PAYBACK
posted by James Reel
Norman Lebrecht has a delighfully vicious column suggesting that the lavishly compensated violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter be banned from London concert halls. Seems she was recently paid the equivalent of $53,000 per night for a three-concert series of Mozart sonatas, and filled less than two-thirds of the house:
Why are orchestral managers tempted to overpay the likes of Mutter? Because they think her smidgeon of fame will attract a lashing of celebrity seekers. A sixty percent turnout proves them wrong. The lady has no more pulling power than a one-armed dentist with a manual drill.Coincidentally, Terry Teachout’s latest “Number, please” blurb reminds us that Rudolf Serkin’s fee in 1938 for a piano recital was $1,000, which in today’s dollars would be $12,871.50.
For comparison, I might note that the most expensive string quartet in the world today charges about $15,000 per appearance, and most quartets and trios are averaging more like $8,000. That sounds like a lot for one night’s work, but remember that it has to be split three or four ways, then managers take a cut, publicists have to be paid, and there are travel and lodging expenses to take into account, as well as taxes, instrument insurance, and somehow compensating for a lack of health insurance.
Meanwhile, on the subject of delightful viciousness, A.C. Douglas, proprietor of the blog Sounds and Fury, has returned with a vengeance after a two-month hiatus. The object of his fury this time is Greg Sandow, who, in a post on the new opera Doctor Atomic, opined again that classical music needs to be more cognizant of the realities of the wider world and popular culture if it is to survive. I pretty much agree with Greg, but it’s entertaining if nothing else to see Douglas defend the status quo:
Mr. Sandow, I think, as well as others of his ilk, needs to take a sabbatical to do nothing but rethink seriously and deeply his wrongheaded notions on all these matters instead of repeatedly plunging ahead spouting his perverse, simpleminded, pop-culture-infected ideas of the way things ought to go and be.Thank you, Mr. Sounds and Fury, for spouting your own … ideas of the way things ought to go and be.
