equal value.

The Vienna Philharmonic came to Philadelphia on Wednesday night for the first time in 36 years. Although the band, perhaps the world's most elite orchestra, appears in nearby New York annually and has even debarked in far-off Costa Mesa twice in the last four years, it has steered clear of Philadelphia for the simple reason that, like the city's own exceptional orchestra, it hated playing in the acoustically dead Academy of Music.