It’s crunch time for the baton superstars
source: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/classical/article648...
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As orchestras struggle to make ends meet, could the era of the high-cost supermaestro be coming to an end?
Orchestral classical music is in financial crisis worldwide, and the finger-pointing has begun. So far the blame is landing on conductors, the public face of every orchestra. Last month the Chicago Tribune revealed the stratospheric sums still paid to select maestros: $2.2 million (£1.3 million) to Lorin Maazel at the New York Philharmonic in 2006-07; $1.5 million to James Levine at Boston Symphony; $1.9 million to Daniel Barenboim at Chicago Symphony. At a time when American orchestras, which receive no public subsidy, have seen their private and corporate endowment funds nosedive, these fees look as out of step as Sir Fred Goodwin’s RBS pension.
Not a single American orchestra is touring to the Proms or Edinburgh International Festival this summer. “We had a US orchestra pull out because their endowment funding had been shredded,” says Jonathan Mills, the director of the Edinburgh Festival.
The wallets of British orchestras have been hit, too, even if it is less immediately obvious. At the Philharmonia, David Whelton, its chief executive, says that income from the orchestra’s endowment fund is down 60 per cent. Orchestras are having to dip into reserves to keep ambitious artistic programmes afloat.
Other businesses adapt to crises and classical music should be no different. It is not some ethereal artistic entity without bottom lines and budgets. Those have been ruthlessly exposed in recent months. The challenge now is for self-interest to be laid aside.
Orchestral classical music is in financial crisis worldwide, and the finger-pointing has begun. So far the blame is landing on conductors, the public face of every orchestra. Last month the Chicago Tribune revealed the stratospheric sums still paid to select maestros: $2.2 million (£1.3 million) to Lorin Maazel at the New York Philharmonic in 2006-07; $1.5 million to James Levine at Boston Symphony; $1.9 million to Daniel Barenboim at Chicago Symphony. At a time when American orchestras, which receive no public subsidy, have seen their private and corporate endowment funds nosedive, these fees look as out of step as Sir Fred Goodwin’s RBS pension.
Not a single American orchestra is touring to the Proms or Edinburgh International Festival this summer. “We had a US orchestra pull out because their endowment funding had been shredded,” says Jonathan Mills, the director of the Edinburgh Festival.
The wallets of British orchestras have been hit, too, even if it is less immediately obvious. At the Philharmonia, David Whelton, its chief executive, says that income from the orchestra’s endowment fund is down 60 per cent. Orchestras are having to dip into reserves to keep ambitious artistic programmes afloat.
Other businesses adapt to crises and classical music should be no different. It is not some ethereal artistic entity without bottom lines and budgets. Those have been ruthlessly exposed in recent months. The challenge now is for self-interest to be laid aside.
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