After Abbado the choice was between Daniel Barenboim, an erudite player on the world stage, and Simon Rattle, half a generation younger and a proven inspirer of new audiences in a multicultural English city. It seemed a promising fit, but Rattle admitted difficulties almost from the outset with an institution that had become a Champions League team of impossible talents. "Nobody comes here thinking they will have an easy time," he muttered recently, preparing for an early 2018 exit.

Now they have to choose his successor, but Berlin for conductors is no longer a dream job and some of the smarter players acknowledge that they need to rethink what it is they want from the next chief before they go in to vote.

Several candidates have already ruled themselves out by committing their futures elsewhere. The Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin, popular with Berlin players and audiences, has signed on with Philadelphia until 2022. The Austrian Franz Welser-Möst  has extended in Cleveland. The explosive Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel, at 34 the youngest under consideration, affects to be uninterested. Christian Thielemann, a powerful Wagnerian with antediluvian political opinions, put himself beyond the pale with remarks that appeared to endorse the xenophobic Pegida mass movement.

In a clear sign of nervousness, two men in their seventies—Barenboim and Mariss Jansons—have been discreetly asked by players if they would stand in for three years after Rattle goes in order to buy Berlin time to reconfigure what kind of orchestra it wants to be (both, I understand, said yes).

At the voting session, the players will consider two front-runners, neither of whom will necessarily accept the job. The Latvian Andris Nelsons, 36, recently moved from Birmingham to Boston, where his impact has been ecstatic. A summer favourite at Bayreuth and Lucerne, Nelsons brings a rare combination of youthful energy and experience beyond his years; he first conducted Wagner's Ring at 26. But Nelsons has all to play for in the US. His wife, Kristine Opolais, is a star at the Met and he is seen as an obvious successor to the fragile James Levine. What does Berlin have to offer that beats Boston and the Met?

The alternative to Nelsons is Riccardo Chailly, 62, a wonderfully accomplished Italian who was Abbado's teenage protégé in Milan and cut his music director teeth with a Berlin radio orchestra in Karajan's time. Chailly alone has the ability to reconnect the Philharmonic to lost certainties.

But Chailly has a superb and happy orchestra in Leipzig and is about to become principal conductor at La Scala, where his father, Luciano, was artistic director. He will not be easily tempted. It is not inconceivable that, after the vote, the Berlin Philharmonic could go from one front-runner to the next and be rejected by both.

This orchestra cannot afford to elect second-best. It must pick a convincing figurehead or risk losing its seat at the top table where German culture is defined. There is nowhere to hide. The deadline is mid-May. Between now and then, the backroom conversation will intensify. At stake is the destiny of the best orchestra in the world, an orchestra that suddenly appears painfully unsure of itself. Intriguing? I should say.