Pierre Théberge, director of the National Gallery of Canada, is well known in Ottawa for taking his dog to work every day. But when he's not on the job, he doesn't assume that gallery staff will let his prized Airedale terrier have the run of the office.
Things are different across the river at the National Arts Centre Orchestra, where on at least one occasion Pinchas Zukerman's wife, cellist Amanda Forsyth, installed the couple's dog in the Conductor's Dressing Room while Zukerman was performing elsewhere. The guest conductor at the NACO that week presumably agreed that every dog must have his day.
The pooch incident has come to symbolize what some close to the NACO regard as an alarming sense of entitlement on the part of the orchestra's power couple. It may also offer a small clue in the continuing mystery of why Zukerman and Forsyth, who is principal cellist, have both abandoned the orchestra in the middle of the season.
Late last month, the NACO announced that the orchestra's energetic music director was tired and had decided to cancel all his concerts (and forgo payment for performing them) at the NAC till June. Zukerman hasn't uttered a public word on the subject, and his New York agent says he doesn't intend to. At about the same time as his departure became known, Forsyth went on indefinite medical leave.
Both have continued to perform elsewhere. They played together on Sunday night, at a Baltimore concert by the Zukerman Chamber Players, which includes three other Zukerman protégés from the NACO.
The NACO has grown accustomed to giving the music director's wife a long leash. When asked about her continued activity when she's officially unable to play with the NACO, orchestra manager Christopher Deacon said that other musicians had played outside gigs while on sick leave.
She suggested that "playing in another setting [might be]therapeutic as well as helpful" for Forsyth's recovery. Deacon also said Zukerman's absence, while regrettable, may help the NACO in the long run, because he'll return this summer with new energy and will have carried on with the programming and educational side of his job even while he's away from the NAC stage.
Zukerman is playing tonight with the Pacific Symphony in California, and conducting two different programs in the next few weeks with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. His freelance schedule between now and the end of the season includes dozens of concerts on three continents, including a European tour with the National Orchestra of Belgium.
That doesn't look like the agenda of a man dragging his feet with fatigue. Nor does it seem much in keeping with Zukerman's formal obligation, in the contract he signed with the NACO in 1998, "to ensure that his role and responsibility to NACO are a top priority of his career."
Those responsibilities have never been more pressing than right now. The orchestra's subscription-ticket sales dropped by almost 10 per cent between 2002 and 2004 (the latest year for which the NACO would provide figures). Average attendance is stuck at 65 per cent (the Toronto Symphony Orchestra last year recorded 85 per cent). The NACO needs a new concertmaster, which after the conductor is the single most important position in the orchestra. Key musicians, like some critics, say that the quality of the NACO has deteriorated.
"I've seen a lessening of the cohesiveness this orchestra used to have," said founding concertmaster Walter Prystawski, who confirmed that he and Zukerman are no longer on good terms. But he denied that his presence had prompted Zukerman's flight, since the music director had already made sure that Prystawski's place would be taken by others during all of Zukerman's concerts this season, including those on the NACO's recent tour of western Canada.
The public knows Zukerman as a dashing virtuoso violinist, whose face and name have been plastered on every surface available to the NACO's marketing department. Over the past seven years, the orchestra has come to know him as a polarizing figure whose charm can curdle drastically when he thinks he is being thwarted. The same musicians who speak admiringly of his playing say he is prone to making impulsive decisions, contemptuous of those who disagree and unable to admit mistakes. His confidence in his own managerial abilities, they say, knows no bounds.
"Pinchas could argue with God, that the Earth is turning in the wrong direction," said Rob McAlear, who was NAC music administrator from 1996 through 2000, and who now holds a similar position with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.
Zukerman's ways have jacked up the tension level in the orchestra, especially when it comes to hiring new musicians. Until he arrived, hiring decisions were reached by consensus, after an open discussion by an audition committee consisting of the conductor and several players, including section principals. But Zukerman's habit of belittling those who didn't share his opinions prompted the musicians' union to push for a system in which dissenting committee members could be shielded from the music director's wrath. For the past few years, hiring decisions have been reached by secret ballot.
Zukerman still has a veto over all hiring decisions, and his wife also votes on all string auditions. That's too much power, say some close to the NACO, especially given the couple's record of promoting players (and soloists) with whom they are personally friendly.
One of those players, violinist Martin Riseley, came to Ottawa from the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in 2003 as interim associate concertmaster. Riseley's wife is a close friend of Amanda Forsyth, and while he was seen to be an excellent player, some in the orchestra felt he was not a good fit with the NACO. After a probationary committee that included Prystawski presented this view to Zukerman, Riseley returned to Edmonton.
That event seems to mark the beginning of a souring of relations between Zukerman and his concertmaster. All of his concerts this year, including those on the recent tour of western Canada, were arranged so that the concertmaster's chair would be filled by a candidate to succeed Prystawski when he retires in June.
"I don't think it has anything to do with my professional competence," Prystawski said of the rift. "I've tried to talk to Pinchas about it, without success."
Zukerman will no doubt be pleased when Prystawski is gone, but his own absence has paralyzed the process of selecting a replacement. The candidates who were scheduled to sit in for trial performances during Zukerman's concerts this season will still play with the orchestra, but not with the music director.
So why has he decided to snub the orchestra, and its public, for the next six months?
Rob McAlear said he believes Zukerman was never a good fit with the administrative side of his job, and has probably become bored and impatient with his situation in Ottawa. McAlear recalls meetings in which Zukerman seemed unable to muster much interest in the details of programming, even in his first year.
"Finally, he just said, 'Call my agent, and get them to send you all my programs from St. Paul,' " McAlear said, referring to Zukerman's earlier seven-year gig as music director of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. After he studied the programs, McAlear realized that in those seven years, Zukerman had only covered enough works to fill two or three seasons and then repeated them in different permutations. He seemed uninterested in expanding his repertoire, and violently opposed to Canadian work, which McAlear said he routinely referred to as "shit." Rather than examine unfamiliar scores himself, Zukerman had them shipped to his accompanist, Marc Neikrug, in Santa Fe, N.M.
For all his apparent lustre as a marketing icon, Zukerman has actually undermined some of the NACO's market strengths. Early in his tenure, he cancelled a baroque-music series, in spite of the fact that the NACO had market research proving that the series was well-supported by an audience that might not be willing to shift its attention to other concerts. The recent decline in subscription-ticket sales may also be a sign that the NACO's most loyal listeners are becoming weary of the repetitions in Zukerman's programs. McAlear said the music director often spoke with contempt of Ottawa audiences, saying they would accept whatever he chose to give them.
"For me, his disappearance is the ultimate expression of that," McAlear said.
Right now, Zukerman is giving his Ottawa public nothing. The question isn't just whether he'll come back, to a job that pays him at least $500,000 (U.S.) per year. It's whether anyone in Ottawa will still care.