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Saturday, December 27, 1997

Symphony seeking new music director, easing financial woes

HOUSTON (AP) -- The Houston Symphony is trying to find a new music director who can keep up the group's high standards, but hopefully one who will come cheap considering the organization is $7.1 million in debt.

"We're at an important crossroads," symphony executive director David Wax told the Houston Chronicle. "If we meet the challenges, I see the orchestra building ... moving further forward. I think the problems are solvable."

It's a tough way for the symphony to go into 1998 after such a promising start to 1997.

Music director Christoph Eschenbach had extended his extending his contract by a year, then in February there was a successful second concert tour of Europe that included debuts in London and Amsterdam and an acclaimed return to Vienna.

Back home, the symphony board was implementing a five-year plan designed to end decades of annual deficits. The plan included unpopular ideas such as a cut in expenses.

Eschenbach and the musicians needed more money for salaries, touring and recording, not less. So negotiations for a new contract foundered once the old one expired May 31.

In July, the Houston Symphony Society, a nonprofit organization that funds and manages the orchestra, cut musicians' annual salaries by 7.7 percent. A threatened strike was averted when enough money was raised for a one-year contract at the same basic annual salary as last season, $62,400.

In September, the symphony and Houston Grand Opera announced that the orchestra would stop playing for HGO's productions at the end of the 2001-2002 season, ending a relationship that dates to the HGO's 1956 debut. That decision will cost the symphony about 750,000 this season.

Then came Eschenbach resigned, saying he wanted to strengthen his career in Europe. The native German will assume two leadership positions in Hamburg, where he received his early musical training, in the fall.

"People were too comfortable with the status the orchestra has (achieved), and didn't take care of the deficit, didn't raise enough money," Eschenbach said.

Eschenbach will return to Houston in January 2000 to conduct the orchestra for Houston Grand Opera's long-planned production of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. He also said he would like to retain a titled position with the Houston Symphony.

Chicago Symphony President Henry Fogel is supervising the search for a way to handle the orchestra's recurring money problems, while a separate committee has begun searching for Eschenbach's successor.

Musicians took the initiative in negotiations by inviting Fogel to mediate and by seeking interim funding for the one-year contract.