Breaking: Dark days for music directors as Concertgebouw names ‘creative partner’

The Concertgebouw orchestra of Amsterdam, which has been running headless since it fired its last music director, has just put out a schedule for its coming season.

The most striking event is the appointment of Pierre Audi as ‘creative partner’.

The official blurb is bland enough: The Concertgebouworkest is entering into a three-year partnership with the visionary director Pierre Audi…. As its creative partner, Mr Audi will be working with the Concertgebouworkest this season on a mise-en-espace for a newly commissioned work by Tan Dun at The Concertgebouw and on a special programme at the Gashouder (Westergas Amsterdam) in collaboration with an unexpected guest artist.

Audi, a former head of Dutch National Opera who’s now running the Aix-en-Provence festival, is a very good ideas man. But his appointment hammers another nail in the coffin of the music director role.

The longer an orchestra goes without a chief conductor the less it finds it needs one. Many orchestras have not seen their MD for a year.

These are the dying days of the music director.

UPDATE: Dresden drops Thielemann. Is no-one safe?