Don Satz:

>It's acceptable to me because it makes sense.  "Stars" pull in audiences;
>orchestra members do not.

It is absolutely not acceptable for many reasons.  Most importantly, it is
one major factor crippling the salary levels of rank-and-file orchestral
musicians.  It is also a great insult, as Marcus Maroney pointed out, to
the players who actually create the performance that a conductor is seen,
by the size of his fee, to be vastly more important than them.

Ido not see any difficulty with musicians like Levine and the Three Tenors
taking $1million each for concerts which are commercially incredibly
successful.  When Levine takes 25,000 from an orchestra which is struggling
to survive I cannot see how it is a good thing.  That fee is more than a
rank-and-file player earns in a year.  And the two concerts occured in a
year in which all the members of the Philharmonia were forced to take a 2%
pay *cut*.

It seems to me that if a musician such as Levine, someone who carries heavy
influence throughout the musical world, really cares about music he would
want to show how much he values his players.  If he is asked to perform a
piece such as the Verdi Requiem, for which he would have to do little
preparation, he could use his box office pull to really make money for the
orchestra.  By coming for a small fee (which I am absolutely sure he could
afford to do) the Philharmonia could have charged similar ticket prices and
really profited from the concerts and from Levine.  As it is they have to
fork out a massive chunk of their budget for his glamour.

The same is true of glitzy managers like Ernest Fleischmann.  I do not
doubt his capacity to get the best results from the best people, as he has
shown in Los Angeles.  Neither, though, do I see that he is justified in
taking the sort of fees he does.  If he truly cared about his musicians
why not show it by making a personal sacrifice for them?

Someone is "agreeable" to paying these sort of fees but it is surely
important to examine why they are agreeable.  The tight budgets of many
orchestras mean that they are highly dependent on measures which are
guaranteed to bring in audiences.  One such way is to get big names -
witness the London Philharmonic's coup with Kurt Masur (who currently earns
around $1million a year with the New York Philharmonic?).  They are willing
to pay for such figures because of the status they hold not only musically
but also for their box office draw.

Of course it is worth paying for the best but how can the Levines be the
best if they don't appear to care about the people who actually make what
they do possible? There are examples of conductors who did invest in their
players.  John Barbirolli regularly refused pay increases and instead
divided that figure between his musicians.  Bernstein never took a fee
from the Israel Philharmonic because they couldn't easily afford it.

Orchestras are not successful businesses with large turnovers.  They
do not create profits.  Yet so many star soloists and conductors command
fees which equal or surpass those of Managing Directors.  If a business can
afford to pay high salaries then they do but if they can't they don't.  Why
should government and private subsidy go toward the fees of the stars? I
would hope that musicians want to perform for the love of music, for the
joy it gives to so many people; not for the money.

Orchestral musicians do have some hard choices to make.  They have to
make the decision that they *are* of utmost importance.  They have to
decide not to accept stars and managers taking huge cunks of money from
their budgets.  There does need to be a change in the way orchestras are
organised and the players must decide to demand more freedom over their
choice of conductors and management.

Music does not need people like Levine.  It needs people like Rattle,
Barbirolli and Wigglesworth.  It needs musicians who look out for their
orchestras, who care about who plays, about whether players are happy,
about whether they catch the coach an hour later, about whether they get a
decent breakfast when they are on tour.  Music is not about glory - music
is not just entertainment.

Its about people and relationships: musicians with musicians, musicians
with audience, musicians with management.  Its about learning, growing,
feeling, understanding, loving, hating.

$25,000 for conducting a work which is known by everyone, and especially
by the conductor, with an orchestra which is struggling to say afloat is
selfish in the extreme.  Even more so when you consider that just about
all he said in rehearsal was "It's very good but you might watch me a bit
more".  He didn't add anything - he just came and went.  If that is typical
behaviour of a great musician then it is disgusting.

Robin Newton
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