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Miffed at BSO, famed maestro backs out |
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|  There is an eminent Russian conductor encamped at a private home in Brookline, and he is fuming.
In an extremely rare public flare-up in the outwardly genteel world of major symphony orchestras, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, the 77-year-old maestro who is one of the last living links to a golden era of Russian music, has pulled out of the entire run of four concerts he was scheduled to conduct with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which began on Thursday.
He is outraged, he said yesterday, at how disrespectfully, in his view, the BSO administration had marketed his appearances to the public.
In an emotional 40-minute interview at the home of a friend, Rozhdestvensky and his wife, Viktoria Postnikova, explained the maestro's abrupt decision to withdraw from the performances, including concerts scheduled for tonight and Tuesday, and to return today to Moscow. He began with a pointed clarification.
"The BSO told its audiences I was 'unable to conduct this performance as planned,' " he said, referring to an announcement that appeared in a program insert and on the BSO's website. "I must say that I was able to conduct." Full stop. "And how."
The week's early rehearsals had gone marvelously, he continued, speaking with occasional help from a translator. The trouble began on Wednesday during a rehearsal break, when the conductor and his wife took a stroll around Symphony Hall. They came upon a promotional poster that gave the week's soloist, the cellist Lynn Harrell, top billing, both with large print and a photograph. Rozhdestvensky's name appeared in smaller print as part of the program announcement.
Soon afterward, the conductor came across a copy of the orchestra's season brochure, a marketing tool designed to entice potential subscribers. He found a page with the heading "Artists who inspire" and a smaller section devoted to "Distinguished Conductors." That section, while including the names of two little-known conductors, did not mention his name. It appears only in a third section on the page under the heading "The Cello Shines," in connection with Harrell, this week's cello soloist.
"I felt insulted by the actions of the administration," he explained, "I feel not only slighted but I suffered what is called in Russian a moral insult, and I'm free to take any actions to defend myself in public."
BSO senior officials declined requests for an interview, but managing director Mark Volpe responded yesterday in a statement: "All of us at the Boston Symphony Orchestra greatly admire Gennady Rozhdestvensky's artistry. We genuinely regret that Maestro Rozhdestvensky decided to cancel his concerts this week."
If there is a possible upside to the turn of events, it was the big break it provided for the BSO's young assistant conductor Julian Kuerti, who, after just one rehearsal, has stepped in to replace Rozhdestvensky for all four concerts. Following Thursday's performance of Tchaikovsky's "Manfred" Symphony, he won a robust ovation and the clear appreciation of the orchestral musicians onstage, who insisted that he take a solo bow. Even Rozhdestvensky went out of his way to praise his replacement, whom he had met over the course of the week. "In our days, many young conductors have no right to conduct, but he really does," Rozhdestvensky said. "Now he can realize it. I'm very glad."
A few longtime BSO watchers who were surveyed recently could not recall a similar incident involving the marketing of a guest artist. Rozhdestvensky has conducted the orchestra many times since his BSO debut in March 1978. He called those experiences "an honor and a joy for me," and referred to the orchestra as "one of the best, if not the best in the world."
In many ways, the incident seemed to emphasize the yawning gap between old-world notions of cultural eminence and American-style marketing strategies, which often foreground the names and images most immediately recognizable to the greatest number of people.
Rozhdestvensky is an old-world conductor if ever there was one, a musician who forged his career in the Soviet Union from the 1950s onward. He worked closely with the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and many celebrated soloists of the late Soviet era.
It was a period during which classical music carried enormous prestige and importance, both symbolically for the regime, as a way of projecting an image of Soviet excellence to the world, and in the daily lives of everyday citizens, who found in concerts a rare outlet for authentic public expression.
Of course, the cultural landscape has significantly changed in Russia as well since the fall of the Soviet Union, and when disappointed, Rozhdestvensky has made his opinion known at home as well.
In 2001, he abruptly resigned as artistic director of Russia's Bolshoi Theater after just one season in that post, complaining of production problems, desertions by singers, and what he called vicious criticism by the Moscow press.
His Boston visit, the first since 2004, had been keenly anticipated by the BSO musicians.
"He's such a great maestro," said Tamara Smirnova, the associate concertmaster. "We've all been looking forward for him to come. Julian, our assistant conductor, did a marvelous job, but I'm still very sad that maestro Rozhdestvensky canceled." |
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