Arts Council England has responded with its usual dismissals to a highly critical report, published today, by the House of Commons select committee on Culture, Media and Sport.

The Committee attached ACE for spending too much on itself, lacking a clear purpose for the works of art it owns, favouring big organisations over small ones, among other faults. 
The Council responded – to the Guardian, where it gets a soft landing – that the Committee was working from old information and biased witnesses.
It’s the standard rubbishing tactic. Exactly the same ACE response, in exactly the same words, was trickled to the Guardian last year when I and others appeared before the Committee to testify on the Council’s many weaknesses.
Can’t the ACE come up with a new tune? Of course, it can’t. That’s the problem.
And this week the arts in England will discover just how flawed the Council has been in its allocation of diminished funds.
Watch this space. 
Here, meantime, is a summary of the Committee’s report:

Culture,
Media and Sport Committee

Select Committee Press notice

 

EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 MONDAY 28 MARCH

 

Cuts could be
‘disastrous’ for arts and heritage, but level of spending was unsustainable,
Committee says

MPs criticise Arts
Council ‘waste’

A Report released
today (Monday 28 March) from the Culture, Media and Sports Committee acknowledges
that cuts in public spending will have a major impact on arts and heritage
organisations, and some may well be forced to close.  However, the Report, Funding of the Arts and Heritage, also
notes that over recent years the arts have enjoyed a period of high levels of
public investment and criticises the Arts Council in particular for wasting
money on some projects.

John Whittingdale, Chair of the Committee said:

 

“Arts and heritage in Britain are among our greatest assets. They
bring both great cultural and economic benefits. Since the Second World War,
most arts and heritage organisations have operated on a mixed funding model,
whereby their income is made up partly of public subsidy and partly of private
investment and earned revenue. This model has worked for them, and our
Committee continues to support mixed funding.

          However, we also
highlight that over the past twenty years the arts have enjoyed a period of particularly
high levels of public investment. While this has created a vibrant and successful
arts scene in the UK, there has also undoubtedly been waste. Our Report
highlights in particular the case of the Public gallery in West Bromwich, which
the Committee considers a gross waste of public money by the Arts Council.

          We
realise that cuts in public spending will have a major impact on arts and
heritage organisations, forcing some closures and we regret that. However, at a
time when cuts are biting across the board, 
it is right that all sectors share the burden. Our Report suggests ways
in which arts and heritage organisations might improve financial management and
explore other funding schemes.”

The Arts Council

The Report
notes that the financially comfortable period of recent years led to the Arts
Council’s spending on its own administration to rise to much too high a level. Government
funding for Arts Council England increased by just over 150% to £453 million in
the 12 years to 2010, while funding for English Heritage fell in real terms.
While the Arts Council has undergone considerable change in recent years and
has already cut its administration budget by over 50% the Committee believes
that a further 50% cut can be managed. 

The Report
welcomes the launch of the Arts Council’s National Portfolio funding programme,
and notes that it has the potential to offer more strategic and finessed
funding arrangements with arts bodies. However, the Committee is concerned about
the timescale – the Arts Council intends to assess all the applications for the
National Portfolio and to draw up funding agreements, in just two months. Given
that so many arts organisations will not make it into the National Portfolio,
the short time frame will inevitably leave the Arts Council open to criticisms
that its selection process lacked rigour.

The Committee
acknowledges the vital role played by the Arts Council in supporting a myriad
of groups across the whole sector. Without this support many would certainly
cut back or close. There have been mistakes, however, and the Report highlights
the case of The Public gallery in West Bromwich as perhaps the worst example of
a gross waste of public money by the Arts Council.

Other arts bodies:

The Report
examines the Government’s review of arm’s length bodies, and notes the
surprising decision to abolish the UK Film Council, Museums, Libraries and
Archives Council and the Public Lending Right. The Committee disparages the
Government’s lack of dialogue with these bodies during its review, as well as
the surprising way they were informed of their abolition. The Report also
raises concerns that the Government’s decision was taken without any clear idea
of which bodies would take on their respective functions.

With regard to
the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the Committee is concerned that
the Arts Council – itself under pressure – will not be as effective a
replacement and urges the Government to review its decision again in 2012. With
regard to the Public Lending Right body, the Report notes that no one who gave
evidence to the Committee supported the decision to abolish it. The Report recommends
that the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, not the British Library, is
the appropriate organisation to administer the body’s work.

The Report acknowledges
the concerns of arts organisations across the board about the reduction in arts
spending by local authorities, in combination with spending cuts from the Arts
Council and notes that the impact of this “double-whammy” could be disastrous
for some arts bodies.

The Committee recognises the important contribution
that sponsorship and philanthropy can make to support for the arts. It regrets
the decision to withdraw all funding from Arts & Business after 2012 and
notes that the Government’s philanthropy strategy, launched in December, made
no mention of reform to the tax and gift aid system. Therefore the Committee
very much welcomes the review of these systems, announced in the Budget on 23
March.

Heritage:

The Report
acknowledges the importance of safeguarding the UK’s heritage, as once lost it
is lost forever. The sector relies on expertise and skilled professionals and the
Committee notes, with concern, the continuing decline in local authority
conservation officers and the impact this will have on the local planning
decisions that affect heritage. Other sources of advice, such as the network of
local architecture and design centres sponsored by the Commission for
Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), also face a precarious future
and the Report urges the Government to act to halt this loss of expertise
across the sector.

The Committee
commends the Government’s recognition of the importance of heritage tourism in
Visit Britain’s budget, but notes that the heritage sector has already suffered
disproportionately from funding reductions over the years. The abolition of the
Regional Development Agencies will result in the loss of another important
funding stream. The Report calls on the Government to take account of the
burden our heritage sector has already shouldered when making future funding
settlements.

Please find the full Report attached, under strict
embargo until 00:01 hrs on Monday 28 March. Media inquiries and requests for
interview should be addressed to Laura Humble on 020 7219 2003/ 07929 726 659/
humblel@parliament.uk.

FURTHER
INFORMATION:

Committee Membership is as follows: 

Mr
John Whittingdale (Chair) (Con) (Maldon) Paul
Farrelly (Lab) (Newcastle-under-Lyme)

Ms Louise Bagshawe (Con) (Corby)         Alan
Keen (Lab Co-operative) (Feltham and Dr Thérèse Coffey (Con) (Suffolk Coastal)                 Heston)

Damian
Collins (Con) ( Folkestone and Hythe) Jim
Sheridan (Lab) (Paisley and Renfrewshire

Philip
Davies (Con) ( Shipley) North)

David
Cairns (Lab) (Inverclyde) Mr Tom Watson
(Lab) (West Bromwich East)

                                                                        Mr
Adrian Sanders (Lib Dem) (Torbay)

 

Specific Committee Information:  cmscom@parliament.uk/ 020 7219 6188

 

Media Information: Laura Humble 
humblel@parliament.uk/ 020 7219 2003

 

Committee Website: www.parliament.uk/cmscom

 

Watch committees and parliamentary debates
online
:  www.parliamentlive.tv 

 

 

 

 

 

Christie’s have just announced the sale of works from the collection of Jeffrey Archer.

For those unfamiliar with shlock fiction, Archer is a phenomenally successful producer of works in that genre. He was previously a Member of Parliament who went to prison for perjury.
Never mind the whiffs of impropriety that trail his reputation like so many old herrings. Never mind the lumps in his prose. What puzzles me is how anyone would trust the taste and provenance of a fallen politician and literary clunker. Why Christie’s think Archer’s ownership adds value to the sale I cannot imagine. Are they, perhaps, exploiting notoriety?
If I wanted to own a Monet (and I do, I do), I think I’d wait for the next auction.
Press release follows:

WORKS OF ART FROM

THE COLLECTION OF JEFFREY ARCHER

TO BE OFFERED AT CHRISTIE’S

IN JUNE 2011

    Evening gala auction on 27 June will offer mementos and collectibles, with all proceeds to benefit various charitable causes

    Art collection to be offered on 28 June at Christie’s South Kensington and will include works by Sickert, Monet, Renoir, Rodin and Warhol

London – Christie’s will present two auctions associated with international best-selling author Jeffrey Archer in June 2011 in London. On the evening of 27 June at King Street, Christie’s will host a gala auction with all proceeds to benefit charitable causes with Lord Archer as the guest auctioneer. On 28 June at South Kensington, a selection of approximately 150 works of art from Lord Archer’s collection will be offered at a dedicated sale expected to realise in excess of £5 million.

Lord Archer: “I recently celebrated my 70th birthday – an event which prompts a certain degree of thought and realization. As a result, I have begun to restructure my art collection with a view to the future. At Christie’s in June, I will host an evening gala auction with all proceeds benefiting charitable causes. This will include personal mementos that I have acquired over the years and is the ideal opportunity to highlight many great causes that are close to my heart. The commercial auction the following day will offer works of art from my personal collection as well as works from the Neffe Gallery, of which I was, for three decades, a business partner. I have always enjoyed being an art collector and amateur auctioneer, and these two events allow me to celebrate both.

27 June 2011

The gala evening auction will take place at Christie’s King Street salerooms in St. James’s and will offer a selection of approximately 20 mementos, collectible relics and items, both from Lord Archer’s personal collection, with additional donations from several famous public figures. All proceeds will benefit charitable causes. On of the highlights donated by Lord Archer will be the senior timekeeper’s stopwatch that recorded Roger Bannister’s first four minute mile at Iffley Road on 6 May 1954, which will be sold to benefit Oxford University Athletics Club. Further lots will be revealed at a later date.

28 June 2011

The auction o
f works of art from the Coll
ections of Lord Archer will take place at Christie’s South Kensington on 28 June and will offer approximately 150 works of art with a total value in excess of £5 million. Lord Archer has been an avid collector of art since his university days, and this passion has driven him to ammass an impressive collection. It also led to a business partnership with the celebrated Neffe Degandt Gallery in George Street, London, a business which recently closed its doors on the retirement of the highly respected art dealer Christian Neffe. The collection to be offered at Christie’s presents selected works of art from both the private and corporate collections of Lord Archer, with estimates as low as £1,000. Highlights include
 La Seine près de Vétheuil, temps orageux, 1878, by Claude Monet (1840-1926)  (estimate: £800,000 to £1,200,000); L’Eternelle Idole (Grande Modèle) by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) (estimate: £300,000 to £500,000); Marilyn (Feldman & Schellmann II.24)by Andy Warhol (1928-1987) (estimate: £100,000 to £150,000); and Rue de la Boucherie with St Jacques by Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) (estimate: £50,000 to £80,000).

Jeffrey Archer

Jeffrey Archer, whose novels and short stories include Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less, Kane and Abel and Only Time Will Tell, has topped the bestseller charts around the world, with sales of over 250 million copies.  With fifteen novels, six sets of short stories, three plays (all of which have been performed in London’s West End), three children’s books, one gospel, and three volumes of prison diaries, he is published in 97 countries and 33 languages.

Educated at Wellington School, Somerset, and Oxford University, he gained an athletics Blue, was President of the University Athletics Club, and went on to run the 100 yards in 9.6 seconds for Great Britain in 1966. Jeffrey has served five years in the House of Commons, nineteen years in the House of Lords, and two at Her Majesty’s pleasure, which spawned three highly acclaimed Prison Diaries. 

Jeffrey currently spends much of his time as an amateur auctioneer, conducting around 30 charity auctions a year, and has raised more than £39 million for various charities in the past 30 years.

Jeffrey has been married for over 40 years to Dr Mary Archer, who is chairman of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (incorporating Addenbrooke’s and the Rosie Hospitals in Cambridge) which will be one of the beneficiaries of the charity auction on 27 June.


An article in the tabloid Sunday Mirror reports the possible rediscovery of an instrument that may have been played on the Titanic as it went down.

I have inserted several disclaimers into that sentence. You may wish to add more.
The instrument is the subject of a new book by pop biographer Steve Turner. He is coy about disclosing where and how the instrument was found, and how it might be considered playable after a hundred years’ immersion at the bottom of the ocean.
However, he claims it is being subjected to tests at a reputable auction house and, if validated, if going to be sent on tour next year before a public sale, at which he estimates it might fetch as much as a million pounds.
Here’s the story.

The putative value of this object has, of course, nothing to do with music. It is merely accompaniment to the Winslet-DiCaprio romance.
The bandleader’s name, by the way, was Wallace Hartley.


For those who live on another landmass, Professor Brian Cox is presently magnetising British attention with his expositions of science on television and his columns in the tabloid Sun.

Cox, once a boyband member but now an advocate for ruthless empiricism, gave a revealing interview to the Guardian today in which he quoted Carl Sagan’s famous aphorism that science ‘has not got an agenda… it is a process that is utterly dispassionate’.
In a previous breath Cox had told the interviewer that ‘I just want to beat them (my critics) into the ground.’ 
He admits there may a paradox here. So that’s all right, then.
Cox is also absolutely sure, beyond doubt, that there is no God.
What he cannot grasp are the limits of his exaggerations. Education is entitled to exaggerate for effect. We expect teachers to take a theory to extremes in order to amplify core truths.
Television, on the other hand, exaggerates for survival. It pushes image and idea to extremes in order to stop viewers drifting off to more enlivening experiences. Cox is a prisoner of this process. Millions can see that. Only he can’t.
Read the Stuart Jeffries interview. It made my day.

                                 picture: www.thesun.co.uk

Just as Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt preens himself on establishing the ‘most generous tax regime in the world for arts giving, philanthropist Dame Vivien Duffield has stepped into the breach to address urgent needs in the arts in a year of government clawbacks.

She has given £8.2 million to 11 institutions ranging from the Royal Shakespeare Company to the Holburne Museum in Bath. Most of the grants are education or child oriented.
Let’s hear it for Dame Viv. (She’s the one next in line)

Not having seen his work for six years – the last release was Don’t Come Knocking (2005) – I clocked in for a preview of Wim Wenders’ new film Pina in the hope of finding possible clues to his thinking on Wagner’s Ring.

Pina, in UK cinemas next month, is a multi-sensational tribute to the dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch (1940-2009), whom Wenders once described as ‘the inventor of a new art: dance theatre’. 
Undaunted by Bausch’s swift and sudden death as filming was due to begin, Wender built the film elliptically around her suggestive approach to the making of dance, a workaholic, family-intense involvement with her dancers, singly and collectively, to create an experience that touches both emotion and intellect.
Filmed within her Tanztheater in Wuppertal and on location in and around the industrial city, Wender gives an impression of how society evolves – from one creative mind, to a small group of co-workers, to a theatre, a city, a country, the world. Wagner’s Ring metaphor is never far from mind. 


By shooting in 3-D, the first European director to do so, he reinforces the relation of one-to-all that is so integral to Wagner’s epic narrative. He also eliminates audience. Every act in the film takes place unobserved, as if the spectacle entirely exists for itself. He also makes every possoible use of natural elements – water, air, space, light, darkness.

All of these impressions quicken the pulse greatly for what Wenders might achieve at Bayreuth. He stands in boyish wonderment before a great work of art, as if seeing it for the first time. Whether such innocence will best serve the complexities and nototieties of agner’s cycle remains to be tested, but the premise is sound and the technology astonishing.
Will Wenders introduce 3-D to Bayreuth?

Placido Domingo has postponed a concert in Buenos Aires and told the city he will not sing there again until it settles a musicians strike at the Teatro Colon.

The city had apparently tried to recruit musicians out of town to form a pick-up orchestra for the tenor, but Domingo declared solidarity with the strikers and refused to sing.
Spanish tenor Placido Domingo talks during a press conference about his performance scheduled for next 23 March, but not yet confirmed due to a trade dispute between the Estable Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Teatro Colon, the scene of one of the concerts, and the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 21 March 2011.  EPA/LEO LA VALLE

Spanish tenor Placido Domingo talks during a press conference about his performance scheduled for next 23 March, but not yet confirmed due to a trade dispute between the Estable Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Teatro Colon, the scene of one of the concerts, and the Government of the City of Buenos Aires. photo: EPA/LEO LA VALLE

Report here.
It’s rare to see a legend remembering his humbler colleagues. Good man, Placido.
I wonder who will be the first classical star to boycott the Brazilian Symphony Orchestra over the way it is replacing its tenured musicians with the youth orchestra. 

Eddie Fisher (husband)

John Barry, Alex North (composer)
Michael Jackson (don’t go there)
Barry Manilow (her arm candy at Jackson’s funeral. 
Stephen Sondheim. Who’d have guessed?


And here’s the video.

The thing is, our Liz didn’t sing. This may be her only melodic attempt on fulm – her X-factor moment.

The seasonal Cambridge centrepiece, widely broadcast, has been given a makeover this year by music director Stephen Cleobury. 

The big event is Golgoatha by the Swiss composer Frank Martin. Petris Vasks, the Latvian, gets a big look-in and Prime Brass will bow out the festival with anticipations of the royal wedding.

Press release below.










Now in its seventh year, Easter at King’s has forged an enviable
reputation for presenting traditional and innovative repertoire for Passiontide
and Easter.  It offers a varied feast of
services and concerts that illustrate, contemplate and celebrate the Holy Week
and Easter narrative. In most years, BBC Radio 3 has broadcast from the
Festival to listeners all over the world.  


 

The climax of this year’s
festival is on Good Friday, 22 April, with a rare opportunity to hear Frank
Martin’s epic oratorio, Gologtha,
which will be broadcast live on Radio 3. 
Martin wrote some of the most poignant sacred music of the 20th
century. Golgotha (1948), written
when the composer was at the height of his powers, is a personal response to
the desolation of war-torn Europe. The awe-inspiring space of King’s College
Chapel, combined with the drama and sheer scale of Martin’s work, will make the
evening a rewarding musical and spiritual experience.

 

Easter at King’s opens on Tuesday 19 April with a performance of Bach’s St John Passion. The Choir of King’s
College Cambridge and Academy of Ancient Music combine forces again and the strong
cast of soloists includes King’s alumnus and Cambridge local Andrew Kennedy as
the Evangelist, and former Cambridge student, Elin Manahan Thomas returns to
sing soprano. There is an additional opportunity to enjoy this performance in
London, at the Cadogan Hall on April 20th.

 

Chamber Music for Maundy
Thursday, on 21 April, offers a chance for reflection and contemplation. The
concert will take place at the east end of the Chapel by candlelight. The trio
of top young artists, including Cambridge favourite and former King’s
chorister, Guy Johnston, will perform Vask’s extraordinary allegorical work, Episodi e Canto perpetuo framed by works
by Beethoven and Fauré.

 

Pergolesi’s masterpiece, Stabat Mater, combines with Bach for the Easter Vigil programme on
23 April. The work conveys, with great beauty, deep and heart-rending
compassion for Mary’s suffering during the events of Good Friday. Bach’s
powerful Cantata Christ lag in Todesbanden was written for Easter and
takes us from the crucifixion to the resurrection, whilst another work by Bach,
the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto prefigures the celebratory theme of Easter
Sunday. These three works provide the perfect mix of celebration and
contemplation for a concert set at the heart of the Easter weekend.

 

Daniel Hyde, a former Organ
Scholar at King’s College, will give an organ recital on Monday 25 April, which
concludes our Easter celebrations. However, we will be celebrating the Royal
Wedding in style the following Saturday with a brass concert given by Prime
Brass. The concert programme features some great British music, including
William Walton’s majestic Crown Imperial.

 

Throughout, the powerful and
moving Chapel liturgies are fundamental to the series and are sung by the
Chapel Choir.  Good Friday is an
excellent day to visit Cambridge with Allegri’s famous Miserere mei Deus sung in the morning and the Lamentations of Jeremiah of Thomas Tallis at evensong.
Alternatively, why not come to the concerts on Easter Eve and then stay the
night so that you can also enjoy the services on Easter Sunday itself?

 

We are taking the Festival outside
King’s Chapel and into Cambridge for the first time in 2011. To celebrate the
400th anniversary of the death of Victoria, the extraordinarily powerful Tenebrae Responsories will be performed
in three late night services in three different Cambridge College Chapels. The
climax of the three will be in King’s Chapel on April 23rd.

 

 

Easter at
King’s Schedule

 

Tuesday
19 April

7.30pm
Concert:

 Bach St
John Passion

 

Maundy
Thursday 21 April

5.30pm
Sung Eucharist and Stripping of the Altar

8.00pm
Concert:

Chamber Music for Maundy Thursday

Beethoven Trio op 1 no 2 in G Major

Vasks “Episodi e Canto perpetuo”

Fauré Trio op 120 in D minor

9.30pm
Victoria Tenebrae Responsories
Clare College Chapel

 

Good
Friday 22 April

10.30am
Ante-Communion and Veneration of the Cross

5.00pm
Choral Evensong

6.55pm
Concert:

Frank Martin Golgotha

9.30pm
Victoria Tenebrae Responsories
 Corpus Christi College Chapel

 

Holy
Saturday 23 April

7.00pm
Concert:

Pergolesi Stabat Mater

Bach Brandenburg
Concerto No. 4

9.30pm
Victoria Tenebrae Responsories

 

Easter
Day Sunday 24 April

10.30am
Sung Eucharist

3.30pm
Festal Evensong

 

Easter
Monday 25 April

4.00pm
Concert

Daniel Hyde Organ Recital

 

Saturday
30 April

6.30pm
Concert:

Prime Brass

Music for Easter …and a Royal Wedding

 

Anyone who thought the classical music was in for a quiet time after this blog helped break up the proposed merger between Universal Music and the Harrison Parrott agency is in for a rude awakening. Since then, Parrott has grabbed a chunk of faltering IMG and vultures are swirling around other likely victims. 

So who’s making the next move?

My spies tell me it’s Helene Grimaud, the star earner of HP and personal protegée of its founder, Jasper Parrott. La Grimaud has been looking uneasy of late and playing worse.
Instead of devoting more time to practise, she has been seen huddling in dark corners with predators. Obviously, the first on her tail was the desperate agency wing of Universal Music which has been left high and dry since the HP deal fell through. Grimaud makes her records for DG. A hook-up would make sense. 
But what’s this I hear from Milan? Grimaud, spotted in a cosy nook with persuasive Kathryn Enticott and Libby Abrahams of IMG.
No-one’s confirming anything, but I’m told the deal’s imminent. Grimaud goes to IMG.
That’s seriously bad news for Parrott, since Grimaud earns more in commission than the entire raft of singers he took off IMG.
But it’s even worse than Universal, who are looking not just glum, but pointless.  

Better believe it.

I have received the following case history from a British musician who went to work in the sun as principal cellist of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra.

His name is Mark Peters. I can vouch for Mark as an individual – he used to play in the Concentus Musicus Wien with Nikolaus Harnoncourt – though not for the details of his case. It does, however, throw up certain similarities with the long-running Brazil crisis and it may have ramifications beyond the glorious island of Tenerife – not to mention the rolling lawns of Glyndebourne (see earlier instance, here).

Here is Mark playing:
Unknown.jpeg
And here is his letter:

Dear Norman,

 

Some months ago you invited me to share
with you details pertaining to my demise as principal cellist with the Tenerife
Symphony Orchestra (OST). Although I did initiate a letter to you on that
occasion (as a footnote to my ex-colleague, Mr. Gomez Rios winning the Solti
conducting award) I have tended to keep this information to myself as part of
my own personal odyssey.  However, in
the light of the Brasilian orchestral situation and the reactions it is
provoking internationally, I would like to share my case with you and the
orchestral world at large as an example of the successful purging of a
long-standing member of a “European” Orchestra, in a campaign which
employed similar criteria to those applied by the administration of the
Brasilian Orchestra in Rio.

 

In my case the supposed need to subjugate a
principal player to a “quality control” was eclipsed by the highly
vindictive nature of the campaign against me, a campaign aimed principally at
eliminating an uncomfortable voice raised in protest against the hijacking of
the OST by a small group of musicians within the orchestra, in cahoots with an
unconscious management and a misguided and immature conductor, in the face of
an apathetic and intimidated orchestra.

 

The majority of us agreed that – after a
meritorious career spanning almost two decades, in which time the OST rose from
its roots as a semi-professional chamber orchestra composed of music-loving
Tenerifans to a fairly professional symphony orchestra which vied with the best
in Spain – maestro Victor Pablo’s term had reached its logical and natural end.
However, the pathological hatred towards him harboured by key members of the
orchestral committee charged with finding his successor, led to the precipitous
hiring of the first-best candidate, the Chinese conductor, Lü Jia,
circumventing the rational search process which had in fact been initiated by
Mr. Pablo and the serving orchestral manager at that time.

 

Around the same time (2006 or so),  Mr. Paolo Morena, a friend of Mr. Jia’s, was
invested as leader of the OST by way of dubious proceedings resulting in Mr.
Morena’s becoming the first and only member of this orchestra to serve without
having auditioned for his post, that is to say, without members of the
orchestral collective having had any say in his hiring.

 

It was my vocal opposition to these
goings-on which led to my being placed before a jury consisting solely of my
accusers and their cohorts: Mr. Jia, Mr. Morena, the then Manager Mr. Santos
and the two principal members of the orchestral commitee, Mr. Kirby and Mr.
Jones, principal clarinette and bass, respectively.

The Spanish cellist, Asier Polo was
apparently invited to sit on this tribunal but, much to his credit, did not
show up on the day. I was found to be wanting in my performance, a decision I
would not necessarily contest on and of its own merit, as the futility of the
exercise was apparent from the very start. I had recently come off sick-leave
for an arthritic elbow and severe depression having for months suffered
exaggerated intimidation and persecution under Mr. Jia’s heavy stick and by no
means was I in conditions to confront such a test of nerves. The psycho-terror
had included such measures as Mr. Jia programming the Wilhelm Tell Overture as
the opening number of his inauguration as music director in an open-air concert
with tens of thousands in the audience, with him doing his utmost to make my
life as soloist as difficult as possible.

 

The decision of the jury was contested by
the public workers syndicate I belong to and in a laughably open-and-shut case
was struck down by a first-circuit judge here in Tenerife. The government –
sole patron of the OST – appealed and won reversal of the sentence – no
surprise given the notoriously partisan composition of local superior court. At
our appeal to the national supreme court in Madrid it was stated that we would
have had to have presented a precedential case identical in all details to
mine. No luck there. So it was that I was afforded a small severance – 39.000€
after some 16 years of faithful service in which I appeared repeatedly as
soloist with the OST, years in which I also made other significant contributions
to the musical life on this island, conducting a local youth orchestra during
two seasons of highly successful concerts (which were then inexplicably
discontinued) and teaching at the conservatory. Left to my own devises I now
struggle to make ends meet and feed my four children on an island where the
existential possibilities for a classical musician are severely limited to say
the least.

 

As for the OST: a little over a year ago
the orchestra voted 54 to 7 against the renewal of Mr. Jia’s contract, having
apparently tired of his tyrannical and despotic tactics of intimidation and
belittlement and disappointed at having gone nowhere with him (except for a
single concert in Bejing) after having heard great promises about receiving
international exposure. Although he remains as “principal guest
conductor” he no longer figures as music director, much to relief also of
the administration who had soon tired of his capricious modus operandi – a
litany of unanswered emails, cancellations, dodgy programming, etc.

 

He leaves behind an orchestra trained like
a show horse whose robot-like, soulless playing is a shadow of what it was once
capable of in its hey-day. His arrogance and favouritism have worn thin in the
eyes of the public (many of whose number no longer attend concerts) and
orchestra alike – the childish posturing of his cronies, including but not
limited to on-stage intimidation and the taunting of colleagues not of the
inner circle (a speciality of Mr. Gomez Rios) have left an indelible mark. Needless
to say, I am very grateful not to have suffered through this chapter in the
history of the OST, a chapter which should serve as a great lesson – for those
who care to analyse – about the squandering of the moral and ethical authority
which in the best of situations should reside within the institution of the
symphony orchestra, an institution which should be setting an example for
harmonious coexistence among fellows. How very sad indeed!

 

Thank you Norman, for your untiring
championing of the better side of human nature in the professional musical
world and best wishes for all orchestral colleagues the world around.

 

Best regards,

 

Mark Peters

 

 

 

After the big modelling contract of the day…

First, Sir Harrison Birtwistle introducing his celebrated line in urban leisurewear.

picture by Malcolm Crowthers for one of the last columns I wrote for the former Evening Standard

Here’s Sofia Gubaidulina in her new off-the-shoulder look, perfect for premieres.

                                                         photo:Schirmer










Nico Muhly, dressed for radio. In Minnesota.

  
Here’s Philip Glass, crashing in on Muhly’s confab with his designer, Diane von Furstenburg.
Nico Muhly Designer Diane Von Furstenberg, composer Nico Muhly, and composer Philip Glass attend a screening of "The Reader" hosted by Diane Von Furstenberg and Philip Glass at The Tribeca Grand Hotel on December 18, 2008 in New York City.
photo: zimbio.com
Mark Antony Turnage, the falling-over-backwards sleeveless look

                                                 photo: boosey.com
And finally John Adams knitwear, very popular with the country set (from johnadams.com).