Playing for peanuts
New tax legislation means that life in Britain’s orchestras is getting harder – as if it wasn’t hard enough. Jessica Duchen hears the inside stories

Published: 08 November 2005

My husband, Tom Eisner, doesn’t have a job. He has a vocation. He spends his working life making a noise on a wooden contraption in the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s first violin section. At a time when it has been revealed that the Government’s planned changes to National Insurance payments could bankrupt most of the UK’s orchestras, Tom, like his vastly talented colleagues, is determined to keep on making that wonderful noise, come what may.

Orchestral players have greeted this latest financial development with a certain ennui. British orchestras are political footballs: falling down the crack between the floorboards of European subsidy and American, tax-broken sponsorship, they benefit a little from both, yet substantially from neither. They’re accustomed to lurching from crisis to cock-up, as subject to the latest government whim as nurses or teachers; they’re underpaid and undervalued, given the extensive training and expertise demanded by their jobs; worst, they’re often misunderstood by a public who sometimes ask them, “What’s your real job?”

Orchestral life means lousy pay, antisocial hours, extremely hard work and huge stress. But the focus, the excitement, the team spirit and the thrill of making music with up to 99 other people in front of an audience can prove utterly addictive. “Playing in an orchestra is a vocation,” stresses the LPO second violinist Fiona Higham. “If you thought of it simply as a job, you wouldn’t do it.”

British orchestras have a unique system for appointing new members: after auditioning, several prospective appointees are taken “on trial”. The process can take a year or more. Still, most musicians are convinced that this system works.

Once a player is in, the pressure is on. The French violinist Philippe Honoré recently joined the Philharmonia as principal second violin, a half-time post in that orchestra. A long-time member of the Vellinger Quartet, he hasn’t been in a symphony orchestra before. “I’d never thought I would enjoy being part of such a big noise so much,” he laughs. “I’m enjoying the social aspect and the repertoire. But we have very little rehearsal for a demanding schedule and difficult programmes. British orchestras work two or three times faster than any in continental Europe, and the amazing thing is, they are better, too. Working under such pressure gives the concerts an edge; but the downside is that there isn’t time to explore the music in more depth.”

That’s the musical side, but life outside is equally pressured. Orchestral players are finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet. A rank-and-file player can earn up to £40,000 per annum in the London Symphony Orchestra, but the equivalent post in the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras is unlikely to be more than £30,000 – in the North it’s nearer £25,000.

Musicians in the self-governing orchestras are on Schedule D, and if they don’t work, they don’t earn. These orchestras offer their members no pension schemes, no health insurance beyond in-house benevolent funds and, in some cases, no fixed retirement age. Players in salaried positions with the Hallé and BBC orchestras, for example, have increased stability, but less flexibility and less ready cash. Money was more plentiful in the 1980s; now there are fewer recording sessions, less sponsorship and more competition for work such as film scores and advertising. With house prices high and instrument prices soaring, players are increasingly turning to alternative sources of income: teaching, property development, massage and more.

Bringing up a family becomes a logistical nightmare. One LPO violinist, a father of two, found an orchestral job in Germany, where life is duller but more practical. Another dad now installs bathrooms for a living. Some couples decide not to have children. Miranda Davis, a freelance orchestral viola player, is among them. “I couldn’t think how I could do it,” she says. “You only earn enough money if you work extremely hard. And kids can feel absolutely bereaved if their mother vanishes off on tour.”
Performance stress and stage fright can take a huge toll, especially for a principal player, whose personal sound is constantly exposed. Annie, a veteran, says: “It can be terrifying. We had 10 years of difficult 20th-century repertoire under Simon Rattle, which was hard for the percussion – and you’re on your own at the top of the orchestra!”

That’s one reason healthy living plays a bigger part in orchestral life than it used to. The old drinking-culture has disappeared. Increased competition for jobs means that nobody can afford to rest on their laurels.

The oboist

Emma Ringrose
Sub-principal oboe, BBC Philharmonic

I’ve been playing the oboe since I was nine. By the time I was 15, I hoped I might be able to play in an orchestra, but it seemed like a distant dream. I studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, in Manchester, graduated in 1995, then freelanced for six years before joining the BBC Philharmonic.

My twin boys are just over a year old. I took a year off when I had them, the maximum time that I could, to get some sanity back into my life. It’s tricky to manage the schedule, but we’re incredibly lucky to have a flexible part-time nanny – without her, we’d struggle, because two nursery places would cost more than my salary.

I don’t tour at the moment, as I can’t travel with the boys; the orchestra allows me unpaid leave. Fortunately my partner is an accountant and is supportive. It would be much more difficult if we were both musicians.

I do feel secure in my job in terms of the warmth and emotional support among my colleagues, but with any orchestra in the current climate you can’t be certain where it’s going to go in the future – with all the movement, you’re never sure what’s going to happen. The whole orchestral scene is like that: we love it, but sometimes other people don’t see the necessity for it.

The double-bassist

Matthew Gibson
Double bass, London Symphony Orchestra

I’ve been playing with the LSO since 1990 and have been a full member since 1992. I studied at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London. I started the cello aged eight and was so bad that my teacher said I should try the double bass. Once I started playing in groups with other people, I caught the bug.

I’m involved in the LSO’s education programme, Discovery, which is wide-ranging; 60 to 70 per cent of the orchestra participates. I think orchestras have become much more flexible in what we offer the community – which justifies our existence.

The sheer talent of all the musicians, hearing what we can do together on a daily basis – that’s very inspiring. The effort and dedication are amazing.

The violinist

Fiona Higham
Second violin, London Philharmonic Orchestra

I grew up in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music, but was launched into the profession accidentally, when I was offered work touring with an excellent chamber orchestra. When I had my first taste of playing with a symphony orchestra, that was it.

For the past 13 years I’ve been a single mother to two daughters. This is a hard profession even if you have a spouse who can cover the antisocial hours; my children both play instruments, but they don’t want to become musicians.

One huge reason why orchestras struggle is because conductors’ fees are so high – a conductor can earn up to £15,000 for one concert, while we’re paid around £100.

HAL ROBINSON: The bassist is featured in the film ‘Music from the Inside Out.’
ANKER PRODUCTIONS

By Peter Rainer | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

In the new documentary “Music from the Inside Out,” the players of the Philadelphia Orchestra who are interviewed seem lit from within. Whatever their life’s difficulties have been, they know they are blessed.

Musicmaking isn’t simply a job to them, it’s a calling. Individually or in groups, on the road or at home, they talk about the sounds they create as if they were discussing living tissue – which, in a sense, it is. As one violinist says, “Music is what we are composed of.”

The great virtue of this film, which was directed by Daniel Anker (“Scottsboro: An American Tragedy”), is that it doesn’t attempt to neatly summarize the musical experience. Anker gives the players free rein to express their wonderment. “Music moves me very deeply,” says a violist, “but I don’t know why it moves me.”

The musicians – including a trombonist who plays after hours in a salsa band, and a Japanese violinist who says she first picked up the instrument as a child because the sound annoyed her mother – are presented as regular people who have been anointed with a gift they do not fully comprehend, or want to. The ineffability of their musicmaking is central to their passion. They are in the throes of something greater than themselves.

Anker is not trying for a backstage story or a muckraking inside job. He doesn’t get into the competitiveness that must surely govern the orchestra, and he barely includes its guest conductors. Instead, this movie about great musicians in a great orchestra is told almost entirely through their love for music.

Ultimately, they play for themselves even as they play together. The paradox of performing in an orchestra is that it is an intensely private experience in a public arena. “I love saying something that only I can say,” says Kim, the principal second violinist. “I’m not doing it for anyone, I’m doing it for me.”

Anker has had extensive experience in the music documentary field, and he gives us extended, unbroken passages of Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, and Stravinsky on the soundtrack. It is vital that he include these masterpieces so that we can understand what it means when one of the players says that “great music gets at something inside you that you didn’t know you had.” You don’t have to be a master instrumentalist to connect up to that sentiment. Grade: A-

Installation meant to highlight waste faces being shut off as lack of rainfall threatens wildlife

Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Wednesday July 27, 2005

A water company has given notice to a work of art which has already shed enough water to sprinkle half the lawns in Surrey.
The artist disconsolately conceded yesterday that his installation, The Running Tap, has probably run its course after pouring an estimated 800,000 litres (1.4m pints) down the drain during one of the worst droughts in the south-east in decades.

“Well that’s it, isn’t it?” Mark McGowan said miserably after a formal notice from Thames Water that if he does not turn the tap off, it will cut off the water to the entire gallery. “One way or another, I reckon it will be gone by Thursday.

“The people in the gallery are really, really nice, and they’re a bit worried, particularly about having no water in the toilet, which I can understand.”
He turned on the cold water tap, running into a sink in the kitchen space of the small artist-run House gallery in Camberwell, south-east London, on June 28.

He intended to leave it running for a year – to highlight, he insists, the way people waste water.

Thames Water, already facing fierce criticism over the worst leakage from broken pipes of any water company in the country, was not amused.

The Running Tap provoked passionate reactions – a few supporters and many more enraged. One sent a birthday card with the warning inside that if the tap was not turned off, the gallery would be blown up.

The irony was that in the course of producing the work, McGowan has become messianic about water wastage: yesterday he spluttered with outrage about people washing their teeth or cleaning vegetables under a running tap. At the weekend he denounced a family member for running the washing machine daily for only a handful of clothes.

Yesterday a spokesman for Thames Water confirmed that it had started legal proceedings. “We tried everything possible to reach a compromise – we would have been happy to work with him on collecting and recycling the water. But there was a very strong groundswell of opinion among our customers that we should do something about this.”

A surprising face saver has emerged: the gallery has just received an email inquiry from the United States about buying both the tap and the sink – and replacing them with somewhere to fill the kettle and wash the coffee mugs – in order to recreate the work in exile.

McGowan – whose previous creations include walking backwards for 11 miles with a turkey on his head, to draw attention to the problem of obesity – has never earned more than £400 from his art.

If the tap has to run dry, he is not at all opposed to selling it: the money would probably be split between artist and gallery.

“It would have been really nice to leave it running for a year,” he said sadly.

“But I don’t think people take any notice. They just get really angry. My theory is it’s the people who get most angry who go away and waste the most water.”