The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is quality goods.
The musicians contend that management is exaggerating the situation and that filing for bankruptcy will undermine the orchestra's quality and discourage donors.
Administrators said that the players would not be assigned duties beyond what they normally do or in ways that would hurt the orchestra's quality.
Others, looking back further to Pierre Monteux's reign, think it our most French orchestra, a quality nurtured by Previn and latterly Claudio Abbado.
Contributor Brett Campbell called the recording one of the year's "most compelling", with "blistering, committed, sharply etched performances" that illustrate the orchestra's quality under Kalmar's leadership.
But before tackling those texturally complex works Mr. Spano demonstrated his orchestra's qualities at the opposite extreme, in the haunting pianissimo string writing that opens and closes Mr. Pärt's "Fratres".
Such erosion in salaries, Mr. Lester says, would ultimately put the orchestra's artistic quality at risk.
Instead the account of the Goldberg Variations was the outstanding performance of the evening, testament both to the success of violinist Dmitry Sitkovetsky's arrangement for string orchestra and the quality of the Britten Sinfonia's playing.
And while negotiations are expected to be difficult, especially for the 20 to 30percentt of the musicians who never accepted hoshin homilies, everyone's larger concern seems to be whether the city is prepared to sustain the orchestra's high quality.
GRAPHIC: Highest-earning art executives | Highest-earning conductors Lehninger had his hands full not only with four different sorts of soloists but a community chorus full of gusto and an orchestra of variable quality, with very good players and sections that need improvement.
