I have received an independent account of Benjamin Zander’s dismissal which does not accord with the official version. This report has been confirmed by two people close to the case and reflects nothing but discredit on the New England Conservatory and its president, Tony Woodcock.
Here’s what happened:
Zander was on tour in Europe with the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra last summer. Three 16 year- olds went out and got a bit drunk on beer in Austria, where the drinking age is 16. NEC policy is to send kids home if caught drinking.
Zander fought to keep them because putting substitutes in for principal players in Mahler 9 would have been disastrous for the orchestra and its morale. He said they could be disciplined once back in the USA. This was contrary to NEC rules.
Zander got his way on the tour but was ordered to resign when he got home. A deal was worked out by which he could stay on two years and then retire with honour.
That, however, was not enough for Woodcock. The affronted president went looking for an excuse to sack and disgrace Zander and came up with the long-serving videographer with a sex crime in his distant past.
UPDATE: Further information has come my way which suggests that a decision to remove Benjamin Zander was taken before the Mahler tour of Europe. If that were so, then the drink-play incident is yet another excuse in this unhappy saga. There is also some speculation as to whether Woodcock was acting on his own volition, or under orders from his board. Since the NEC is hiding behind a crisis-management PR and refusing to speak for itself, full discovery may take a little longer to emerge.
I have been smuggled the new logo of the BBC Symphony Orchestra by some of its unlicensed dissidents. See what you think.
Paul Daniel, who has been on the loose since leaving English National Opera in the last decade, has landed a good berth in Spain. He is to be chief of the Real Filharmonía de Galicia (Santiago de Compostela), succeeding Antonio Ros Marba and, before him, Helmut Rilling. Very good orchestra, I hear.
Paavo Berglund, the austere, authoritative and vastly accomplished Finnish maestro has passed away, aged 82.
Renowned in Sibelius, he developed a Mozart style that – like Neville Marriner’s – modified the difference between romantic and period interpretation. Never the most approachable of men, I found him polite, agreeable and carefully unassuming. We went shopping once together in a Copenhagen street market.
As well as founding the Helsinki Chamber Orchestra and heading the radio orchestra and the philharmonic, he was chief conductor in Bournemouth, Stockholm and Copenhagen.
Friedrich Cerha, the Austrian composer best known for completing Alban Berg’s torso opera, has been awarded the 200,000-Euro Ernst von Siemens prize. Cerha is 85, and unlikely to blow it on Lulu-like indulgence.
Much delight among pianophiles at the unexpected reappearance of a 1966 German documentary about the phenomenal Arthur Rubinstein, shot in the Steinway factory at Hamburg.
Watch here… and be prepared to watch again.
The pieces he plays are:
Chopin: Etude in A-Flat Major, Op. 25 No. 1;
” Etude in C Major, Op. 10 No. 1;
” Etude in A minor, Op. 10 No. 2;
” Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23;
Szymanowsky: Symphonie Concertante, Op. 60;
Ravel: Valses nobles et sentimentales;
Schubert: Sonata in B-Flat Major, D. 960.
