Maestro cancels Boston, blaming his agency
mainVladimir Jurowski has pulled out of this week’s Boston Symphony performances ‘because of a visa problem arising from a miscommunication with his management team. Make of that what you will. Jurowski’s management is the faltering giant, IMG.
Stefan Asbury will replace Jurowski in a Birtwistle premiere. Ken-David Masur will take over the rest.
In case the new score by mr B brought Jurowski a shock, his agency was very understanding.
I’m not sure what this means. If it is intended to mean that the conductor was not keen to conduct the Britwistle work, he had already conducted the premiere in London last December! If I’ve got that wrong, apologies!
I thought Asbury did that.
I am pretty sure Ashbury conducted the world premiere in Munich in October whilst Jurowski conducted the UK premiere with the LPO in December.
Stefan Asbury will be great. Terrific break for him!
Really? Visa problems? And nobody in his management or in BSO has a number to call in a US embassy or the state department to sort this out within an hour and send him with the next available plane?
Something smells here… we are not talking about North Korea, or are we? This is a famous conductor and EU resident, having a contractual obligation to perform for an American audience. I’m sure someone in the state department would have been glad to help…
Individual consulates and ambassadors can no longer sort these things out in an hour. The American visa bureaucracy has become an absolute nightmare both for orchestras and individual soloists/conductors. I recall slipped disc reporting on the CBSO (or was it Hallé?) cancelling a tour to the US in part because of the then new and thus unexpected costs of bussing every single musician to the US Embassy in London to be issued visas in person rather than doing the process by mail or having a consular official come to the orchestra…. Of course, Jurowski’s management ought to know the deadlines and intricacies inside out. Typically orchestra administration incl Boston Symphony are not well equipped to deal with visa problems.
This reminds me of the director Peter Stein pulling out of the Met’s new Boris Godunov in 2010, when the stress of applying for a work visa at the American consulate proved too much for him. Not that that was Jurowski’s difficulty.
“Mr. Stein said he had pulled out because he felt offended by his treatment at the United States Consulate in Berlin when he applied for a work visa and by a lack of sympathy from Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, over confrontations with bureaucracy.
“I told Gelb from the beginning, ‘Don’t create a situation where I don’t feel well,’ ” Mr. Stein, 72, said Friday in a telephone interview from Berlin. “I’m old. When I work, I must have the feeling that I’m wanted, that I’m there, that I’ve helped. If this is not the case, I cannot work anymore. It’s not possible.” (NY Times)