Buoyed by his cheerleaders at the New York Times, the chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic has enjoyed a pretty easy run in his first season and a half. No-one local has questioned his international standing (low), his temperament (fractious) or his parentage (both were players in the Philharmonic, trailing a whiff of nepotism).

The city of Syracuse, New York, will commemorate on Thursday the visit exactly 100 years ago by Gustav Mahler and his orchestra, with the consecration of a Mahler monument and a daylong Mahler broadcast on WCNY. It will include the program of his original concert.It might also serve as a reminder to the next manager of the NY Phil that it’s 100 years since they last ventured upstate.

The city of Syracuse, New York, will commemorate on Thursday the visit exactly 100 years ago by Gustav Mahler and his orchestra, with the consecration of a Mahler monument and a daylong Mahler broadcast on WCNY. It will include the program of his original concert.It might also serve as a reminder to the next manager of the NY Phil that it’s 100 years since they last ventured upstate.

Zarin Mehta, executive director of the New York Philharmonic, was paid $1 million last year, down from $2.6m the year before. No reflection on his efforts and achievement. The previous sum included ‘deferred compensation’ – which suggests he has been stacking up his bonuses over several years.

Apart from Deborah Borda in Los Angeles, who also runs the Hollywood Bowl, Zarin Mehta is the highest paid orchestral executive in America and, hence, the world.

A million bucks seems an awful lot of money for managing a band. What has Zarin Mehta done before? Managed another band in Montreal and the festival in Ravinia. Before that, he was an accountant.

In the August issue of The Strad magazine, out now, I discuss the skill sets required to run an orchestra and wonder why more musicians don’t step up to the plate. It’s a well-paid job with a good pension plan and it brings in many times what most players, who study for years to perfect their craft, can dream of earning. Rocket science, it ain’t. Job security is great: very few orchestral managers ever get the sack. I know some who cling to the job for 25 years and more, never taking a risk or venturing an original idea.  

So why aren’t there more candidates for the role? And why aren’t Philharmonic musicians telling their board that when Mr Mehta, 72, hangs up his abacus, the next boss should be picked from the strings?

Read more in The Strad.

Zarin Mehta, executive director of the New York Philharmonic, was paid $1 million last year, down from $2.6m the year before. No reflection on his efforts and achievement. The previous sum included ‘deferred compensation’ – which suggests he has been stacking up his bonuses over several years.

Apart from Deborah Borda in Los Angeles, who also runs the Hollywood Bowl, Zarin Mehta is the highest paid orchestral executive in America and, hence, the world.

A million bucks seems an awful lot of money for managing a band. What has Zarin Mehta done before? Managed another band in Montreal and the festival in Ravinia. Before that, he was an accountant.

In the August issue of The Strad magazine, out now, I discuss the skill sets required to run an orchestra and wonder why more musicians don’t step up to the plate. It’s a well-paid job with a good pension plan and it brings in many times what most players, who study for years to perfect their craft, can dream of earning. Rocket science, it ain’t. Job security is great: very few orchestral managers ever get the sack. I know some who cling to the job for 25 years and more, never taking a risk or venturing an original idea.  

So why aren’t there more candidates for the role? And why aren’t Philharmonic musicians telling their board that when Mr Mehta, 72, hangs up his abacus, the next boss should be picked from the strings?

Read more in The Strad.

What people can and cannot do during a concert came up this morning on the BBC’s Today programme, according to a respondent to my previous posting:

A similar theme was taken up by (Vladimir) Jurowski on this morning’s “Today” programme on R4. Audiences at the OAE’s(Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment) Roundhouse gigs should be allowed to drink beer and eat crisps, apparently.

I’m all for a relaxation, but crisps? Honestly… Still, I would rather depend on the decency of my neighbour not to rustle & crunch than be told hat to do by an officious theatre or concert hall, I agree. Mind, they could just be clever and not sell crisps at the bar.

One of the best comments was from one of the two players interviewed, who commented (I paraphrase loosely) that audience members should be able to do what they like – once they are there, it’s the performer’s responsibility to make the performance so engaging, so musically thrilling, that the audience are compelled to listen.

The real difficulty, I guess, is getting bums on seats on the first place; once we can get them in the concert hall, it’s the artists job to make them want to come back again. Sadly I’ve seen all too-many concerts where the players frankly can’t be bothered. That’s not going to encourage repeat visits.

Myself, I’m less pessimistic. True, every time I see the NY Philharmonic and some of the stuffier German orchestras, my heart sinks back into my boots at the display of antediluvian attitudes. But players in many other orchestras are changing their tune in terms of how they relate to an audience. The tone of the London Symphony Orchestra’s blog is just one of these new forms of engagement. I find them greatly encouraging. And you?

Richard Morrison, the Times music critic, had an eye-popping experience in New York. At a Philharmonic concert, he relates in BBC Music magazine, ‘audience members were allowed – nay, encouraged – to “live blog” or “live tweet” comments to each other, or their “followers” in the world outside, during the performances.’

Indeed they were, and we have read much about it elsewhere. What struck me here, though, was Morrison’s use of verbs and inverted commas to signify his distance – nay, disdain – from the ghastly modern practices he encountered. The idea that tweeting could be allowed, let alone encouraged in the sacred space of a concert hall is intolerable to a traditional listener.

His horror was aptly conveyed by a headline – Should an audience be allowed to tweet and blog during a concert? – that says all you need to know about the persistence of patrician, nay authoritarian, attitudes in 21st century classical music.

Most concert halls, the moment you enter, do not let you forget who’s boss. Go here, do that, switch off, please don’t, be considerate. You may cough between movements and discreetly fart, but do not applaud until signalled to do so and above all do not signify your response on an electronic device until you have departed the premises, preferably until you have read the authoritative review next morning in a respectable newspaper and have been told what you are supposed to think.

Small wonder that the coming generation refuses to accept classical music as part of its cultural spectrum. This is an art form that must urgently change its language, its top-down mode of address, if it is to have any kind of audience in the future.  

LATE EXTRA: Perhaps concert halls need to consider separate seating for electronics users. If, like me, you might resent being distracted by someone tweeting in a concert, you should be able to book a n on-tweet seat, just as you can book a non-smoking floor in most hotels

In light of technical and security difficulties – think Afghan election – polls for the most durable composer will remain open until 1800 EST (2300 GMT) Monday Nov 16. The response has been far heavier than expected and the spin-off discussions will run and run.

Early returns show Pärt leading by a tiny margin from Reich and Adams, with Glass and Golijov strongly in pursuit.

There is a heavy weighting towards US composers of a minimalist/anti-modernist tendency.

It’s not too late to change the result. I’ve been surprised by the absence of, for instance, Tan Dun, Magnus Lindberg (the New York Phil’s resident), Kalevi Aho, Michael Nyman, Michel van der Aa, Wolgang Rihm (just one vote so far) and Penderecki (though two other Poles are, as it were, polling well).

Vote now for the composers most likely to be heard in 2059. Vote here, or tweet @NLebrecht

At the memorial service for Geoffrey Tozer in Melbourne, former prime minister Paul Keating slammed past directors of the Sydney and Melbourne symphony orchestra for deliberate and malicious neglect of the country’s most gifted pianist. ‘This malevolence more or less broke Geoffrey’s heart,’ he said, adding that the saga was a prime instance of ‘bitchiness and preference within the arts in Australia.’

Keating has written an article to the same effect in the Sydney Morning Herald, while the Age of Melbourne carries a full text of the speech under the headline ‘Indifference to Tozer’s genius is a disgrace’ – perhaps to make amends for its own disgraceful silence over Tozer’s death. 

I endorse and applaud every word of Keating’s eulogy. Australia failed its greatest pianist and little has been done to put the arts on a more professional footing that might prevent such waste and injustice in the future – witness only what is happening now in Melbourne’s chamber music hall. I have said it in Australia and I say it here again: the arts in that country need a Royal Commission – an independent assessment of assets and future strategy. 

Meanwhile, let’s not lose sight of the precedent of an elected leader attacking orchestral administration for bias, ineptitude and flagrant favouritism. Can we hear it now from the Mayors of Philadelphia and New York? Berlin, too, should take note.

Good on yer, Paul. 

In Alan Gilbert’s first season, just announced, the orchestra will pay a reparatory visit to North Vietnam, a gesture infinitely more meaningful and productive than Lorin Maazel’s attention-grabbing swoop last year on North Korea.

Why so? Because, while the US has dues to pay in both places, Vietnam these days is a fairly open society where people can read what they like on the internet and choose which concerts to attend. Some 17,000 Vietnamese bought into the BBC’s download Beethoven cycle. Those who go to hear the NY Phil will do so out of free will, not as puppets of a regime where nothing moves an eyelid without the Dear Leader’s say-so.

In Pyongyang, the audience was made up of party hacks and hordes of foreign journalists who descended on a starved, enslaved society like proverbial locusts. The concert, an empty showcase for one of the cruellest governments on earth, achieved precisely nothing.

In Hanoi, most of the audience will be survivors of the Vietnam War or its human legacy, the progeny of relationships, loving or coerced, between US soldiers and local people. There is much pain and memory still to be catharted in Vietnam and this event promises to be a new stage in the healing process. It augurs well for Alan Gilbert’s leadership.

In Alan Gilbert’s first season, just announced, the orchestra will pay a reparatory visit to North Vietnam, a gesture infinitely more meaningful and productive than Lorin Maazel’s attention-grabbing swoop last year on North Korea.

Why so? Because, while the US has dues to pay in both places, Vietnam these days is a fairly open society where people can read what they like on the internet and choose which concerts to attend. Some 17,000 Vietnamese bought into the BBC’s download Beethoven cycle. Those who go to hear the NY Phil will do so out of free will, not as puppets of a regime where nothing moves an eyelid without the Dear Leader’s say-so.

In Pyongyang, the audience was made up of party hacks and hordes of foreign journalists who descended on a starved, enslaved society like proverbial locusts. The concert, an empty showcase for one of the cruellest governments on earth, achieved precisely nothing.

In Hanoi, most of the audience will be survivors of the Vietnam War or its human legacy, the progeny of relationships, loving or coerced, between US soldiers and local people. There is much pain and memory still to be catharted in Vietnam and this event promises to be a new stage in the healing process. It augurs well for Alan Gilbert’s leadership.

– Hold the front page, hot story coming in.

– What is it?

– There’s a player in the orchestra who didn’t like last week’s conductor.

– Come again? Yeah, that’s right. There’s a trombone in the New York Phil beefing on his blog about the guy who did Mahler 2. Get some pictures in.

Is this some kind of mistimed joke, or the end of journalism on the New York Times? For reasons better left uninvestigated, the Times has made a C1 splash today of comments made by a trombonist – the third trombone, I believe – about the amateur conductor Gilbert E Kaplan who led Mahler Second last week.

According to the player, Kaplan ignored ‘a blizzard’ of Mahler’s instructions and had a beat the band could not follow. Any good that came out of the performance was entirely to the credit of the players, working against impossible odds.

Well, let’s get a couple of things straight. There isn’t an orchestra in the world that does not represent a diversity of views. Every time Simon Rattle steps onto the podium in Berlin, a dozen players grunt and grumble. When Abbado rehearsed the LSO, they complained of boredom. When Dudamel does his hightail tricks, they accuse him of showmanship. Musicians complaining about conductors is not news. It’s part of their job description.

The difference here is that a player decided to blog his dissent and the local fish-rag picked it up. Before we consider the facts of the matter – and I attended the performance, as the Times reporter evidently did not – let’s just consider whose failure that is. Is it Kaplan’s, or is it the New York Philharmonic’s for failing to impose appropriate corporate discretion on its musicians?

Every self-respecting orchestra in the world maintains certain public courtesies in the interest of self-preservation and maintaining audience mystique. What we have just seen at the NY Phil is a failure of  management procedures. If I were chairman, I’d have the chief executive and the PR on my carpet before the morning’s coffee break.

And while we’re in the blame game, let’s just ask ourselves if the trombonist would have slagged off a professional conductor, whom he might have to face again next season? I think we know the answer to that.

Now to the performance. I make no secret of being a long-standing friend and admirer of Gilbert Kaplan’s. I have published that disclaimer several times and have no reason whatsoever to be ashamed of it. Having watched him master the work over almost 25 years, I am convinced – and so are many musicians – that no-one alive has such detailed knowledge of the score. My own credentials on the subject are as the author of one published book on Mahler and another in progress.

But don’t take my word for it. Players in the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Stockholm Phil will testify to his grasp of minutiae – not just the annotations that Maher made on 14 different scores but the reasons for those annotations. If the trombonist is feeling frisky, perhaps we should put him on a platform with Kaplan to see which of them knows more of the notes.

There is certainly criticism to be made of Kaplan’s technique – he is an amateur, after all – and he does not bring to the rostrum the encyclopaedic knowledge of repertoire and orchestral psychology that one can expect from a Jansons or a Maazel. But he can deliver a memorable performance and he seldom fails, in my experience, to illuminate something new in the score.

I have heard him do the Mahler 2 several times, on occasion with greater impact than he made at Avery Fisher last week. The original NY Times review was very positive and there were rhythms in the second and third movements that he delivered more idiomatically and true to score than I have heard from most professionals. The performance as a whole achieved its intended catharsis – and if the New York Philharmonic think they can do that without a conductor, as the trombonist suggests, well, let’s see them try. Go on, book a date.

I had the impression, watching the orchestra’s body language, that they were not comfortable on the night. They are a bunch of very fine players. They also have a reputation for very bad attitude. There is a reason why many of the world’s best will not conduct the NY Phil. And that may be the same reason why the next music director barely ranks in the top league.

If there was a story to cover here, it was about the New York Philharmonic behaving badly. But are we going to read that in the New York Times? When pigs can fly, perhaps.