In my current conversation in The Strad, I raise the issue that most afflicts the lives of modern musicians:

We fly to live. Anyone in classical music who is grounded for more than a month is commonly presumed to be hungry, heavily pregnant or halfway to oblivion.

What are we to do about it? You’ll have to buy a copy of the magazine, or subscribe, to discover the alternative models that I propose – but you’ll also find a bonus between the same covers. The Strad has commissioned a survey of string players on which airlines treat them worst (and sometimes best).

Since writing the piece four weeks ago, more than 1,000 players have joined the Facebook group Musicians against Ryanair, raising the total to 12,400. Ryanair are by no means the worst offenders.

We must find a better way of organising our musical lives. 

In my current conversation in The Strad, I raise the issue that most afflicts the lives of modern musicians:

We fly to live. Anyone in classical music who is grounded for more than a month is commonly presumed to be hungry, heavily pregnant or halfway to oblivion.

What are we to do about it? You’ll have to buy a copy of the magazine, or subscribe, to discover the alternative models that I propose – but you’ll also find a bonus between the same covers. The Strad has commissioned a survey of string players on which airlines treat them worst (and sometimes best).

Since writing the piece four weeks ago, more than 1,000 players have joined the Facebook group Musicians against Ryanair, raising the total to 12,400. Ryanair are by no means the worst offenders.

We must find a better way of organising our musical lives. 

I was sad to read of the death of Maurren Forrester at 79, after a long, debilitating illness.

I met her only once, during the Cardiff sessions for Gilbert Kaplan’s first recording of Mahler’s second symphony in July 1987. Although slightly over the hill, she had recorded the work in 1957 with Mahler’s disciple, Bruno Walter, and brought along a kind of secondhand authority that she bore with consummate solemnity.

‘Doctor Walter did it like this,’ she pronounced in orotund tones, or ‘Doctor Walter said that’. It would have been inappropriate to remind her that Walter had left at least three recordings of the work – his arch-rival Otto Klemperer made six (see Why Mahler? for comparisons) – and that hers was by far the smoothest and most benign of the bunch.

Walter understood that performing Mahler is a matter of mood. Mahler told interpreters to follow momentary feeling. There is no cast-iron rule in the Resurrection. Maureen never quite got that, but she was lovely to have around and her slightly faded grandeur remains, for me, unforgettable. The recording, with the LSO and Benita Valente, is pretty good, too.

I was sad to read of the death of Maurren Forrester at 79, after a long, debilitating illness.

I met her only once, during the Cardiff sessions for Gilbert Kaplan’s first recording of Mahler’s second symphony in July 1987. Although slightly over the hill, she had recorded the work in 1957 with Mahler’s disciple, Bruno Walter, and brought along a kind of secondhand authority that she bore with consummate solemnity.

‘Doctor Walter did it like this,’ she pronounced in orotund tones, or ‘Doctor Walter said that’. It would have been inappropriate to remind her that Walter had left at least three recordings of the work – his arch-rival Otto Klemperer made six (see Why Mahler? for comparisons) – and that hers was by far the smoothest and most benign of the bunch.

Walter understood that performing Mahler is a matter of mood. Mahler told interpreters to follow momentary feeling. There is no cast-iron rule in the Resurrection. Maureen never quite got that, but she was lovely to have around and her slightly faded grandeur remains, for me, unforgettable. The recording, with the LSO and Benita Valente, is pretty good, too.

Almost everyone who knew him has memories of Ernest Fleischmann hitting the roof. He had a hair-trigger temper and could turn from sunny smile to screaming rage in an instant. I saw him blow his top on many occasion and my email inbox is full of people telling me how he fell out with them yet, scanning my internal hard drive, I cannot recall one occasion when Ernest and I had a serious falling out.

On the contrary, in deference to our common German-Jewish ancestry, we almost fell over one another in competition to be polite and after-you. Four years ago, when I reported that Esa-Pekka Salonen was planning to leave Los Angeles for the Philharmonia in London (where his wife used to be a player and with which he was sentimentally attached), Ernest wrote me a very gentle email, wondering if I mightn’t consider publishing a correction since, to the very best of his personal knowledge, Esa-Pekka was staying put in LA.

I checked back on my sources and they assured me that Salonen was, as I had written, heading for London. I replied to Ernest, standing my ground, and we agreed to differ. When, some weeks later, the Salonen move to London was announced I realised that he had raised the objection more from heart than from head. Ernest, though no longer running the Philharmonic, remained a fervent fan and an incorrigible local patriot. He couldn’t bear to see LA lose an asset. He took every little thing to heart, and that’s what we loved about him.

It was a treat to read today’s Guardian obituary written by Alan Rich and illustrated with a photograph (not online) by Betty Freeman, both sadly no longer alive. I first met Alan at a Sunday brunch series at Betty’s where he would introduce a living composer and his works – on that occasion, George Perle. Ernest, who instigated the series and took me there, loved nothing better than to engage people with music they had never heard before. Betty had the most discriminating ears I ever met and Alan was an immaculate presenter. Of such characters is great music made.  

Almost everyone who knew him has memories of Ernest Fleischmann hitting the roof. He had a hair-trigger temper and could turn from sunny smile to screaming rage in an instant. I saw him blow his top on many occasion and my email inbox is full of people telling me how he fell out with them yet, scanning my internal hard drive, I cannot recall one occasion when Ernest and I had a serious falling out.

On the contrary, in deference to our common German-Jewish ancestry, we almost fell over one another in competition to be polite and after-you. Four years ago, when I reported that Esa-Pekka Salonen was planning to leave Los Angeles for the Philharmonia in London (where his wife used to be a player and with which he was sentimentally attached), Ernest wrote me a very gentle email, wondering if I mightn’t consider publishing a correction since, to the very best of his personal knowledge, Esa-Pekka was staying put in LA.

I checked back on my sources and they assured me that Salonen was, as I had written, heading for London. I replied to Ernest, standing my ground, and we agreed to differ. When, some weeks later, the Salonen move to London was announced I realised that he had raised the objection more from heart than from head. Ernest, though no longer running the Philharmonic, remained a fervent fan and an incorrigible local patriot. He couldn’t bear to see LA lose an asset. He took every little thing to heart, and that’s what we loved about him.

It was a treat to read today’s Guardian obituary written by Alan Rich and illustrated with a photograph (not online) by Betty Freeman, both sadly no longer alive. I first met Alan at a Sunday brunch series at Betty’s where he would introduce a living composer and his works – on that occasion, George Perle. Ernest, who instigated the series and took me there, loved nothing better than to engage people with music they had never heard before. Betty had the most discriminating ears I ever met and Alan was an immaculate presenter. Of such characters is great music made.  

Regime change at the leading classical record label stepped up a gear yesterday when Michael Lang, head of Deutsche Grammophon, was ordered to report to his parent company’s German HQ instead of the Universal New York office. This is a small but significant shift.

Lang, an American, was installed at DG as the executive arm of Chris Roberts, president of Universal Classics and Jazz, whose writ reduced the famous label from standard-bearer of classical performance to ambulance chaser of crossover trash. Roberts is leaving the job in October and his structure is being demolished daily beneath him.

Many expected Lang to depart with his master and commander, but the quiet former jazz producer has been given one big chance to put right all that has gone wrong over 15 years. It’s a huge task, but the restoration of geographic primacy will be widely cheered – and not just by the surviving Mutters and Thielemanns on the roster.

One of the world’s leading conductors told me the other day of the hostility he faced from Roberts & Co. ‘I felt they hated conductors. Anything I suggested was greeted with a sigh and a frown. I was a time-waster for them. We were never going to achieve anything together.’

That deadly ambience has changed with the return of Costa Pilavachi in a presiding A&R role. Pilavachi was removed as head of Decca when Roberts decided to demolish the London-based label. he went on to become head of EMI Classics, fell out with its hedge-fund owners and has now returned in a peacemaking role to revivify the Roberts wasteland. 

Much will need to be done before Deutsche Grammophon can regain its rightful historic position as pacemaker in the classical music industry, and Pilavachi has a long way to go before he gains the confidence of its devoted German staff. Many of them are avid readers of Slipped Disc, anxious to know what’s will hit them next.

Regime change at the leading classical record label stepped up a gear yesterday when Michael Lang, head of Deutsche Grammophon, was ordered to report to his parent company’s German HQ instead of the Universal New York office. This is a small but significant shift.

Lang, an American, was installed at DG as the executive arm of Chris Roberts, president of Universal Classics and Jazz, whose writ reduced the famous label from standard-bearer of classical performance to ambulance chaser of crossover trash. Roberts is leaving the job in October and his structure is being demolished daily beneath him.

Many expected Lang to depart with his master and commander, but the quiet former jazz producer has been given one big chance to put right all that has gone wrong over 15 years. It’s a huge task, but the restoration of geographic primacy will be widely cheered – and not just by the surviving Mutters and Thielemanns on the roster.

One of the world’s leading conductors told me the other day of the hostility he faced from Roberts & Co. ‘I felt they hated conductors. Anything I suggested was greeted with a sigh and a frown. I was a time-waster for them. We were never going to achieve anything together.’

That deadly ambience has changed with the return of Costa Pilavachi in a presiding A&R role. Pilavachi was removed as head of Decca when Roberts decided to demolish the London-based label. he went on to become head of EMI Classics, fell out with its hedge-fund owners and has now returned in a peacemaking role to revivify the Roberts wasteland. 

Much will need to be done before Deutsche Grammophon can regain its rightful historic position as pacemaker in the classical music industry, and Pilavachi has a long way to go before he gains the confidence of its devoted German staff. Many of them are avid readers of Slipped Disc, anxious to know what’s will hit them next.

The announcement of Yannick Nézét-Seguin as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra is a high-risk, half-calculated strategy. No question of the young Canadian’s talent – he has demonstrated at Rotterdam and the London Philharmonic both the interpretative gift and the human skills to raise a fine orchestra several notches higher. I have been impressed ever since I heard a Bruckner seventh that ran without an audible gear change, a wonderfully organic performance that seemed to have been conceived in a single breath.

At 36, he is inexperienced but full of idealism and unlikely to get worn down by world-weary professors in the front desks who have seen it all before. As Peter Dobrin has reported, the players liked him more than any other guest conductor in the past couple of years.

So why the high risk and the half-calculation? Because talent is never enough. An artist at Yannick’s stage needs a partner in management who can shield and guide him in the way that Ernest Fleischmann nurtured Esa-Pekka Salonen at Los Angeles and Alexander Pereira handled Franz Welser-Möst in Zurich. At Philadelphia he will work with Allison Vulgamore, a recent arrival from Stlanta, who is fighting fires on all fronts – financial, artistic, demographic and strategic. It’s going to be tough for Yannick, from day one.

And that’s why the calculation is no more than a halfway guess. The decline of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the past decade has been a sorry spectacle of indecision, misjudgement and overweening pride. That kind of rot does not stop overnight. The next year is going to be crucial for the orchestra. Win or lose, a conductor can always walk away.  

The announcement of Yannick Nézét-Seguin as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra is a high-risk, half-calculated strategy. No question of the young Canadian’s talent – he has demonstrated at Rotterdam and the London Philharmonic both the interpretative gift and the human skills to raise a fine orchestra several notches higher. I have been impressed ever since I heard a Bruckner seventh that ran without an audible gear change, a wonderfully organic performance that seemed to have been conceived in a single breath.

At 36, he is inexperienced but full of idealism and unlikely to get worn down by world-weary professors in the front desks who have seen it all before. As Peter Dobrin has reported, the players liked him more than any other guest conductor in the past couple of years.

So why the high risk and the half-calculation? Because talent is never enough. An artist at Yannick’s stage needs a partner in management who can shield and guide him in the way that Ernest Fleischmann nurtured Esa-Pekka Salonen at Los Angeles and Alexander Pereira handled Franz Welser-Möst in Zurich. At Philadelphia he will work with Allison Vulgamore, a recent arrival from Stlanta, who is fighting fires on all fronts – financial, artistic, demographic and strategic. It’s going to be tough for Yannick, from day one.

And that’s why the calculation is no more than a halfway guess. The decline of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the past decade has been a sorry spectacle of indecision, misjudgement and overweening pride. That kind of rot does not stop overnight. The next year is going to be crucial for the orchestra. Win or lose, a conductor can always walk away.  

Early appreciations of Ernest Fleischmann, who has died aged 85, have focussed rightly on the second half of his life when, as manager, he transformed the Los Angeles Philharmonic into a world-class orchestra and created a Frank Gehry Hall that will be a city landmark for the next 100 years. It was a phenomenal achievement. Safe to say that Ernest did more for orchestral life in America than any executive since Arthur Judson invented the Philadelphia brand with Leopold Stokowski during the First World War. 

But Ernest had another life, and it saddened him that it got downplayed. Before moving to the US in 1970, he had gone from being a conductor in South Africa – the last pupil of Albert Coates – to a talent spotter and career maker. Appointed manager of the player-owned London Symphony Orchestra, he retrieved Jascha Horenstein and Pierre Monteux from the discard pile and rocket-boosted their late careers.

Andre Previn and Claudio Abbado were two of his proteges, followed (much later) by Esa-Pekka Salonen. His eye and ear for conductors led to deep and lasting personal relationships with Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Carlo-Maria Giulini and Kurt Sanderling.

It was Ernest who established the London Symphony Orchestra’s pre-eminence in its city, a rank it has held almost unbroken ever since, and Ernest who – on the whiff of a Friday-afternoon City rumour – wrote the proposal that won the LSO its valued residency in the new Barbican Centre. He was deposed by a players’ putsch led by his closest friends and, though always quick to anger, he managed over the years to make his peace with most of them.

After the LSO he spent a year in the record business with CBS but Ernest was always a live wire. He lacked the Sitzfleisch for corporate meetings.

He was always open and forthcoming when I approached him for information and we often saw things from a similar angle. Passionate about new music, he introduced me to the extraordinary impresaria Betty Freeman, opening a three-way friendship. He was happy in LA, after his fashion, yet, in almost every conversation with me, Ernest would start chewing his lip and wondering why his London years had been written out of the record.

He had been a subtle catalyst of Swinging London in the 1960s, one of the backroom fixers who turned the town from deadening post-war austerity to a place where people came to have fun. For that, he deserved a knighthood – more than most conductors do.

Early appreciations of Ernest Fleischmann, who has died aged 85, have focussed rightly on the second half of his life when, as manager, he transformed the Los Angeles Philharmonic into a world-class orchestra and created a Frank Gehry Hall that will be a city landmark for the next 100 years. It was a phenomenal achievement. Safe to say that Ernest did more for orchestral life in America than any executive since Arthur Judson invented the Philadelphia brand with Leopold Stokowski during the First World War. 

But Ernest had another life, and it saddened him that it got downplayed. Before moving to the US in 1970, he had gone from being a conductor in South Africa – the last pupil of Albert Coates – to a talent spotter and career maker. Appointed manager of the player-owned London Symphony Orchestra, he retrieved Jascha Horenstein and Pierre Monteux from the discard pile and rocket-boosted their late careers.

Andre Previn and Claudio Abbado were two of his proteges, followed (much later) by Esa-Pekka Salonen. His eye and ear for conductors led to deep and lasting personal relationships with Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, Carlo-Maria Giulini and Kurt Sanderling.

It was Ernest who established the London Symphony Orchestra’s pre-eminence in its city, a rank it has held almost unbroken ever since, and Ernest who – on the whiff of a Friday-afternoon City rumour – wrote the proposal that won the LSO its valued residency in the new Barbican Centre. He was deposed by a players’ putsch led by his closest friends and, though always quick to anger, he managed over the years to make his peace with most of them.

After the LSO he spent a year in the record business with CBS but Ernest was always a live wire. He lacked the Sitzfleisch for corporate meetings.

He was always open and forthcoming when I approached him for information and we often saw things from a similar angle. Passionate about new music, he introduced me to the extraordinary impresaria Betty Freeman, opening a three-way friendship. He was happy in LA, after his fashion, yet, in almost every conversation with me, Ernest would start chewing his lip and wondering why his London years had been written out of the record.

He had been a subtle catalyst of Swinging London in the 1960s, one of the backroom fixers who turned the town from deadening post-war austerity to a place where people came to have fun. For that, he deserved a knighthood – more than most conductors do.