Music

Abbado Won’t Take Manhattan: Conductor Claudio Abbado was headed for the New York Philharmonic to succeed Zubin Mehta as music director before his surprise election Oct. 8 as new chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Times reported Wednesday. The paper said Abbado had been wooed by the New York orchestra for a long time and had come to a verbal agreement to take over when Mehta steps down in June, 1991. Music executives believe that when the Berlin post was offered, he chose that over New York because of that orchestra’s prestige and its proximity to his native Milan and to Vienna where he is music director of the Vienna State Opera.