Tempo speeding up as Lockhart juggles jobs

Fiedler's daughter Johanna, an author and the longtime former press representative at Levine's Metropolitan Opera, is less forgiving. She says Lockhart is not talented enough to lead the Pops and has failed to develop a repertoire of classical music in the way her father did.

"With another twist of fate," she says, "he would have been a high school band leader."

Lockhart has a complicated view of Arthur Fiedler. He dismisses Johanna — "the only link she has to the Boston Pops is her last name" — but agrees that her father did put the orchestra on the map. Fiedler, along with Leonard Bernstein, gave the country its best taste of classical music on television.

Fiedler also should have retired, Lockhart says. He died in 1979 while still Pops conductor.

"He was immensely popular, and he was in a way a victim of that popularity," says Lockhart. "That happens. If you become such an institution it's hard to break out. You kind of jail yourself. Everyone talks about the 50-year career. Well, 50 years is too long anywhere, no matter what you have to offer.

"It's something I don't plan."

So what does he plan?

Even those closest to Lockhart don't know. Will he stay with the Pops and maintain his place as one of the country's best-known conductors? Or will he devote himself to more artistically respected symphonic music?

Lockhart conducts that repertoire in Salt Lake City, though with a fraction of the attention he gets in Boston. He has been music director of the Utah Symphony, an orchestra with 83 players and a $17 million budget, for seven years.

There, he can become the "serious" conductor, doing Dvorak, Brahms and Mahler. But can Lockhart continue to do both jobs? For now, yes. Lockhart concedes, though, that he could not lead a more prestigious, better-funded symphony and remain with the Pops.

The Pops are waiting to hear from Lockhart about his future.

"In a lot of ways, people want things that they're not always entirely suitable for," says Pops manager Tony Beadle. "And I'm not saying that Keith is not suitable for a symphonic career. He is. But he's so suitable for what he does here."

That's the frustrating reality for the BSO's leaders, who say they want Lockhart to remain with the Pops. Even at this difficult time for U.S. orchestras, when most have stopped recording, the Pops sold more than 25,000 copies of its self-released Christmas album, "Sleigh Ride." This season, the Pops have also been recovering some at the box office, in part by spending more money on headlining artists.

The orchestra's concerts with Guster ended with 20-somethings in baggy shorts — far from the usual Pops crowd — dancing in the aisles. "It's one of those things where you try something and it comes out exactly the way you want it to," says Lockhart. "I have never heard screaming like that at Symphony Hall."