Rattling The Cages

Big news out of Germany this week, where the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic (widely considered the world's best orchestra) are reportedly considering a vote to oust their music director, Simon Rattle. Rattle arrived in Berlin amid much fanfare in 2002, but there have been widespread reports of conflict between conductor and orchestra, and some European critics have been unimpressed by the collaboration.

Now, I haven't heard Berlin under Rattle, myself, and as noted in previous posts, I take a somewhat dim view of most music critics, so I don't really have an opinion on whether he ought to continue in his post. But what I find interesting about the story is the unique management structure of the Berlin Phil, under which the musicians actually have the power to hire and fire their boss.

I've written extensively about the audition process musicians go through to win our jobs, and a big part of the equation is that American music directors typically have full hiring and firing authority over us, although we do have a tenure system in place to protect us from capricious action. Music director hirings are far different. While the musicians are usually given input into the search process for a new artistic leader (and I stress usually - believe it or not, there are orchestras whose board and management leaders actually believe that the musicians shouldn't have any role in selecting their primary conductor!), the final hiring decision is made by the board of directors, after taking into account not only musical factors, but such considerations as whether the candidate is likely to be popular with the public, whether s/he will command a salary that is affordable for the organization, and whether s/he is willing to commit to all the gladhanding and fundraising duties that have become standard in American orchestras.

When it comes to getting rid of a music director who has overstayed his welcome, or one with whom the desired chemistry with the orchestra just never developed, the musicians generally have even less input. We can, of course, have our elected committees speak to management and board figures about our artistic concerns, and we can even suggest that it might be time for change at the top. But suggesting is where our role begins and ends. We have no power to compel a conductor to leave our employ, and the board is free to ignore our concerns. The reasons for this are fairly obvious, if you consider an orchestra the way you would consider any other workplace: no one likes their boss all the time, and if the person in charge could be dismissed every time s/he ticked off the employees, there could potentially be chaos.

Because of the way business is conducted in the music world, you rarely actually hear about a music director being fired. In fact, music directors are almost never technically fired. What tends to happen is that, once it's clear that the relationship is going nowhere, both sides agree to some sort of separation, which often comes in the form of the music director signing a contract extension with a fat raise attached, but announcing at the same time that s/he will be leaving the post after the extension is up. It's a version of the golden parachute, I guess - allowing the executive to exit with dignity (and no small amount of cash) in exchange for relative organizational tranquility. With luck, the orchestra will have found a new music director to take over by the time the old one departs, and the transition can be a smooth one.

Occasionally, something goes horribly wrong, of course. A few years back, disputes between the musicians of Orchestre symphonique du Montreal and their longtime music director, Charles Dutoit, exploded into public view when a musicians' union official wrote a public letter calling Dutoit a "tyrant" and accusing him of treating the musicians unfairly. It quickly became clear that a) the union official had somewhat misinterpreted the manner in which the musicians had asked him to intercede on their behalf, and b) that not all the musicians of the OSM were angry with Dutoit, but the damage was done. Dutoit swiftly resigned his post, pronouncing himself shocked and shaken by the charges, and the OSM spent several years with no one at the artistic helm before landing Kent Nagano as their next MD. (That the OSM also went through a brutal months-long strike in 2005 is not directly connected to the Dutoit debacle, but it does point up the fact that when an organization isn't functioning well, all manner of difficult situations are likely to crop up.)

Meanwhile, in Berlin, an entirely different business model is in use. The Berlin Philharmonic is funded entirely by the government, as are many German orchestras. A general manager is charged with overseeing the day-to-day operations of the group. But it is the musicians who hold nearly all of the power in the organization, including the power to hire and fire the music director. To date, they have never used the firing power. Every music director Berlin has ever had has either left of his own accord, or actually died in the post. So it's understandable that the possibility of a no-confidence vote in Rattle is attracting a lot of attention. That his famously high salary, granted at a time when the city of Berlin was literally going bankrupt, was widely reported in the press has added ammunition for his critics over the years, and his predilection for programming difficult composers like Stockhausen has hurt him with some percentage of musicians and public alike.

Now, even if Rattle were to be shown the door in Berlin, he'll be just fine. (Minnesotans can think of him as the Paul Douglas of conductors.) There's already speculation that both the Chicago Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra would be chomping at the bit to sign him as music director (Rattle has a long history with the Philadelphians,) and he commands some of the highest guest conducting rates in the world. Plenty of orchestras love working under him, and as a general rule, a conductor's failure to connect with Orchestra X is irrelevant to whether s/he will work well with Orchestra Y. And his reputation as an innovator and builder of orchestras (he famously brought England's City of Birmingham Symphony to great prominence during his whopping 18-year tenure in the East Midlands) will remain intact regardless of whether he comes to a bad end with the Berliners.

But as a matter of professional interest, I find the whole situation fascinating. Most American musicians probably believe that we should have the primary voice in hiring and firing decisions concerning music directors. But would we actually want that kind of power? If we were sitting in the Berlin Phil's place today, what would we do?