The Lost Accord

Although the eight-week strike has been settled, the malady which plagued the orchestra still festers beneath the surface harmony

Taking Sokoloff’s advice to compare this to the schedules of other orchestras doesn’t produce impressive results on the touring score. The two other major Eastern seaboard orchestras stack up this way: The Boston Symphony Orchestra has 210 performances planned for this season. Twenty-six of these will be given in their eight-week hitch at nearby Tanglewood, 38 in the course of six separated touring weeks and live run-outs. The New York Philharmonic gave 190 concerts last season, including only four out-of-town dates. This year they took a two-week pre-season tour. Managing director Carlos Moseley cautions that the situation in New York is different than it is anywhere else. The Philharmonic could play to sold-out houses every day in the week the demand is so great, and they expect to stay at home again this summer after their great success in Central Park last year. Some years, however, they do more extensive touring.

Touring is a particularly sore point in Philadelphia. The schedule for the ’66-’67 season called for 29 run-outs plus the arduous annual Ann Arbor Festival, seven weeks of touring Japan and then cross-country without a break (compare with Boston’s staggered six weeks of touring and five run-outs). The day after returning from the grand tour, the orchestra rehearses and plays the first concert of a six-week Robin Hood Dell season followed immediately by four weeks in Saratoga.

The men are separated from their families for long periods of time. Says one, "I see more of the orchestra than I do of my family. I know traveling salesmen are away from home all the time, but I’m not a traveling salesman." They have to adjust to strange rooms, water and food, to the acoustics and peculiarities of strange auditoriums. One musician recalls having to play in overcoat and gloves in an unheated hall in Glasgow in June.

The musicians realize the part touring plays in stimulating interest in radio broadcasts and records (someone has figured out that after five years, record sales drop if an orchestra isn’t heard in a particular area), but of course, they don’t participate directly in either record royalties or proceeds from radio transcriptions of concerts. However, they didn’t suggest that touring be dropped, and the new contract does limit it some.

STATE OF MIND. Statistics and comparisons of statistics are inconclusive in human terms. Adding up the number of hours and the number of performances — even if both sides could agree on what they are — still wouldn’t prove anything. What does mean something is how the workers felt about the workload and whether you have any faith in their honesty. They say they felt "driven," they say they were at the point where "the fear of mistakes and tension replace enthusiasm and joy."

But who’s saying this? The troublemakers? The first desk men have their own salary arrangements with management and are not generally on the side of the militants. But a respected man like cellist Samuel Mayes, who came back to Philadelphia last year to replace young Larue Monroe (reportedly a management dispute dropout), said on television last month so everyone in Philadelphia could hear what an honored first chair man thought: "Since I came back to Philadelphia I haven’t played a concert when I haven’t been tired."