Miffed at BSO, famed maestro backs out
By Jeremy Eichler
There is an eminent Russian conductor encamped at a private home in Brookline, and he is fuming.
In an extremely rare public flare-up in the outwardly genteel world of major symphony orchestras, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, the 77-year-old maestro who is one of the last living links to a golden era of Russian music, has pulled out of the entire run of four concerts he was scheduled to conduct with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, which began on Thursday.
He is outraged, he said yesterday, at how disrespectfully, in his view, the BSO administration had marketed his appearances to the public.
In an emotional 40-minute interview at the home of a friend, Rozhdestvensky and his wife, Viktoria Postnikova, explained the maestro's abrupt decision to withdraw from the performances, including concerts scheduled for tonight and Tuesday, and to return today to Moscow. He began with a pointed clarification.
"The BSO told its audiences I was 'unable to conduct this performance as planned,' " he said, referring to an announcement that appeared in a program insert and on the BSO's website. "I must say that I was able to conduct." Full stop. "And how."
Read more about this at the Boston Globe website:
www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2008/11/22/miffed_at_bso_famed_maestro_backs_out/
