On Thursday, January 12, 2006 at 5:48:26 PM UTC-8, tomdeacon wrote:
> FYI
> A missing maestro
> Why has Pinchas Zukerman decided to snub his orchestra for the next six
> months?
> By ROBERT EVERETT-GREEN
> Thursday, January 12, 2006 Page R1
> Pierre Théberge, director of the National Gallery of Canada, is well
> known in Ottawa for taking his dog to work every day. But when he's not
> on the job, he doesn't assume that gallery staff will let his prized
> Airedale terrier have the run of the office.
> Things are different across the river at the National Arts Centre
> Orchestra, where on at least one occasion Pinchas Zukerman's wife,
> cellist Amanda Forsyth, installed the couple's dog in the Conductor's
> Dressing Room while Zukerman was performing elsewhere. The guest
> conductor at the NACO that week presumably agreed that every dog must
> have his day.
> The pooch incident has come to symbolize what some close to the NACO
> regard as an alarming sense of entitlement on the part of the
> orchestra's power couple. It may also offer a small clue in the
> continuing mystery of why Zukerman and Forsyth, who is principal
> cellist, have both abandoned the orchestra in the middle of the season.
> Late last month, the NACO announced that the orchestra's energetic
> music director was tired and had decided to cancel all his concerts
> (and forgo payment for performing them) at the NAC till June. Zukerman
> hasn't uttered a public word on the subject, and his New York agent
> says he doesn't intend to. At about the same time as his departure
> became known, Forsyth went on indefinite medical leave.
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> Both have continued to perform elsewhere. They played together on
> Sunday night, at a Baltimore concert by the Zukerman Chamber Players,
> which includes three other Zukerman protégés from the NACO.
> The NACO has grown accustomed to giving the music director's wife a
> long leash. When asked about her continued activity when she's
> officially unable to play with the NACO, orchestra manager Christopher
> Deacon said that other musicians had played outside gigs while on sick
> leave.
> She suggested that "playing in another setting [might be] therapeutic
> as well as helpful" for Forsyth's recovery. Deacon also said Zukerman's
> absence, while regrettable, may help the NACO in the long run, because
> he'll return this summer with new energy and will have carried on with
> the programming and educational side of his job even while he's away
> from the NAC stage.
> Zukerman is playing tonight with the Pacific Symphony in California,
> and conducting two different programs in the next few weeks with the
> Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. His freelance schedule between now and
> the end of the season includes dozens of concerts on three continents,
> including a European tour with the National Orchestra of Belgium.
> That doesn't look like the agenda of a man dragging his feet with
> fatigue. Nor does it seem much in keeping with Zukerman's formal
> obligation, in the contract he signed with the NACO in 1998, "to ensure
> that his role and responsibility to NACO are a top priority of his
> career."
> Those responsibilities have never been more pressing than right now.
> The orchestra's subscription-ticket sales dropped by almost 10 per cent
> between 2002 and 2004 (the latest year for which the NACO would provide
> figures). Average attendance is stuck at 65 per cent (the Toronto
> Symphony Orchestra last year recorded 85 per cent). The NACO needs a
> new concertmaster, which after the conductor is the single most
> important position in the orchestra. Key musicians, like some critics,
> say that the quality of the NACO has deteriorated.
> "I've seen a lessening of the cohesiveness this orchestra used to
> have," said founding concertmaster Walter Prystawski, who confirmed
> that he and Zukerman are no longer on good terms. But he denied that
> his presence had prompted Zukerman's flight, since the music director
> had already made sure that Prystawski's place would be taken by others
> during all of Zukerman's concerts this season, including those on the
> NACO's recent tour of western Canada.
> The public knows Zukerman as a dashing virtuoso violinist, whose face
> and name have been plastered on every surface available to the NACO's
> marketing department. Over the past seven years, the orchestra has come
> to know him as a polarizing figure whose charm can curdle drastically
> when he thinks he is being thwarted. The same musicians who speak
> admiringly of his playing say he is prone to making impulsive
> decisions, contemptuous of those who disagree and unable to admit
> mistakes. His confidence in his own managerial abilities, they say,
> knows no bounds.
> "Pinchas could argue with God, that the Earth is turning in the wrong
> direction," said Rob McAlear, who was NAC music administrator from 1996
> through 2000, and who now holds a similar position with the Edmonton
> Symphony Orchestra.
> Zukerman's ways have jacked up the tension level in the orchestra,
> especially when it comes to hiring new musicians. Until he arrived,
> hiring decisions were reached by consensus, after an open discussion by
> an audition committee consisting of the conductor and several players,
> including section principals. But Zukerman's habit of belittling those
> who didn't share his opinions prompted the musicians' union to push for
> a system in which dissenting committee members could be shielded from
> the music director's wrath. For the past few years, hiring decisions
> have been reached by secret ballot.
> Zukerman still has a veto over all hiring decisions, and his wife also
> votes on all string auditions. That's too much power, say some close to
> the NACO, especially given the couple's record of promoting players
> (and soloists) with whom they are personally friendly.
> One of those players, violinist Martin Riseley, came to Ottawa from the
> Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in 2003 as interim associate concertmaster.
> Riseley's wife is a close friend of Amanda Forsyth, and while he was
> seen to be an excellent player, some in the orchestra felt he was not a
> good fit with the NACO. After a probationary committee that included
> Prystawski presented this view to Zukerman, Riseley returned to
> Edmonton.
> That event seems to mark the beginning of a souring of relations
> between Zukerman and his concertmaster. All of his concerts this year,
> including those on the recent tour of western Canada, were arranged so
> that the concertmaster's chair would be filled by a candidate to
> succeed Prystawski when he retires in June.
> "I don't think it has anything to do with my professional competence,"
> Prystawski said of the rift. "I've tried to talk to Pinchas about it,
> without success."
> Zukerman will no doubt be pleased when Prystawski is gone, but his own
> absence has paralyzed the process of selecting a replacement. The
> candidates who were scheduled to sit in for trial performances during
> Zukerman's concerts this season will still play with the orchestra, but
> not with the music director.
> So why has he decided to snub the orchestra, and its public, for the
> next six months?
> Rob McAlear said he believes Zukerman was never a good fit with the
> administrative side of his job, and has probably become bored and
> impatient with his situation in Ottawa. McAlear recalls meetings in
> which Zukerman seemed unable to muster much interest in the details of
> programming, even in his first year.
> "Finally, he just said, 'Call my agent, and get them to send you all my
> programs from St. Paul,' " McAlear said, referring to Zukerman's
> earlier seven-year gig as music director of the St. Paul Chamber
> Orchestra in Minnesota. After he studied the programs, McAlear realized
> that in those seven years, Zukerman had only covered enough works to
> fill two or three seasons and then repeated them in different
> permutations. He seemed uninterested in expanding his repertoire, and
> violently opposed to Canadian work, which McAlear said he routinely
> referred to as "shit." Rather than examine unfamiliar scores himself,
> Zukerman had them shipped to his accompanist, Marc Neikrug, in Santa
> Fe, N.M.
> For all his apparent lustre as a marketing icon, Zukerman has actually
> undermined some of the NACO's market strengths. Early in his tenure, he
> cancelled a baroque-music series, in spite of the fact that the NACO
> had market research proving that the series was well-supported by an
> audience that might not be willing to shift its attention to other
> concerts. The recent decline in subscription-ticket sales may also be a
> sign that the NACO's most loyal listeners are becoming weary of the
> repetitions in Zukerman's programs. McAlear said the music director
> often spoke with contempt of Ottawa audiences, saying they would accept
> whatever he chose to give them.
> "For me, his disappearance is the ultimate expression of that," McAlear
> said.
> Right now, Zukerman is giving his Ottawa public nothing. The question
> isn't just whether he'll come back, to a job that pays him at least
> $500,000 (U.S.) per year. It's whether anyone in Ottawa will still care.