This Week in Classical Music-Jan. 24, 2010

by: Randy Kinkel

January 24, 2010

Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic

( Phoenix, AZ )
•Cleveland strike settled
•Gilbert changes focus, style at NY Phil

This week in Classical Music 01/24/10

It’s this week in Classical Music”, an update on what’s happening in the Classical music world; I’m Randy Kinkel.

The Cleveland Orchestra musicians and management have settled the strike that lasted just over a day last week. The Orchestra struck on Monday, and an agreement was ratified the following afternoon. The pact in Cleveland calls for a pay freeze for this season and the next, a 3 percent increase for the first half of the third season and a 2 percent increase for the second half of that season.
Management was seeking a 5 percent pay cut for this season and offering a return to par for the next and a 2.5 percent increase for the third. The musicians were seeking a freeze for just this season, with a new contract to be negotiated over the summer. The musicians avoided a first-season pay cut; they agreed to play 10 extra rehearsals or concerts without compensation over the course of the contract. The agreement also gives the orchestra some budget predictability as it struggles to contain $4 million in yearly deficits. And the musicians agreed to a proposal by the orchestra that they contribute more to health insurance premiums, starting in July 2011. “This is the right settlement for the institution,” Gary Hanson, the orchestra’s executive director, said in an interview. “I don’t think anybody here is adjudicating win or loss.”
How is young conductor Alan Gilbert changing the New York Philharmonic? Well, for starters, he’s much more approachable than predecessors like, say, Lorin Maazel; reportedly some orchestra members went for years without speaking to him. “There’s a palpable difference in the mood around the orchestra,” Gilbert says. “Just today one musician came up to me and said: ‘It’s really, really fun to rehearse with you.’ That is the greatest thing for a conductor to hear.” he said… New Music is also a focus of the 42-year-old conductor: Gilbert admits, “New music wasn’t presented in the best possible light in the past, It wasn’t clear why the orchestra was playing it or whether the orchestra really believed in it.” Now that’s all changed—there’s plenty of what Gilbert calls “Gnarly New Music”. Magnus Lindberg (their composer-in-residence), Ligeti and H. K. Gruber occupy almost as much concert time as Mahler, Schubert, or Beethoven. For the first concert of Contact, a new music series that Gilbert has initiated, called “Contact”, they programmed four world premieres by obscure composers. “It was a total risk,” he admits. “But, for this year, we wanted to go all the way.” Even though the Orchestra board’s first choice was Ricarrdo Muti, who turned down the job, The orchestra’s Executive Director Zarin Mehta approves of all the changes Gilbert has put forth; “It was time to change,” Mehta says. “And we are so glad we did it.”

for more on these and other items and events, go to the website, kbaq.org; be listening each week at this time for another update, and join me every weekday at noon for “The Mozart Buffet”, an hour of music by Mozart and his contemporaries; I’m Randy Kinkel for “This Week in Classical Music” on eighty nine-five KBAQ Phoenix, a service of Rio Salado College and Arizona State University.

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