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An ousted maestro, an angry orchestra, an uncertain financial future. The BSO faces the music.
The fight over the future of a preeminent orchestra is not going well.
Two years. That’s how long it’s been since Andris Nelsons, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, has had a meaningful conversation with the orchestra’s chief executive Chad Smith. In fact, the two barely speak at all.
Symphony Hall, a marvel of acoustic excellence for 125 years, has continued to radiate elegant melodies, and audiences still gather on the lawns at Tanglewood to sip Sancerre and delight in dreamy summer evenings of sweeping orchestral works.
But behind the music and traditions that make every BSO performance feel like an occasion, the ensemble is locked in a momentous struggle: How do you transform a beloved institution while preserving the legacy that made it special? Ordinarily, this clash — between tradition and innovation, past and future, old and new – is confined to discreet meetings behind closed doors. But today the conflict is on spectacular display in Boston, as the existential crisis of a preeminent orchestra echoes around the music world.
That might imply there’s a high-minded debate going on inside Symphony Hall. To some extent, there is, but it’s also colored by a different reality: One of the world’s great orchestras has become a hornet’s nest of recriminations, with Nelsons and a majority of the musicians on one side, and BSO trustees and Smith on the other. While prestigious orchestras elsewhere are taking bold steps to remain relevant and reach broader audiences, Boston is bickering.
Behind the scenes — simmering for years — there have been allegations of verbal abuse, Trumpian theatrics, explosive meetings, arrogance, poor preparation, and obstinacy. Amid this cacophony of complaints, BSO attendance is down 23 percent since the pandemic and by 40 percent over the past two decades. The orchestra’s significant endowment is being drained at an alarming rate — in 20 years, leaders have drawn an additional $100 million — and expensive upkeep costs for the orchestra’s treasured venues continue to mount.
The way forward? The current infighting makes any movement hard to imagine. On March 6, the BSO board surprised — and outraged — its own orchestra by issuing an off-key statement announcing it would not renew Nelsons’ contract. After 13 years, the renowned maestro was out. (Or, awkwardly, will be out – after the 2027 Tanglewood season.) In protest, musicians first sounded off on social media and are now waging a velvet revolt by wearing red boutonnieres to show support for their embattled leader.
This is what the public sees. But dozens of interviews with symphony executives, musicians, trustees, staff members, former employees, patrons, and financial supporters — many of whom signed non-disparagement agreements, and some of whom are speaking publicly for the first time — reveal an organization riven by factions and fragile, if outsized, egos.
Symphony Hall is a house divided. The BSO isn’t merely at a crossroads, it’s in crisis — a collision of cultures and personalities whose outcome will determine the future of one of the world’s most storied ensembles.
“I have never seen this before,” said Deborah Borda, a former CEO of both the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics. “It appears to be unprecedented.”
The maestro
Nelsons can be effusive with the baton, but he’s rarely forthcoming in person. In interviews, the 47-year-old conductor, who grew up in a musical family in Latvia, can be circumspect, more comfortable opining about his orchestra than himself.
When BSO trustees announced in March that his days as music director were numbered, Nelsons was restrained, saying only it was “not the decision I anticipated or wanted.” That was it. A man fluent in four languages offered no other words. But the message was clear: Nelsons didn’t want to leave. One of the world’s most lauded conductors was being forced out.
In the months since, attempts to speak with Nelsons, who lives in Lucerne, Switzerland, with his wife, have been rebuffed. Contacted for this story, the maestro’s manager again vetoed an interview request and instead emailed a short statement in response to specific questions and claims made by others.
“I am appalled and disappointed by the levels of inaccuracy and misinformation being presented both in the media and beyond, and stand by my original statement unwaveringly,” Nelsons said.
In other words, he still isn’t talking, which speaks volumes.
The trustees’ email announcing the split with Nelsons was, at best, opaque: The music director and his overseers “were not aligned on future vision.” In reality, Nelsons had been at odds with BSO leadership even before Smith was hired in 2023, and those tensions had only increased.
The new chief executive arrived with ideas, endorsed by the board, to shake up Symphony Hall — primary among them a belief that the BSO could grow its audience by adding more adventurous music to its repertoire. That strategy worked well at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where Smith was CEO for four years before coming to Boston.
“One of the strengths I’ve always had as a creative is taking risks,” Smith said in a recent interview, “and I got it right more than I got it wrong.”
Nelsons is first and foremost a proponent of traditional orchestral music. He’s regularly commissioned and premiered contemporary pieces, but excels at the sort of massive, symphonic works that harness the full power of the orchestra — think Mahler, Shostakovich, Brahms. In rehearsal, he commonly refers to contemporary compositions as “funny pieces,” a coinage that’s raised eyebrows among some in the Boston orchestra.
But his skills on the rostrum remain, for the most part, unquestioned. In concerts and recordings, the conductor has wrung intensity and opulence from the orchestra in equal measure, winning multiple Grammys and, recently, the 2026 Opus Klassik Award for Conductor of the Year.
Nevertheless, some wonder privately if Nelsons – whom the BSO pays $1.7 million annually — is overextended. He is also music director for the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany, and he maintains an active schedule as a guest conductor elsewhere, regularly leading other ensembles, including the elite Berlin and Vienna philharmonics.
While many conductors have multiple posts, some BSO musicians say Nelsons has at times arrived at rehearsals underprepared. In one 2018 instance, he had to be shown a YouTube video to recollect a section of a Leonard Bernstein ballet. And last summer at Tanglewood, Nelsons rehearsed a piece by contemporary composer Gabriela Ortiz at less than half its normal tempo because he was still learning it. Even in rehearsals, musicians say, it’s uncommon for a maestro to be so unfamiliar with a work.
The difficulties have occasionally resulted in frustration. In January, during a rehearsal of the Samuel Barber opera “Vanessa,” Nelsons became unsettled when principal BSO oboist John Ferrillo asked to repeat a particularly tricky section. According to musicians, the conductor stepped off the podium and extended his baton. “You want to conduct?” he demanded. “You want to conduct?” (Nelsons later apologized, arriving at rehearsal the following day with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne for the oboist.)
Some music critics have taken notice. Reviewing the BSO’s performance of “Vanessa,” a New York Times critic described Nelsons as “running through a work with which he was clearly not intimately familiar, stooping over his score to a perplexing degree.”
“These are the kinds of details that are the difference between a merely good orchestra and the great one that Boston ought to be,” the Times critic, David Allen, wrote in January. “Here was confirmation, for the umpteenth time, that the Boston Symphony has a problem.”
Piccoloist Cynthia Meyers, among other BSO musicians, believes such criticism is unfair. Meyers said Nelsons has a deep understanding of symphonic music and credits him with leading the orchestra through some of the most memorable performances of her career.
“No conductor does every aspect of the repertoire equally brilliantly,” Meyers said, a sentiment echoed by others in the orchestra.
Nelsons has likewise struggled with some contemporary social issues. At the peak of the #MeToo movement in the fall of 2017, a radio host asked the maestro if sexual harassment has been an issue in classical music.
“No,” Nelsons replied.
He went on to say that “many things are, I think, artificially exaggerated or made too important [than] they are.” The comment provoked an angry response online, prompting a BSO spokesperson to walk it back with a clarification on the conductor’s behalf.
Off stage, Nelsons has kept a low profile in Boston, rarely showing up at charity galas or other gatherings where prospective donors could be charmed into writing fat checks. Indeed, the maestro has demonstrated a limited appetite for gladhanding or the sort of public showmanship displayed by former BSO conductor Seiji Ozawa or the Boston Pops’ Keith Lockhart.
On the day he was introduced as the BSO’s 15th music director in 2013, a trustee confidently declared Nelsons would be more visible and involved in the community than his predecessor, James Levine, who was often away at his other job with the Metropolitan Opera in New York. “Boston is [Nelsons’] primary location and primary interest,” said Robert O’Block, then vice chair of the board.
But after 13 years at the BSO, Nelsons’ primary residence remains in Europe. He never bought a house in Boston, bunking instead in a Back Bay apartment paid for by the BSO. Going forward, it seems, the next music director will be expected to be more than an intermittent presence in the city.
“Boston deserves artistic leadership that is grounded in Boston,” said Smith.
The musicians
On a Friday evening in early March, Meyers, the piccoloist, was in line at Panera Bread when a musician friend in Chicago texted about the dismissal.
“Just saw the news about Nelsons,” the friend wrote.
“What news?” Meyers asked.
Four months later, Meyers, along with most of the 90-plus virtuoso members of the orchestra, is still fuming over the removal of their prized conductor. (Nelsons has detractors in the ensemble, but they’re in the minority.) Not only were players shocked and insulted by how the board informed them, via a terse email sent simultaneously to the media, but the fact that they weren’t consulted beforehand felt like a profound betrayal.
Meyers, who joined the BSO in 2006, was staggered by the trustees’ tone deafness; it was as if the musicians had no stake in who leads them. “I went to bed on solid ground and woke up the next morning in quicksand,” she said.
Many musicians focused on the ambiguity of the board’s statement, which said only that Nelsons and the board had divergent visions of the future. What did that mean? Does leadership intend to shrink the BSO’s classical offerings? Does it envision the orchestra as a sort of glorified house band, fiddling movie soundtracks and backing avant-garde musical acts? Or did they just not want Nelsons?
“We are tired of vagueness,” said Lorna McGhee, the BSO’s principal flute. “We need transparency and concrete examples.”
The bitterness among musicians is evident on bulletin boards in the Symphony Hall basement, where players have pinned Globe articles and opinion pieces, including one editorial headlined: “BSO board can’t get out of its own way.”
Smith and the board have sought to allay the musicians’ fears, describing upcoming seasons that will include symphonic cycles; festivals organized around broad, humanities-based themes; and programs intended to appeal to more diverse audiences.
“These changes are neither radical nor even especially novel,” BSO leadership noted in an internal memo that outlined some of the changes.
All of which begs the question: How was Nelsons not aligned?
The maestro says he was just as stunned by his dismissal as the musicians. According to a recently leaked email from the conductor’s representatives to a member of the orchestra, Nelsons and BSO management had “agreed in principle” to a renewed contract that would have extended the conductor’s tenure in Boston.
The terms “were in the process of being finalized,” Nelsons’ manager, Karen McDonald, wrote in the email. There “were no discussions with Andris or us about an exit at any point, nor did we have any indication a termination was imminent.”
Similarly, McDonald said, “BSO leadership have not explained to Andris in what way they felt he was not aligned with the organization’s strategic vision.”
Smith denies there was any agreement “either in principle or otherwise” on a new contract and said negotiations had reached an impasse.
The lack of clarity has only deepened musicians’ frustrations with BSO leaders.
They have “yet to provide a compelling, coherent explanation [of] why they got rid of Andris,” said Elizabeth Klein, the orchestra’s associate principal flute. “They’re hiding from answering these really difficult questions.”
The anger within the ensemble has become an uprising of sorts. Beyond wearing red flowers (the flag of Nelsons’ native Latvia is red and white), principal clarinetist William Hudgins has begun stomping his feet and leading a chant of Nelsons’ name at the end of concerts. At least a few Symphony Hall observers have likened the spectacle to a MAGA rally.
The resistance has gained traction. Two BSO patrons have designed a website — StandWithAndris.org — that includes testimonials from acclaimed pianist Lang Lang and conductor Simon Rattle, and a petition, signed by more than 3,000 people, requesting a sit-down with trustees. (The site also sells merch: Frisbees, playing cards, and picnic blankets with a Shepard Fairey-style image of Nelsons clutching a bouquet of red flowers.)
The website’s creators are spreading the gospel of Andris using social media and yard signs. They’ve hung posters in a vacant Stockbridge storefront and placed half-page ads in The Berkshire Eagle encouraging concert-goers to wear red flowers to Tanglewood this summer: “For Andris. For the Musicians. For the Future of the Boston Symphony.”
“This is about the musicians having a voice in artistic planning and future vision,” said George Whiting, a massage therapy student and one of the website’s creators. “The precedent this sets is pretty scary in terms of taking away the musicians’ artistic voice.”
The sturm und drang enveloping Symphony Hall makes this a perilous moment for BSO leadership. David Callahan, author of “The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age,” said large, established arts institutions such as the BSO rely on a pyramid of donations — some enormous, many quite small — and that every one is essential.
“If you piss anybody in that pyramid off, you’re courting trouble,” he said.
Historically, BSO musicians have not been timid about making themselves heard. The players, among the most accomplished in the world, have a strong union: The average salary in the orchestra is $250,303, and players get nine weeks of vacation per year. The musicians, many of whom also play for the Pops, enjoy considerable influence in the organization; under certain circumstances, they can even hire new colleagues.
Much of that is thanks to Mark Volpe, who was a champion of the orchestra and its conductor during his 23 years as BSO president and chief executive. Today, Volpe, who remains extremely close with Nelsons, still casts a shadow at the BSO, five years after he retired. Since the Nelsons announcement, he’s continued to visit Symphony Hall, meeting the maestro in his dressing room and speaking with the orchestra in their backstage tuning room. During one performance, musicians on stage observed Volpe sitting in the first balcony alongside Nelsons’ wife and manager. The former president’s continued presence has struck some as odd and stoked speculation, at least among the conspiracy-minded, that he is encouraging the orchestra’s resistance.
“It’s like he’s cosplaying being CEO again,” said one BSO employee.
Volpe declined numerous requests to comment.
This supreme confidence of BSO musicians has occasionally been perceived as entitlement. Players have sometimes quarreled with guest conductors. Most recently, in April, the Finnish maestro Susanna Malkki encountered resistance and outright hostility from some in the orchestra, according to musicians who were present. At one rehearsal, a player questioned the timing of the conductor’s “stick” (baton) in a manner that some colleagues viewed as disrespectful. Later, during a performance at Symphony Hall, a different musician played a piece at his own tempo, without watching Malkki. According to BSO musicians and others at Symphony Hall, the conductor later complained to the orchestra’s personnel director.
Contacted by the Globe, Malkki’s manager said his client was unavailable for comment, but that “she enjoyed her recent week with the BSO.”
The discord created by the Nelsons decision comes at a complicated time for the orchestra, which is in the midst of negotiating a new contract with the musicians. Todd Seeber, who’s at the bargaining table as head of the Players Committee, said musicians are seeking a greater voice in artistic matters, including selection of the BSO’s next music director. At present, musicians play an advisory role, holding five of 11 seats on the music director search committee.
“This is our road map back to trust and building a strong institution going forward,” Seeber said. “With the current process in place, they could choose a music director the orchestra doesn’t want.”
The strife shows few signs of relenting. Over the past weekend, board members met with musicians at Tanglewood in search of common ground and the results, predictably, were mixed. Musicians voiced their frustrations and board members tried to explain their actions, making clear, however, that Nelsons is not coming back.
Seeber called it a “difficult meeting.”
He added the power imbalance between board members and players contributed to the meeting’s tensions. “It’s not a level playing field when the people who write your paychecks are sitting there,” he said.
Meanwhile, in an email obtained by the Globe, BSO board chair Barbara Hostetter called the summit an “important step.”
“Many of you asked thoughtful, candid, and important questions,” she wrote, addressing the musicians. “At the same time, there were other moments when conversation veered off course, with personal attacks and rhetoric directed towards leadership that fell well short of the standard of civility this institution deserves.”
The board chair
On a frozen February afternoon, in a conference room on the 35th floor of a downtown office tower, Barbara Hostetter huddled with her fellow trustees. Negotiations on a new contract for Nelsons were at a critical juncture, and the board was about to make a major decision: Cut the famed conductor loose or stay the course.
Under Hostetter, the board had been driven by twin ambitions: Reverse the orchestra’s financial slide and revitalize its offerings, transforming Symphony Hall into a destination, a lively venue that would attract a diverse and engaged crowd. By early February, however, it was clear to board members that Nelsons was not the person they believed was able or willing to lead the charge.
Smith and others not involved in the board vote left the room. Then, one by one, the trustees spoke. “There was a gravity to what was being discussed,” said board member Tom Kuo. “It was, ‘Hey, we know this is what has to be done.’”
In the end, it wasn’t even close: With more than 30 of the BSO’s 42 trustees present, the vote not to renew the maestro’s contract was unanimous.
Hostetter, the billionaire philanthropist who has chaired the BSO board since 2021, hoped the break would be amicable — a conscious uncoupling presented, at least publicly, as a friendly parting of ways. Now, seated in her office on Lewis Wharf, Hostetter acknowledged missteps, but sounded resolute.
“If we could do one thing over again, it would be the announcement to the orchestra,” she said. “It didn’t roll out the way we hoped. It rolled out abruptly, and, in the end, it was costly and painful.”
As co-founder of the progressive Barr Foundation, Hostetter is regularly lauded for her contributions to arts and culture in New England. She and her husband, Amos, co-founder of Continental Cablevision, have disbursed more than $1.5 billion through the foundation across the region, supporting arts groups, environmental projects, and educational initiatives. (The Barr Foundation supports the Globe’s reporting on education and inequality.)
Hostetter also led the effort to reimagine the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, a stately house museum with strict rules that prevent any changes to the collection. After enlisting famed architect Renzo Piano, the museum now boasts a striking contemporary addition that helped transform it into a magnet for a younger crowd, hosting music performances, temporary exhibitions, and upscale parties.
But to some, the uproar surrounding Nelsons’ ouster has cast Hostetter in an unfamiliar role: villain. There have been calls for her to step down; most of the orchestra and some in the audience are incensed with her, and she knows it.
“This isn’t personal for me. It’s a commitment to stewarding an institution,” she said. “I try to get up above it and think longer-term.”
In person, Hostetter is understated and chooses her words carefully. She’s at once cerebral and also accessible. The shelves in her office brim with art books, and the walls are arranged with paintings purchased on foundation trips to Uganda, Haiti, and Ethiopia.
Hostetter said the board is determined to address declining interest in the BSO. Attendance for classical music concerts at Symphony Hall has dropped by 23 percent since 2019, subscriptions are down sharply, and operating deficits have curtailed growth of the BSO’s $600 million endowment. (While enormous, the bulk of the orchestra’s endowment has restrictions and cannot be used for operations.)
Hostetter has had plenty of challenges as board chair. When she took over, the organization was still reeling from the pandemic, and she clashed with Volpe, then the CEO, over how to navigate the social justice movement that arose after the killing of George Floyd.
“She just saw [Volpe] as not being progressive enough,” said one former BSO executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personal conversations.
Hostetter put it in terms of governance, problems she first noticed when she joined the board in 2017. “There were major issues that were not transparent,” she said. “It’s all on the business side.”
In her office on a recent Monday, Hostetter said she wanted to clarify something: It was the board’s decision, not Smith’s, to cast out Nelsons. She said the goal had been a graceful, mutually-agreed-upon exit that would enable the acclaimed conductor to return periodically to lead the orchestra. “We hoped to give him a title,” she said. “We thought it was a good deal, and it didn’t happen.”
The board’s clumsy announcement of Nelsons’ dismissal, and the trustees’ subsequent silence, has led to rumors about what’s really going on. None of them is true, Hostetter insisted, least of all the suggestion that the BSO will cease playing the sort of music for which it’s famous.
“We are deeply committed to the orchestra in terms of what it does best, and that is the Western canon,” she said, referring to the warhorses of Beethoven, Brahms, et al. “There’s no intention to do anything but support that.”
She added, however, that “we know it’s a declining audience . . . and there are so many ways you can be innovative.”
The CEO
Chad Smith knew what he was signing up for — or at least he should have.
His predecessor, Gail Samuel, was the first female CEO of the BSO in 2021, succeeding Volpe, whose retirement was hastened by clashes with Hostetter and the board.
Like Smith, Samuel was an alum of the LA Phil, an orchestra widely considered to be the most artistically daring and financially stable in the country. But in Boston, she took over an orchestra buffeted by the pandemic, and her relationships with musicians, some longtime BSO employees, and Nelsons, especially, were uneasy.
“It was clear to everyone within the first month that she didn’t like Andris,” said the former executive, characterizing conversations with Samuel.
The feeling, apparently, was mutual.
“Andris didn’t want to be in the same room with Gail,” said Lynn Larsen, former vice president of orchestras and production at the BSO and a critic of the board’s handling of Nelsons’ departure.
After 18 fitful months, Samuel, who did not respond to multiple interview requests, abruptly resigned. Trustees have never said why she left, but it’s clear that conflicts with Nelsons played a part. Since leaving, Samuel has received some $2.7 million from the BSO, including $1.5 million in severance, according to tax filings. Volpe, similarly, received nearly $1.4 million after he left, according to tax filings.
Predictably, perhaps, Smith was viewed with suspicion when he showed up at Symphony Hall. To anyone who’d listen, he talked about forging partnerships, reinvigorating the BSO’s aging concert halls, and updating the repertoire. A risk-taker in commissioning and performing new works, Smith likes to say the greatest classical music has yet to be written.
But in an interview in his Symphony Hall office, Smith also sought to ease concerns that he intends to seize artistic control in Boston as part of a top-down reinvention.
“There’s a fear that I’m going to take the BSO in a radical direction,” he said. “What I was able to do in Los Angeles is not the same thing we’ll be able to do here.”
Still, Smith said he took the job because of the BSO’s long history of innovation, a mantle he wants it to reclaim. (The BSO was a pioneer in televising concerts. It broke new ground with the Pops and Tanglewood. It has commissioned many important works and was the first US orchestra to tour the former Soviet Union and China.)
“The BSO is arguably the most innovative orchestra in history,” he said. “That’s gone dormant.”
At the LA Phil, Smith had a knack for luring audiences with unconventional programs: performances with pop stars such as Billie Eilish and Diana Ross, and offbeat events including the Fluxus Festival, which featured a performance artist who chopped vegetables to the beat of live music and then served a massive salad to the audience. Such offerings, with a major assist from conductor Gustavo Dudamel, one of classical music’s biggest stars, helped attract large, diverse crowds, while also creating partnerships with renowned conductors, composers, and the local community.
This mix of mainstream, provocative, and pop programming not only created buzz but also grew the LA orchestra’s bottom line. When Smith left for Boston, the LA Phil’s board chair said the ensemble was in the best financial shape in its 104-year history.
A Pennsylvania native who grew up in a small town near Gettysburg, Smith studied at Tufts (European history) and the New England Conservatory (vocal performance). He played trumpet as a teen and was in the choir at the Presbyterian church his family attended. In college, Smith focused on becoming a classical singer and spent two summers studying at Tanglewood. Although steeped in classical music, he’s a product of the MTV generation. Smith is a fan of the sound and spectacle of such ’80s pop acts as Madonna and Depeche Mode; the first album he ever bought was Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual.”
In 2000, after a brief stint as a backup singer for Harry Belafonte, Smith took a job as personal assistant to conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. It wasn’t glamorous. Thomas was then artistic director of the New World Symphony, a training ensemble for young musicians. Smith was his gofer, fetching the conductor coffee and taking his dog to the groomer.
But Smith also sat in on meetings with record executives, agents, musicians, and managers. The experiences helped shape his view of classical music.
“It’s not some moribund thing that has to be preserved,” he said. “It’s actually an art form that is ever evolving.”
Studied and articulate, Smith can command a room. His keen interest in history is evident in conversation; he often cites artists and events from the past to make or refute a point.
He’s also conversant in pop culture in a way Nelsons is not. Yet Smith’s relationship with the maestro was initially cordial. Publicly, he lavished praise on Nelsons, who nodded along happily. Speaking to The Berkshire Eagle, Smith said the conductor was “giving one great concert after another, and the orchestra has been playing at a level that is just so exciting.”
But the good vibes didn’t last. By 2024, Boston’s odd couple rarely spoke about artistic matters, and tempers eventually flared. One meeting, about a key hire, became so heated that both Nelsons and Smith left the room. Communication between the two eventually broke down altogether, and they haven’t had a substantive conversation about programming for two years.
“I don’t have animus for Andris,” Smith said. “What I do have is a lack of a collaborative working relationship.”
By his own admission, Smith does not lack self-confidence: He can sometimes sound like a caffeinated marketing executive pitching big ideas for the orchestra.
The approach doesn’t always land well, and numerous former employees have complained Smith’s management style can be abrasive. For instance, Larsen, the former BSO vice president, said Smith “belittled and berated” him and other colleagues during meetings. It became so bad, he said, that in 2024 he complained to human resources about Smith’s treatment of Anthony Fogg, the BSO’s vice president of artistic planning.
“It was just beyond the pale,” said Larsen, who retired in 2025. “That’s ultimately why I left. I didn’t want to spend my days in that environment anymore.”
Fogg did not respond to a request for comment.
Asked about those complaints, Smith grew agitated. He said he was hired to shake up the status quo at Symphony Hall and not everyone has been happy about that.
“We’ve had to make leadership changes,” he said. “Those leadership changes are hard.”
Hostetter said she’s aware of “rumors” about Smith’s management style, but supports her chief executive.
“Chad is two and a half years in, and the progress is immense,” she said. “Every CEO that enters this complicated world that we live in, especially, needs and deserves the support of everyone in the institution.”
Minutes after the Feb. 2 vote to dismiss Nelsons, the board relayed the result to Smith, who had been waiting outside the room. That night, the CEO boarded an overnight flight to London to meet with Nelsons’ representatives and, he hoped, craft an amicable separation. The discussion was productive, and Smith was optimistic he might be able to continue on to Lucerne to meet face to face with the maestro.
The aim, he said, was to hammer out an agreement that would be satisfactory to all involved, a parting that might include residencies, tours, and an emeritus title for Nelsons.
But the meeting with Nelsons never materialized, and Smith flew home without speaking to the conductor. In the end, the two sides could not even agree on the wording of the press release announcing Nelsons’ departure.
The present
What now? Fence-mending, for sure. The public relations fallout has been extreme, prompting the BSO to enlist a Washington, D.C.-based crisis communications firm. Last weekend, for example, the glittery Tanglewood gala kicking off the orchestra’s summer season — an annual fund-raiser that in the past was open to the media – was declared private and off limits to reporters.
Making the media rounds lately, Smith had kind words for Nelsons. But he also repeated his belief that the conductor and the board were no longer playing from the same score. He’s suggested the maestro was unwilling to do what’s necessary to broaden the BSO’s audience, which Smith considers imperative to the orchestra’s survival.
“We have to believe that what we’re doing is right,” he said, seated at a large wooden table in his Symphony Hall office. “We have to take the slings and arrows and then get to the other side.”
For his part, Nelsons will continue to lead the BSO even as the search for his successor gears up. “I would like to reiterate my love for the orchestra, our audiences, and our community,” he said in a statement sent by his manager. “We will continue sharing the beautiful music-making of the BSO.”
Audiences will get a fresh taste of that when Nelsons leads the players in a series of performances throughout July. The concerts, heavy with crowd pleasers by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart, will no doubt play to the maestro’s strengths.
But perhaps more telling will be an event scheduled for later this month at the Tanglewood Learning Institute. The program will feature Smith in conversation with Esa-Pekka Salonen, the acclaimed Finnish conductor whom some consider a front-runner for the new BSO job.
The talk’s title: “Shaping Sound: The Future of Orchestras.”
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com. Malcolm Gay can be reached at malcolm.gay@globe.com.
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