National Symphony Orchestra musicians have decided that enough is enough, that on the stage of the National Concert Hall they want air with normal levels of oxygen.
Their discomfort has reached such a pitch that last week they voted unanimously to demand from RTE management an alternative rehearsal venue until the conditions in Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin are improved.
The NCH says that the problem is being rectified.
The players have been complaining about conditions onstage for a long time. Some parts are hot, they say, while others are chilly. They say the lack of oxygen, which was last year confirmed by independent tests, is serious where people such as musicians are working with an increased heart rate and with special demands in breathing, not least for wind players.
Regular concert-goers at the NCH will know that the hall's temperature can vary, but the audience only has to listen, not to play. "Performing involves quite an expenditure of energy," says one musician. "It's now accepted that the centre of the stage, where the woodwind are, is not getting a sufficient change of air, and there's a build-up of carbon dioxide."
It had become a familiar sight to see players leaving the stage during concerts, and members are "getting dizzy while they're on the stage, and some of them just have to stay there".
The players' ire has been triggered by the fact that, as their SIPTU representative Mr John Swift puts it, "commitments given earlier were not met". Work which it was agreed last November would be completed by the end of January has not been done, he says.
RTE's director of music, Mr Niall Doyle, says musicians' concerns about their working conditions in the National Concert Hall had been on the table for a number of years. "We are going to sit down immediately with the musicians and the NCH and see what can be done about the situation."
The NCH's PR/marketing manager, Ms Jacqui Mahon, agrees there is an air problem but said 36 separate stage panels "to disperse the air more evenly and efficiently" were "to be delivered tomorrow morning".
The delay, she says, has been caused by difficulties in securing a contractor to work between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m., so that the normal activity of the hall would not be disrupted. "It seems to us that the orchestra members are not aware of what's going on."
The unusual noises the musicians are making are surfacing just when RTE and the NCH are renegotiating their contract.
