Mariss Jansons is to leave the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, once dubbed by Gramophone as "the world's best orchestra". It has certainly been a successful tenure (since 2004), the more remarkable for the fact that Jansons concurrently runs another world-class band, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and has indeed recorded some of the same repertoire with both -- and yet each orchestra has kept its sense of unique identity. That takes special players, but it also takes a special conductor. The big question now is who can fill Jansons's shoes?
The orchestra haven't announced a successor, nor even any candidates. Neither does looking at the past seem to help much. They have had only seven chief conductors since 1888 - Willem Kes, Willem Mengelberg, Eduard van Beinum, Eugen Jochum, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly and Jansons...
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