Drew McManus has reached the third and last segment of his charts of high earners in US orchestras.

You’ve read the presidents’ and conductors’ salaries for 2014/15. Now the concertmasters, who have apparently suffered a pay cut for three successive years:

1 San Francisco Symphony: $640,714 (Alexander Barantschik)

 

 

2 Chicago Symphony: $549,963 (Robert Chen)

3 Los Angeles Philharmonic: $524,910 (Martin Chalifour)

4 Cleveland Orchestra: $501,155 (William Preucil)

5 Boston Symphony: $443,715 (Malcolm Lowe)

6 New York Philharmonic: $437,538 (Frank Huang)

7 Philadelphia Orchestra: $406,355 (David Kim)

8 National Symphony: $378,254 (Nurit Bar-Josef)

9 Dallas Symphony: $299,539 (Alexander Kerr)

10 Cincinnati Symphony: $294,868 (Timothy Lees)

You may notice a gender imbalance.

Natalie Clein has withdrawn from the world premiere of Brian Elias’s concerto at the Proms on August 9.

No reason given.

The BBC have been incredibly lucky to find Leonard Elschenbroich free and willing to jump in.

He has less than a week to master a new concerto.

Toi, bloody, toi!

UPDATE: Natalie Clein is undergoing surgery tomorrow.

Slipped Disc readers have been asking about an advertisement for auditions in the AFM’s International Musician for principal horn of the New York Philharmonic.

The post has been held since January 1980 by the outstanding Phil Myers, one of the orchestra’s defining personalities.

Rumours of a disciplinary issue leading to Myers’ departure were denied to us by the NY Phil press office a month ago. Myers himself has not responded to emails or phone messages. He is still listed on the NY Phil website as principal horn.

But his job is apparently being advertised.

The tenor Andrea Bocelli took 60 kids from Haiti, aged 9 to 15, to sing for Pope Francis yesterday after his weekly general audience. The chorus, known as Voices of Haiti and drawn from the poorest parts of the island, is touring Italy as a project of the Bocelli Foundation.

They sang ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Ave Maria.’


photo: L’Osservatore Romano

Carlos Espinosa-Machado, 34, has pleaded no contest in Douglas County, Kansas, to one count of indecent liberties with a child and one count of furnishing alcohol to a minor for illicit purposes. He will be sentenced next month.

Espinosa-Machado is assistant professor and symphony orchestra director at Elizabeth City State University in North Carolina.

Report here.

 

Daughter of an eponymous publisher and later his hugely successful successor, Livia recalls the years when she played third horn in the London Symphony Orchestra and principal in the Halle.

Her memory is pinpoint.

Watch.

 

 

photo: Anne-Katrin Purkiss

The UK public are responding warmly to an appeal on behalf of Chris Toon, a clarinet player and teacher from Derbyshire who swerved his motorbike to avoid a group of cyclists and suffered a broken back.

Chris needs expensive equipment in order to continue teaching.

A local BBC story has gone viral and donations are pouring in here.

Do help if you can.

Desperate efforts over the past week to keep the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra alive failed last night when the board voted to shut down the orchestra after 38 years.

‘Efforts to garner increased community support and seat a new Board came up short,’ said Board Chair Joe Campanelli. ‘I want to personally thank all those who have supported this great orchestra over the years. The organization also deeply appreciates the extraordinary dedication of our talented musicians and brilliant music director, Heiichiro Ohyama, as well as our Board. If funding is available, a grand celebratory concert may be planned.’

Sad times.

Drew McManus has published his annual survey of maestro earnings, and there’s one notable omission*. But before we go into the small print let’s congratulate Marin Alsop on being the first woman conductor to pull down a £1 million salary. What’s more, it’s the first time Baltimore has ever paid seven digits for a conductor.


photo: Chris Christodoulou/Lebrecht Music&Arts

 

Here’s the top ten list of earners for the 2014/15 season:

1 Chicago Symphony: $2,776,869 (Riccardo Muti)

2 San Francisco Symphony: $2,715,815 (Michae Tilson Thomas)

3 Dallas Symphony: $2,657,139 (Jaap Van Zweden)

4 Los Angeles Philharmonic: $1,906,100 (Gustavo Dudamel)

5 New York Philharmonic: $1,672,450 (Alan Gilbert)

6 Cleveland Orchestra: $1,248,711 (Franz Welser-Möst)

7 Philadelphia Orchestra: $1,110,000 (Yannick Nézet-Séguin)

8 Saint Louis Symphony: $1,042,644 (David Robertson)

9 Baltimore Symphony: $1,015,937 (Marin Alsop)

10 Detroit Symphony: $828,591 (Leonard Slatkin)

 

Right, the small print:

Boston and Houston failed, for some reason, to report music director salaries, perhaps because both men were in their first year. Dallas posted a drop in Jaap Van Zweden’s earnings – he was top dog on a record $5.1 million last year – they may have found another way to shield them.

And one other big earner is simply missing.

*Christoph Eschenbach, in his last full season as music director of the National Symphony Orchestra, is not listed as one of the organisation’s five highest paid contractors. That could be because the fifth highest paid contractor was reported at $2,709,973 whereas Eschenbach’s compensation the previous season was $2,274,151.

Even so, says Drew, ‘this is the first time I’ve encountered a scenario where a multi-million dollar music director wasn’t included on a 990 due to legitimately not being the five highest paid independent contractors.’

More details here.

Michael Johnson has been racing through the piano duo’s memoirs, Katia et Marielle Labèque : Une vie à quatre mains (Buchet et Castel).

The actor Dirk Bogarde, their neighbour in London in the 1980s, could not bear the sound of two pianos.

Olivier Messiaen tried to split them up:

Once as we were working on “Visions de l’Amen” at the Conservatory, someone poked his head around the corner – it was Olivier Messiaen… After listening to us, he said he wanted to rerecord the piece (superseding his recording of 1941). Would one of us be able to play it with his wife Yvonne Loriod? We refused, to avoid being separated, and finally Messiaen relented …

‘We have never felt the need to see each others’ hands in order to stay together. Only Olivier Messiaen asked us to move the pianos side-by-side to record his “Visions de l’Amen” because that is how he always played it with his wife Yvonne Loriod.’

More here.

 

 

We have advised readers, time and again, not to try taking an instrument on Ryanair.

Here’s why.

Laurie Niles at violinist.com reports that Danwen Jiang, Professor of Violin at Arizona State University, flew with three of her students from Milano-Bergamo to a festival in Nuremberg.

They were forced to buy an extra seat for each of their violins – or pay 50 Euros to stow them in the hold.

OK, one more time: do not fly Ryanair with a violin. Got it?