You be the judge. Here are the ages of New York Philharmonic music directors or lead conductors when they took the job:
Ureli Corelli Hill, 1842-1847: age 40
Theodore Eisfeld, 1848-1865: age 33
Carl Bergmann, 1855-1876: age 34
Leopold Damrosch, 1876-1877: age 43
Theodore Thomas, 1877-1891: age 41
Anton Seidl, 1891-1898: age 41
Emil Paur, 1898-1902: age 43
Walter Damrosch, 1902-1903: age 40
Wassily Safonoff, 1906-1909: age 54
Gustav Mahler, 1909-1911: age 49
Josef Stransky, 1911-1923: age 39
Willem Mengelberg, 1922-1930: age 51
Arturo Toscanini, 1928-1936: age 61
John Barbirolli, 1936-1941: age 37
Artur Rodzinski, 1943-1947: age 51
Bruno Walter, 1947-1949: age 71
Dimitri Mitropoulos, 1949-1958: age 53
Leonard Bernstein, 1958-1969: age 40
Pierre Boulez, 1971-1977: age 46
Zubin Mehta, 1978-1991: age 42
Kurt Masur, 1991-2002: age 64
Lorin Maazel, 2002-2009: age 72
Alan Gilbert: 2009 - : age 42
The bias toward elder-statesman directors at the erstwhile Big Five orchestras is a quite recent phenomenon. Peter Dobrin points out that both Eugene Ormandy and Riccardo Muti were younger than Gilbert when they began their tenures with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He might have added that Stokowski was all of thirty. For most of the twentieth century — 1912 to 1993 — the Philadelphia was led by conductors who were under forty when they first took over. What really makes Gilbert stand out in the above list is not his age but the fact that he's American. Sad to say, that's still news in these parts.
More links: Steve Smith covers the press conference. Terry Teachout concisely sets forth the challenge that the new director faces in reaching out to a wider public. (His "pop quiz" is a trick question; there never have been indisputably major conductors under the age of fifty. Disputation surrounds all conductors until they advance to an invincible old age.) Tony Tommasini drops critical detachment and writes, "Hooray! At last!"Update: Galen Brown has run some statistical tests showing that when you factor in changing life expectancy Gilbert is indeed "young" after all. He writes: "The life expectancy for a 40 year old white male in 1850 was an additional 27.9 years, for a total of 67.9 years. So [Ureli Corelli] Hill was at about 58.91% of his life expectancy. Alan Gilbert will be 42 in 2009. The life expectancy for a 40 year old white male in 2004 was an additional 38 years, for a total of 78 years. So Gilbert will be at about 53.85% of his life expectancy when he starts in 2009." I am sure the new maestro will be cheered by that! Galen concludes: "Only 3 of his 24 (12.5%) predecessors were younger as a percentage of life expectancy than Alan Gilbert: Theodore Eisfeld, Carl Bergmann, and John Barbirolli."
I feel we might have wandered off on a tangent. The point isn't that Gilbert is relatively young or relatively old. It's that he made Ligeti resound through all the delis in Manhattan.
