In his season preview for the Morning News last weekend, Cantrell praised the 53-year-old Flor as a potential music director, saying that "the DSO could hardly do better ... [he] seems to get better with each season." Cantrell also identified two other leading candidates who gave impressive performances with the Dallas Symphony last season: 49-year-old Andrey Boreyko, currently chief conductor of the Hamburger Symphoniker (Germany) and the Bern Symphony (Switzerland) and from 2001 to 2005 music director of the Winnipeg Symphony in Canada; and 45-year-old Jaap van Zweden, chief conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and principal conductor-designate of deFilharmonie in Antwerp.
But the orchestra's administration isn't going to rush into a decision. "It's very typical for orchestras to go one, two, sometimes even three seasons without a music director," Dallas Symphony Association president Fred Bronstein told Cantrell. "We're just starting our first season without a music director. If you have a very high quality of guest conductors come in, you're going to get a great product in the meantime."
For information on this weekend's season-opening program and the entire Dallas Symphony 2006-07 season, visit www.dallassymphony.com.