Alan Gilbert in context

Alex Ross provides some interesting context for the appointment of 42-year-old Alan Gilbert as the next music director of the New York Philharmonic. For example, Gilbert is older than Barbirolli (37) and Bernstein (40) were when they took over, the same age as Zubin Mehta (42), and only slightly younger than Pierre Boulez (46). He isn't that much younger than a music director who was one of the greatest conductors of his generation, and who has since become one of the great composers of Germanic tradition: Gustav Mahler, who was 49 when he took the reins.

We'll see.