More than a year of (one hopes) calming reflection have passed since that moment in France when Sir John Eliot Gardiner came offstage after conducting Berlioz’s The Trojans and punched bass soloist William Thomas. Gardiner, who is 80, has publicly apologised and withdrawn from engagements.
His agent tells us that he has sought counselling for his mental health. Thomas, 29, also withdrew from the final performances in The Trojans tour (including the BBC Prom), telling colleagues that the media pressure had become too much.
So is that the end of the matter? If I write ‘I hope not’ I might be accused of spinning out a juicy story for low journalistic reasons. That’s not true. Some aspects of this cautionary tale – for instance, Gardiner’s sometimes abrasive behaviour and his high-handed treatment of the musicians in his ensembles – have been dissected in the press and (more viciously) via social media over the past year.
The incident has raised concerns about the classical music business
There’s no point in continuing that. If and when Gardiner returns to conducting it will be up to individual musicians to decide, all things considered, whether or not they want to work with him.
However, the incident has raised much more general concerns about the way the classical music business works, or ought to work. First, conductors with wealth (or access to wealthy friends) have always, in effect, bought themselves orchestras.
Gardiner is not unique in having generous patrons
Thomas Beecham virtually bankrolled the Royal Opera House and several London orchestras for decades. Richard Hickox owed his early success to the terrific players he recruited for the modestly named Richard Hickox Orchestra (I don’t deny that, in later life, he delivered many fine performances).
There are young conductors and opera directors today who are equally privileged and equally adept at using their access to wealth to buy themselves interesting projects that get noticed in the press. Gardiner is not unique in having generous patrons. Indeed, you could argue that schmoozing is an essential part of the job of running any arts organisation, particularly when public subsidy is scarce.
That need not be a problem if the conductor is also a decent, genial, fair-minded human being. The problem comes when the power to hire and fire colleagues, almost on a whim, is used as a weapon that enables abusive behaviour. That happens in all sorts of workplaces.
Arrogant and offensive conductors are still tolerated
I have seen it often enough in the newsrooms of even quite civilised broadsheets over the past 40 years. But the checks and balances put in place by other industries over my lifetime don’t seem so apparent in music. Arrogant and offensive behaviour from a conductor is still tolerated, even (in some quarters) regarded as necessary in the pursuit of the highest standards.
It isn’t. It has always been possible to inspire wonderful music making without recourse to terrorism. Think of the monumental achievements of Colin Davis, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, Charles Mackerras, Claudio Abbado – people who were genuinely mourned by orchestral musicians when they died. Yes, they had exacting standards, but they also had a surpassing humanity that shone through their dealing with colleagues.
But humanity is prevailing among younger conductors
And I think their attitude, rather than that of the machismo monsters, is the one that is prevailing among younger conductors today. Just thinking back to the 2023 BBC Proms season, I witnessed brilliant results achieved by the likes of Dalia Stasevska, Nicholas Collon, Gemma New and Dinis Sousa (the conductor who replaced Gardiner for The Trojans) without the slightest whiff of authoritarianism or egomania.
‘You can’t hold votes on what tempo the music should go,’ Daniel Barenboim once rasped at me, when I plucked up the courage to ask him about allegations that he bullied colleagues. ‘Someone has to take charge.’
World-class conductors have to make intense demands
That’s obviously true. And I don’t deny that if you want an orchestra to achieve world-class standards in a hugely competitive environment, you have to make intense and unflagging demands. But those demands cannot include inflicting psychological (let alone physical) damage on your colleagues.
It’s not just a question of behaving decently as a matter of course. It’s also about respecting the very basis on which professional music is made, and for which we expect music-lovers, donors, sponsors and governments to pay – that it is one of the highest expressions of human civilisation.
There is nothing civilised about bullying.
Richard Morrison is chief music critic and a columnist of The Times. This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of BBC Music Magazine
