David Stabler found this article from yesterday’s Seattle P-I, written by guest columnist Bernard Jacobsen (who I remember as the program annotator for the Philadelphia Orchestra back in the early ’90s). I’m not sure why the classical music writer(s) for the P-I and its sister publication the Times were not able to write what Jacobsen has, but I’m not in the newspaper business.
Here’s his summation:
All the acrimony is the more regrettable at a time when the orchestra’s budget is balanced, its subscription base has expanded vastly under Schwarz’s leadership, it is one of the few U.S. orchestras active in the recording field, and its artistic standards are higher than ever, and comparable with any to be found among the competition. “Much of the orchestra’s success,” Wakin and Oestreich concede, “can be attributed to its conductor.” It is a pity that that acknowledgement should have been buried in an altogether too public and altogether too negatively insinuating washing of a few frustrated people’s dirty linen.