With broken English, a winning smile and an air of palpable sincerity, Mariss Jansons was a stranger in a strange land when he assumed his first American music directorship with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 1997.

	Daniel Marsula, Post-Gazette Click illustration to see larger version. Related articles PSO takes its time conducting search for music director Jansons' programming 10 highlights of Jansons' PSO years

Next weekend, he bids goodbye to it after seven short years, leaving behind artistic highs and many grateful musicians and patrons.

He also leaves behind questions about what he might have done better. The greatest of those may have to do with why Jansons strove diligently to change the attitudes of the PSO, local political leaders and audiences about the importance of art music while he himself struggled with transforming his own perception of America.

Remembering why music matters

"You come and you feel like you are at a temple, and you are meditating and feel completely different. ... You clean your body and soul. You go home lifted."

These comments from 2001 epitomize Jansons' fervor for the transcendent power of music. His genuineness in this regard -- Wall Street Journal critic Greg Sandow describes Jansons as not having a single ironic or insincere bone in his body -- invigorated patrons who had tired of predecessor Lorin Maazel's clinical approach. And he did succeed in warming the orchestra's sound.

"Some worried more about his precision and technical ability, but Mariss conducted from his heart," said principal bassoonist Nancy Goeres. "He's one of the most committed musicians I have ever known."

Violinist Christopher Wu concurs: "His love of music was so infectious."

Jansons' reinforcement of the value of their work imbued the musicians with the confidence that they belonged among the world's best.

Although Jansons' distaste for jet lag was a major reason he resigned, touring brought out the best in him. The resulting partnership raised the PSO's and Jansons' international profiles to stratospheric heights.

In 2003, the London Guardian lauded "Jansons' dramatic control and athletic energy and the Pittsburgh Symphony's mix of American bravura with European warmth, a quality that makes them the finest orchestra in the U.S." Added Vienna's Die Presse: "With this top American orchestra, the likable maestro has also achieved his goal of combining cultivated European sound with American perfection."

Recently, eminent critics from The New York Times and Washington Post have echoed this sentiment. On the level of its artistry, the PSO is more highly regarded now than at any point in its storied history.

"The combination of Mariss and the PSO has been a classic win-win," said Thomas Todd, former PSO board president. And, said principal bassist Jeffrey Turner, "He succeeded in convincing the orchestra and so many people of our importance. I don't think people -- certainly the board and many orchestra members -- thought that with the sincerity they now do."

Others are just as effusive in their praise. Concertmaster Andres Cardenes believes Jansons "brought a certain class to the orchestra. His persona as a human being was popular with musicians and audience." And former PSO managing director Gideon Toeplitz, who hired Jansons, called the maestro "a wonderful person and a hard worker."

Toeplitz paused and added: "They are not all like that."

What he did for love

The harmonious performances the audience heard in each Jansons concert belied some difficulty in communication. The consensus is that Jansons benefited from the high quality of musicians now in the orchestra, but he certainly did "improve the orchestra in a musical sense," as Cardenes put it. But not without a struggle.

"Since he didn't emphasize it, the precision is not what it used to be," Cardenes went on to say.

"Rather than getting it from technical means, Jansons' sheer love of music comes through in everything he conducts," said Robert Croan, former Post-Gazette classical music critic.

Other musicians, however, felt this looseness led to occasional poor tuning and questionable ensemble, especially in highly rhythmic passages and specifically for those on the edge of the orchestra. The latter complication arose from Jansons' inability to use a baton the first six years of his tenure due to an "old wound." Many musicians felt they occasionally were forced to play through his vague indications.

"With a lot of Jansons' entrances, you had to listen and watch other players," said principal oboist Cynthia Koledo DeAlmeida.

But DeAlmeida and others in the PSO ultimately preferred the vagueness of Jansons over a more dictatorial approach.

"The orchestra was able to play a little more freely and more musically, and things were allowed to blossom," said principal English horn player Harold Smoliar. "A collar had been taken off."

With Jansons picking up the baton again the past two seasons, ensemble has improved.

The 61-year-old conductor, born in Latvia at the height of World War II, has not been a stranger to conflict. He invoked two classical controversies here, one of them by toning down the brass to fit his concept of balance. Therefore, the woodwinds, closer to the podium, profited.

"He worked so much to get a balanced sound, and the voices that stand to benefit the most are the woodwinds, as they are the first to disappear from sound due to the sheer numbers and of volume," said principal clarinetist Michael Rusinek. "For a woodwind player, it was very gratifying to play with him."

The other embroilment concerned the amount of detail and control the conductor exerted on sections and individual players, even to the point of solo work. "If one has to find a criticism, certainly he was very much into details," said Goeres. "That came from his desire to work very hard."

Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette In February 2003, Pittsburgh Symphony conductor Mariss Jansons thanked the audience at Heinz Hall after the "Season in One Night Gala" concert to celebrate Jansons' 60th birthday. Click photo for larger image.

Jansons efforts in crafting his sound even resulted in the removal of risers from the Heinz Hall stage.

"I clashed with him a lot, in the first few years more than the last, [over] interpretation," said DeAlmeida. "But toward the end he gave us more artistic freedom. He trusted the whole orchestra more at the end."

"There were challenges of working with an American orchestra that he wasn't used to with European orchestras," said Rusinek. "He was nave about American orchestras," added DeAlmeida. "He had been taught that American orchestra musicians are [weighted toward] the technical end but not the heart. He felt like he needed to teach us, which doesn't always work out so well with an orchestra."

The disagreements occasionally boiled into the hiring of musicians. "The audition process," said Cardenes, "was quite contentious at times," although others say it had improved greatly post-Maazel.

Last September, the musicians' union and symphony management negotiated to drop the music director's veto power over musician hires, at least until the next director is named. A swipe at Jansons? Not necessarily, say some insiders, indicating the contract change had more to do with the musicians wanting more control over the makeup of their membership.

Jansons' legacy as director certainly extends to the hiring of a number of talented musicians over his tenure -- roughly a fourth of the 101-member orchestra.

The cultural divide

Whatever stress Jansons' crucible created, the concert results often were stunning. While he never achieved "ownership" of a piece as some conductors do, he had that rare ability to imbue an established work with a freshness that made it new even to a seasoned listener.

This critic, for one, fell in love with several pieces for which I was previously lukewarm -- the Strauss tone poems and Rachmaninoff orchestral works. That, without doubt, was due to Jansons. And that's to say nothing of his creative interpretations of pieces I already adored -- anything from Schumann and Mahler Thirds to Beethoven and Schubert Eighths.

Although his interpretations always were respectful to the composers' intentions, they were full of life and excitement. Perhaps more than any conductor working today, he is able to bring out the showmanship qualities in classical music -- inherent even in somber Brahms -- without rendering the music gauche.

Jansons' specialties included Mahler and Bruckner, but it was his imparting of the soul of Shostakovich that will be his greatest legacy. With symphonies nos. 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and more, he actually inspired the PSO to play like a Russian ensemble.

In many respects, the nature of being a music director in a major U.S. orchestra changed about the time Jansons was hired. Therefore, it's not entirely this Russian-trained maestro's fault that he did a poor job at the extramusical aspects of the job. A director must raise funds and build audiences as well as conduct, program and hire, and this old-school gentleman wasn't into that part of the job.

Nor did he ever truly accept American culture in a manner that would push him to want to assume those duties.

"As much as he loved the people, I don't know whether he connected with what Pittsburgh and America is all about," said Toeplitz.

"He never acclimatized or was willing to acclimatize himself to things that go on in this country in personnel and style decisions," added Cardenes.

But this was a fundamental flaw in Jansons' approach to the job. When audiences sagged at the turn of the millennium in Pittsburgh (not to mention everywhere in the country), Jansons' expression of being "depressed after the concerts if I see the hall is not full" was understandable. Yet, his claim that "I did everything I could" rings hollow.

Spending as little time as needed in town, he was hardly the sort of conductor who would show up at a baseball game or other event to promote the orchestra. He only reluctantly talked from the stage, and his continual dislike for American culture became tedious and counterproductive. More to the point, he curtailed his fund-raising efforts after his first three years, and then his time here from 10 to eight weeks a season.

After just three years here, he declined to sign another multiyear contract, putting the writing on the wall.

"We first got the idea his stay would be short after he didn't renew his three-year contract in 1998," said Toeplitz, who drafted an evergreen contract that required negotiation each year. It wasn't long before Jansons decided to depart.

This is not to say Jansons was disingenuous when he said, "I enormously like this community and the orchestra." Indeed, his issues with the low priority Pittsburghers and their civic leaders put on high culture is understandable and laudable. "What I can't understand," he added, "is having this orchestra in the city and not supporting it, or making it a treasure."

Still, the music director could have done more to change things. He gets credit for donating $100,000 to the PSO in the midst of its recent fiscal crisis even after he knew he was leaving. Nonetheless, greater immersion and commitment might well have meant more than his signature on a check.

Coda

Mariss Jansons inherited an ensemble of first-rate musicians. And with that beaming smile and charming personality, he navigated them to warmer artistic waters.

If they were choppy at times, it's clear Pittsburgh and its orchestra ultimately benefited from him as captain, and he with them. The city that repaired his heart with a defibrillator and warmed it with a cordial writing campaign received in return the kind of passionate performances that result in the loftiest of musical standards.

For that, Jansons exits on a high note. And with a debt of gratitude.