The New York Philharmonic in the New York Times

Lincoln Center Fountain

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Javier C. Hernandez published an article in yesterday's NY Times about the NY Philharmonic, which is having troubles that might seem familiar to anyone in the Bay Area: the musicians haven't gotten a raise since 2019; they are between music directors (Jaap van Zweden is gone, Gustavo Dudamel comes on board in two years); their chief executive, Gary Ginstling, resigned after less than 18 months on the job. They also are dealing with an old scandal, where two players were investigated for raping a third player, but they were never charged; the orchestra fired them in 2018, but the contract required arbitration and the arbitrator restored them. The two are currently on paid leave and at least one is suing the heck out of the orchestra. (You can read about the case in Sammy Sussman's Vulture article and various other places around the web.)

The comments....well, they're closed or I would have a couple of my own, mostly in response to people who don't actually know how the orchestra business works and aren't familiar with, say, 990 forms. So a few responses to those comments here.

• "It takes special talent for an orchestra to drive out both its executive AND artistic leader in the same period. " A reminder that the artistic leader (music director) is hired by the board of directors, not the orchestra, though generally there are musicians on the search committee. As far as is publicly known, Jaap van Zweden wasn't driven out by the orchestra, but decided to resign. Whether he was actually let go by the orchestra, we'll never know. He did stay for a year past his initial contract.
• "The NY base salary is low, but the principal players are paid twice as much as principals from Chicago and LA, so it's a question of priority, financial and artistic." Let's check the 990s and see if this is the case. Well, it is; the NY Phil's principals are paid extremely well, based on what I can see on the 990s.
• Concertmasters: Frank Huang, NY: $909,000 (whoa), Martin Chalifour, LA: $476,900, Robert Chen, CSO, $576,000. Okay, Huang's salary....a lot.
• Second highest paid principal: Carter Brey, principal cello, NY: $589,000; Denis Bouriakov, LA, principal flute; $345,000 David Cooper, (former) principal horn, CSO, $329,000.
• Third highest paid principle: Liang Wang, NY, principal oboe (on leave): $580,000; Andrew Bain, LA, principal horn, $342,000; Stephen Williamson, CSO, principal clarinet, $324,000
• "The odds are high that Dudamel stays in Los Angeles." I expect that he will fulfill his contractual obligations in NY. The LA Phil is undoubtedly already looking around for its next music director, and they've got a new CEO who might or might not want Dudamel back.
• "I believe the Chicago Symphony is still paying for the 1990s renovation of Orchestra Hall (I refuse to call it Symphony Center), and doesn't have the endowment the NY Phil has." I cannot speak to the renovation of the CSO's concert hall, but the CSO's endowment on its most recent 990 is $373 million, while the NY Phil's is $236 million. The CSO's endowment, in other words, is $140 million more than the NY Phil's. The LA Phil's is $344 million. (The largest orchestra endowment in the country is the Boston Symphony's, at something approaching a half-billion.)
• "A Music Director who only spends SIX weeks actually conducting his orchestra is just a Principal Guest Conductor, and not worth whatever he is being paid." This is a reference to the amount of time Dudamel will conduct the NY Phil in the year before he becomes its music director. I don't know what his contract says about the first year he is actually music director. (How much time a music director should spend with his or her orchestra is an interesting question, isn't it.) The rest of this person's comments...oy. I certainly wonder why James Conlon's U.S. career hasn't been bigger, as he has been terrific nearly every time I've heard him, in opera or orchestra concerts. But the comments then go on to say that the accusations against the two players seem bogus, and well, they don't look that way to me.