What does the review carried out for RTÉ by Helen Boaden, formerly of the BBC, mean?
Well it means months of waiting and speculation are over. And it means that RTÉ really is to consider ditching at least one of its orchestras.
That means insecurity for full-time orchestral musicians in Ireland may well get worse before it gets better.
One immediate response would be that both RTÉ and the Boaden review have followed the most obvious and the most base route.
RTÉ’s support of orchestras is enshrined in the Broadcasting Act of 2009. So, assuming that the Government was never likely to let the national broadcaster entirely off the hook when it came to orchestral provision, the cheapest option would be for RTÉ to hold on to the smaller of its two orchestras, and hive off the larger one as best it can.
That is exactly what the review proposes.
This is actually the reversal of a perception that RTÉ’s orchestral musicians have had for as long as I can remember. As a prestigious national cultural asset dealing with the greatest works of the orchestral canon, the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) has always appeared to be more secure than the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.
Recent contractions
The NSO can tackle anything composers can throw at it. The Concert Orchestra, which until recent contractions was about half the size of the NSO, is shut out by its size from a lot of the great 19th- and 20th-century repertoire.
Look at it this way: the NSO is far better equipped to do what the Concert Orchestra does than the other way around.
From RTÉ’s point of view, the main matter behind retaining the Concert Orchestra would appear to be money, not music. The review’s terms of reference set that out plainly, so the likelihood of a recommendation that would lead to a return to the kind of orchestral provision that RTÉ supplied only a few years ago was negligible.
There’s no doubting that RTÉ’s management of its orchestras over the last few years was like a calculated depreciation of once-valued assets. Letting the NSO reach a complement of just 68 players brought it back to a level last known in the 1950s.
Demolition inevitable
Letting that happen bears an uncanny resemblance to property developers letting buildings fall into disrepair to make demolition inevitable.
And in a national context, it contradicts all the pats on the back that our public and political figures like to give us about the wonderful cultural life we nurture in this country.
It’s widely understood that cultural spending in Ireland is among the lowest per capita in Europe. And the situation for orchestral music, and specifically symphonic music, is also dire. RTÉ has had a monopoly in this area since the founding of the state.
The single most positive outcome of Boaden, should its main recommendation be acted on, is that it will challenge that monopoly. It will not completely break it, because the monopoly in the largest orchestral repertoire will simply transfer to the new and independent (whatever that will really mean) National Symphony Orchestra.
But in music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann and on to the smaller-scale works of our own time, there will for the first time be the possibility of meaningful competition between two Irish orchestras.
The Boaden review’s solution to RTÉ’s problem is essentially a solution that is to be achieved by spending other people’s money. RTÉ is no longer going to pay for the NSO, and wants the Government to shoulder the burden instead.
The broadcaster has never had a smooth relationship with the world of politics. So the big question is going to be this: will the Government simply let RTÉ off the hook?
Or might it copper fasten a new legislative arrangement to give any independent National Symphony Orchestra a prescribed slice of RTÉ’s licence money cake to limit the Government’s own allocation for the newly independent orchestra?
And quite apart from that, you can be sure that the road to that orchestra will also be paved with any number of administrative and industrial relations pitfalls. Whatever response the RTÉ board makes to the Boaden review, this particular orchestral story will be a long time playing out.
