Discordant notes strike Vanbrugh

Amid fears that RTÉ may reduce its commitment to the Vanbrugh Quartet, MARY LELANDgauges reaction in its resident city of Cork and MICHAEL DERVANteases out the issues

EVERY DAY for five days a week the RTÉ gives €1,000 to a lucky listener able to answer such questions as whether or not Paris is the capital of France. That’s €5,000 a week, €20,000 a month, €240,000 a year. That money would pay, twice over, the RTÉ fees now being earned by the RTÉ Vanbrugh string quartet. With its income from RTÉ cut from €50,000 each to €30,000 each this year, the renewal of its contract for one year instead of three and the sudden commissioning of a brief, questionnaire-based study, the future of the Cork-based quartet looks uncertain.

Chamber music, the small ensembles and demanding repertoire, could be seen as a minority indulgence or even (horror of horrors!) elitist. But now that the date for the presentation of the report RTÉ commissioned from composer and arts advisor Philip Hammond draws near, music-lovers all over the country and abroad are expressing disbelief that a national broadcaster could willingly unburden itself of a renowned and hard-working group of musicians it has sustained for nearly quarter of a century.

Reactions of amazement, support, and assertions of the Vanbrugh’s importance and influence, are flowing in from performers, teachers, journalists and instrument-makers, for this is not a problem for Cork alone. It may be in Cork, and in smaller venues around the country, as well as in Dublin, that the excitement of the Vanbrugh performances and the controlled effervescence of its playing-style are most strongly experienced, but there seems to be a consensus beyond the live experience, beyond the discography. That consensus gives an account of the quartet’s stewardship: how it has managed the brief it was given and what has grown from the talents assembled within this group of solo players with collaborative instincts.

RTÉ director-general Cathal Goan has said, in a letter to Michael Creed TD, that there has been a misrepresentation of its intentions for the quartet, which he describes as “a legally established, VAT-registered partnership which supplies chamber music services to RTÉ on a non-exclusive basis”. He continues that all suppliers of professional services to RTÉ were asked to significantly reduce their fees and many creative and support service providers accepted double-digit reductions, as well as reduced contract durations, as a realistic response to RTÉ’s financial situation, while RTÉ staff had agreed reductions of up to 12.5 per cent.

Goan writes that in discussions RTÉ and the quartet were acutely aware of market conditions for the supply of chamber music services.

“I believe an equitable arrangment has been achieved which will ensure that the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet earns €4,000 plus expenses for each concert it undertakes in 2010. This level of professional fee, while down by 40 per cent on 2009 fee levels, is generous and is still considerably above what other chamber music promoters will pay if they choose to engage the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet or most other quartets.” It is understood the quartet is to give 30 concerts in its 2010 RTÉ programme. Goan points out that the quartet, “unfettered and unrestricted by RTE, has remunerated relationships with UCC, the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, DIT and chamber music promoters” here and abroad.

Appointed by RTÉ in 1986 the Vanbrugh, then consisting of Gregory Ellis (first violin), Elizabeth Charleson, Simon Aspell (viola) and Christopher Marwood (cello) has depended on the security of the residency to allow involvement in the CIT School of Music, at UCC, where they have been artists in residence for more than 10 years, and now at DIT.

They are co-founders of the internationally known West Cork Chamber Music Festival, have performed as a guest quartet at prestigious events abroad, include many internationally renowned musicians in their annual programme of tours around Ireland, have commissioned as many as 50 new works from Irish composers and established the Vanbrugh Scholarship Fund for the education of young players. There is now a RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet chamber music competition run by the Cork School of Music, where the Cork Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Keith Pascoe, who joined as second violin when Elizabeth Charleson retired 11 years ago. Recognised at the time as a crucial element in Cork’s bid for the designation of European Capital of Culture in 2005, the quartet organised the marvelous European Quartet Week for that event.

The players are prevented by their contract from commenting on their future with RTÉ. Even without that clause it is likely that they would be reluctant to say much. This is a group of mature professional people in the prime of their careers. It is not, for them, a matter of the begging bowl or poor mouth.

They have grown grey in this city, but without losing the verve for which they were immediately appreciated when, as four young but already noteworthy musicians, they left gilded opportunities in London to settle in Cork. Here they had security of tenure in a pensioned job as salaried employees of the national broadcaster, earning at the same level as principals in the RTÉ Symphony Orchestra. Here they raised their families, here they developed into the mature musicians and cultural activists and ambassadors they are now; here they brought guest musicians of international fame. From that engagement has developed so much of what Cork, and Ireland, has gained from what Francis Humphreys of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival describes as “a brilliant investment’ by RTÉ”.

Co-founder with the Vanbrugh of the Bantry-based WCCMF, Humphreys believes that this group of exceptional quality, with a vast repertoire by no means limited to the conventional composers, has flourished in Cork. “And the value of their presence through the years is incalculable, especially with their encouragement of young Irish players and their performances of new Irish work. It’s absolutely crazy that RTÉ should be even thinking of letting them go, that it should even be considered, especially as, by any reckoning, they are such good value.”

The question of “value” can be indicated best perhaps by a summary of the quartet’s current working life . Even with cuts – Dublin concerts this autumn down from three to one and the cancellation of the educational strand of its touring programme – it still performs all over Ireland. As anyone used to dealing with classical musicians would know, the one-year contract makes it impossible to plan a programme for 2011 but the Vanbrugh is working on a nationwide series of free concerts in tune with the current economic conditions for the coming year.

So what has motivated RTÉ and its music department to tamper with its commitment to the quartet? It can’t be the economic downturn as changes began more than four years ago. “The Vanbrugh were reluctant then to change their status from employees to engagement on a service contract,” explains John Horgan, former chairman of the Labour Court and now spokesman for the Vanbrugh. “They felt they had no choice, it was a take-it-or-leave-it situation.” Take it or leave it seems to have been the management attitude since then, with the gradual whittling down which John A Murphy, Emeritus Professor of History at UCC and former Senator, describes as “a terrible philistinism”.

A regular member of Vanbrugh audiences in Cork, Prof Murphy remembers the campaigns launched by the late Professor Aloys Fleischmann against RTÉ’s administrative indifference. “RTÉ is the public service broadcaster, presuming to make decisions on our behalf and tell us what is acceptable. In this case they are telling us that these four people don’t matter. That’s contempt, as well as ignorance. Through their sheer verve and excellence and the frequency of their performances, the Vanbrugh has made chamber music acceptable to the general intelligent musical taste. Now the treatment they are receiving from RTÉ, the scaling back of their income, the imposition of a 40 per cent cut while the RTÉSO players had a 5 per cent cut – that’s appalling, absolutely appalling!” In John Horgan’s submission to Hammond on behalf of the quartet the issues of value-for-money, tenure and location are compellingly addressed. Horgan is convinced that the terms of reference are not only directed at reaching a particular conclusion but are based on the wrong principles and are entirely inappropriate. “The corporate value to RTÉ should be a factor of little importance to a consideration of the future of RTÉ’s support for chamber music,” says Horgan. “This is not a race meeting.

“The whole thing is wrong-headed. The Vanbrugh isn’t employed to enhance the glory of RTÉ – although it certainly does enhance its reputation as an employer of classical musicians – and if the quartet’s worth must be re-assessed it should be in terms of its contribution to Irish cultural life. That should be a public procedure, as with the Piano Report of 2005.”

Horgan is also shocked at how the whole business has been handled, given that Seamus Crimmins, executive director of RTÉ’s performing groups , is a fellow board member of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival.

“It’s embarrassing, really, that such a long acquaintanceship should come to this. We had agreed to meet to discuss the long-term future of the residency but a week before the meeting we were told by email that Hammond had been appointed. We were not shown the letter of appointment which included names of some of the people Philip should talk to, and we don’t know if we’ll even be allowed see his report, nor are we able to see RTE’s own submission.”

Given its conduct over the past few months Horgan (whom Hammond did not consult) now suspects that the RTÉ music department would prefer to act as impresario to visiting chamber music groups rather than fund a residency. "It's important to remember that RTE has been entrusted by the state to pay for classical music groups from the licence fee." ML

CORK IS UP in arms. Again. It’s a case of music being under threat. The battle to secure a new building for the Cork School of Music – which opened in September 2007 – was long and hard. But the new challenge has a sense of déja vu. Uniquely in Ireland, Cork has had a resident string quartet since 1959, courtesy of RTÉ. And the future of the current group, the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, appears under threat. It’s had its contract renewed, but for a single year (rather than three or five, as before), and its remuneration has been cut by 40 per cent.

It’s not the first time the Vanbrughs have been under threat. Back when Ray Burke was Minister for Communications he put the screws on RTÉ through the Broadcasting Act 1990, which capped the national broadcaster’s income from advertising.

RTÉ’s music groups suffered badly in the cutbacks which followed. The expansion of its symphony orchestra, which had been announced in 1989 and was not yet complete, was put on hold. The permanent RTÉ Chamber Choir was disbanded. The work of the project-based RTÉ Chorus was discontinued. And RTÉ announced the termination of its contract with the Vanbrughs.

The quartet was put on a retainer that reduced its busy schedule to 12 concerts a year, and the players lost 60 per cent of their income. The great and the good of the southern capital, and music lovers throughout the country, campaigned and the efforts seemed to have worked.

The draconian strictures of the 1990 act were repealed in time, the Vanbrugh’s position was restored, and the group survived and thrived. It has been the anchor ensemble of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival since it was established in 1996, and it was also at the heart of the European Quartet Week, a festival of quartets from around the world, as part of Cork’s reign as European Capital of Culture in 2005.

But the return of tough times has forced the Vanbrughs once again into the firing line, as RTÉ has had to find strategies to deal with problems of survival during a recession. In the early 1990s, there was no secretiveness about the music cuts.

RTÉ was fighting a very public battle with a controversial government minister, a man who would go on to be jailed for making false tax returns – he failed to declare monies he had received from the backers of Century Radio, a company that stood to benefit from the terms of the Broadcasting Act 1990.

RTÉ has been open about the cuts it has been forced to make in the current recession. Last summer, the station’s director general Cathal Goan told an Oireachtas committee that commercial income shrinkage at the beginning of 2009 had led to an unprecedented revenue shortfall of €68 million, which RTÉ was dealing with. The Performing Groups revenue, which was €18.29 million in 2008, took a hit, and 2009 saw the axing of the flagship RTÉ Living Music Festival (the 2008 event featuring Arvo Pärt, with the composer present, had been the most successful ever), and the cancellation of one of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra’s two annual nationwide tours.

The Vanbrughs have not escaped unscathed, although, this time, RTÉ has made no public statement about the changes. In a progressively worsening situation, RTÉ went through a series of budgets in 2009, and the negotiations with the Vanbrughs, whose existing three-year contract expired in December 2009, were delayed. The outcome was made even more worrying by a related development; RTÉ has commissioned a report on its current provision of chamber music, which is being prepared by former Arts Council of Northern Ireland executive, Philip Hammond. This will be delivered to RTÉ later this month.

Hammond’s report has three terms of reference. First, to “evaluate the corporate value to RTÉ of its support for chamber music to date and having consulted with relevant stake-holders, consider options for future activities in this area”; second, “With reference to other organisations which support chamber music, in Ireland and elsewhere, consider ways to optimise value for money to RTÉ in future chamber music services provision”; and finally to, “Make a limited number of recommendations for future chamber music supports based on opportunities around activities of range and quality which will impact with audiences at both local and national levels”.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but isn’t it strange that a report on RTÉ’s support for chamber music should have terms of reference which fail to mention the medium – the string quartet, a genre at the pinnacle of classical musical endeavour – which has for the past half century been the primary focus of RTÉ’s chamber music activity? The terms of reference have been taken, especially in Cork, to indicate that the outcome of the report might be a quartet-less, foregone conclusion.

The establishment of the quartet in 1959 was the result of lobbying headed by the late Aloys Fleischmann, UCC’s professor of music, founding director of the Cork International Choral and Dance Festival, and a formidable force for musical development in Ireland, especially in Cork.

He had wanted something bigger than a string quartet. “For many years,” he wrote in January 1959, “Cork has been agitating for the establishment of a resident orchestra in the new Cork broadcasting studios. The news that a string quartet is now to be stationed here, however much this falls short of our original hopes, has been received with much enthusiasm, and appreciation of this important concession to the principle of regional development has been widely expressed.”

But he wasn’t just writing to give Radio Éireann, as it then was, a pat on the back. He was dismayed that the job spec in the advertisement for the new quartet wanted to give “special consideration” to a violinist or viola player who was also qualified as a pianist and to a cellist who could also play the double bass.

Fleischmann understood that the presence of professional musicians has an energising effect on a community’s musical life. It’s no accident that Cork has been so heavily represented in the new wave of Irish chamber musicians that came to maturity in the last decade. If role models are important, there’s nothing to beat having a full-time chamber ensemble close to home to inspire a young musician with chamber music ideals.

The Cork residency is of inestimable importance to Cork. But it’s also been of huge value to the rest of the country. The various ensembles that have held the residency since 1959 have, in effect, been national string quartets. In the Vanbrugh case, its extended tenure – if it survives to 2011 it will have clocked up a quarter of a century – has seen the musicians give around 800 concerts in Ireland, and perform over 50 works by Irish composers.

It has been the mainstay of the string quartet not just in Cork, but over most of the country. And, when Sligo and Galway set up performing residencies, it was the string quartet model that they chose to follow. Like the Vanbrughs, the Voglers in Sligo and ConTempos in Galway have also spawned festivals of their own. But neither of them have had either the brief or the resources to function consistently on the kind of national level that’s been the Vanbrugh’s norm.

There are awkward questions that are going to have to be addressed in Hammond’s report. Musical residencies and artistic tenures are rarely as long as the Vanbrugh’s. Does the model need adjusting? The Vanbrugh’s RTÉ commitment runs to around 30 concerts a year. Could those be provided in a more cost-effective way in these straitened times by spreading the residency resources between a number of ensembles? Was it jam on the cake to allow the Vanbrughs to draw down salaries equivalent to principal players in an orchestra, and still allow them to pursue an international career, as they have been doing, when not giving concerts for RTÉ? Is RTÉ locked in to having a string quartet, as opposed to some other kind of ensemble? Would it, in human terms, be just to ditch the Vanbrughs, after such a long period? After all, they relocated from London and established roots in Cork in 1986, under the terms of the RTÉ residency. These are extraordinarily difficult times for anyone to set out on a new career direction, particularly in the arts. And there could not be a worse time for the Arts Council to have to think of picking up the tab.

The Arts Council seems to have been taken aback by the fury of the fightback from opera companies about its plans to wind them down and start a new national opera company in Wexford. If you’re already faced with extinction, then you’ve got nothing to lose in any battles you choose to fight. Cork has a formidable reputation in fighting musical battles.

Of course, there may well be other kinds of politics at play. There's nothing to make anyone quicker to accept a severe cut than the threat of a much worse one. Séamus Crimmins, executive director of RTÉ's performing groups, declined to comment on the Vanbrugh's situation, saying it would be inappropriate to say anything until the Hammond report had been completed and considered. It's going to be a nervous wait all round until the musical mandarins in Donnybrook decide what tune they're going to call. MD

The Vanbrugh story

1985: Founded in London

1986: appointed quartet in residence to RTÉ, based in Cork

1988: first prize in Portsmouth International String Quartet Competition

1990: contract with RTÉ cut by 60 per cent, following the Broadcasting Act 1990

1992: appointed artists-in-residence to UCC

1993: full contract with RTÉ restored

1995: won a National Entertainment Award

1996: established the Vanbrugh Quartet Scholarship Fund, co-founded the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, and recorded the complete Beethoven quartets for Swedish label Intim Musik

2000: represented Ireland at the Europamusicale festival of chamber music in Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic

2001: achieved higher pay for services provided through changing their status with RTÉ from employees to independent contractors

2004: toured the EU accession states as part of the cultural programme for Ireland's 2004 presidency of the EU

2006: won the largest ever Arts Council classical bursary – €110,400 over three years – to explore new areas of repertoire

2007: featured in a series of Irish stamps celebrating the RTÉ performing groups

2009: appointed lecturers in chamber music at the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama

2010: contract with RTÉ cut again

MD