Christoph Eschenbach to Lead National Symphony

"You could absolutely find Christoph taking liberties with tempi," he said. "He would also feel no qualms about one approach on a Thursday night and a different one on a Saturday. For those people who say, 'I want to hear it the same way every night,' I say, 'Buy a recording.' What makes the music business exciting, what makes people want to come to concerts, is the live experience."

But Kluger admits that a number of the musicians "found Christoph's Dionysian approach difficult. It requires them to pay attention in a whole different way. Because you have to follow a leader who's not always clear."

Eschenbach has unexpected strengths. European conductors are supposed to shy away from the more hands-on aspects of American music directorships; not he. "I was rather good at fundraising, as you might know," he says. When one CEO in Philadelphia tried to avoid his solicitation calls, he turned up at the man's office at 7 in the morning.

And while he brings the air of the Old World to an orchestra that is hungry for it, he also represents change and innovation. He has long ago discarded the standard tailsuit in favor of a crisp Nehru jacket; at the Orchestre de Paris, where he is music director until 2010 (many conductors hold simultaneous directorships in Europe and the United States), a fashion house was brought in to design an alternative to the players' traditional formal dress.

Eschenbach has been seen by some as something of a has-been after the Philadelphia episode. For this very reason, the NSO may prove a good fit: a chance for both him and the orchestra to reinvent themselves after periods of what has widely been viewed as stagnation.

The orchestra, after 12 years of Leonard Slatkin's all-American athleticism, seems to have been looking for a more European touch; Fischer, who was the previous leading candidate in its music-director search until he agreed to be principal conductor, is, like Eschenbach, a European maverick. With Eschenbach, the orchestra gets to take a step toward the core European repertoire without altogether rejecting the forward-looking contemporary spirit that Slatkin helped establish.

As for Eschenbach, he has another chance to try a new approach to leading an orchestra, as well as expanding the role of music director in his work with the Kennedy Center.

"The point which finally made me decide with 100 percent enthusiasm to come to Washington," he said, "were these two titles and two opportunities to express myself and express myself through others and with others."

But although he is not a traditional authority figure, he has some ideas in mind.

"Maybe I want to make the sound a bit more profound, warm and deep," he said. But in his rehearsals and concert in February, he found "that from the first minutes of rehearsal to the concert, the sound already changed. It got more warm; it got more deep. The musicians were also longing for it. They told me they were happy that the sound was changing in those two days."