Inside the BSO power struggle that led to Andris Nelsons’s fall [Boston Globe]

He had the love of the players, but in the end, that wasn’t enough for Andris Nelsons to keep his job.

Gasps erupted across Symphony Hall as news broke about the unceremonious dismissal of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music director last Friday. Some orchestra members wept backstage. Their grief came with outrage. Not only were the musicians not consulted about the move, they learned about it at the same time as the broader public: Nelsons was out because he wasn’t “aligned on future vision.”

Stricken, the players hastily organized a meeting the following day, where they read aloud a letter of opposition intended for board members. That evening, they registered a symbolic protest from the stage: Instead of tuning up in front of the audience, as they normally do, the musicians entered en masse just before the night’s performance.

“We strongly oppose the decision by the Board of Trustees to end the appointment of Maestro Nelsons,” the musicians said in a statement posted to social media. “The musicians believe in Andris’s vision for the future.”

In an interview Friday, BSO president Chad Smith said that he recognized “the orchestra is angry” over Nelsons, who will leave the symphony at the end of the 2027 Tanglewood season.

“That is very clear. We know that there’s a lot of anger and pain in this moment,” he said. “But this decision is a part of a deliberate process and comes back to this idea of how is our organization, how is our orchestra, going to thrive and be viable for the next 145 years.”

The players’ profound shock speaks to the high regard they have for Nelsons, who over the past 13 years has forged a remarkable bond with his musicians. But current and former executives, staff, and players interviewed by the Globe say the maestro’s fall is the bare-knuckled endgame of a years-long power struggle over the soul of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble renowned for its musical excellence, but which has struggled to keep pace with the times.

The battle has pitted Nelsons, the musicians, and a few key executives against the BSO’s potentially transformative board chair, Barbara Hostetter, an understated philanthropist who in recent years has overseen the hiring of two reform-minded chief executives — first Gail Samuel and now Chad Smith — with the charge to modernize one of the world’s most revered symphony orchestras.

Nelsons and Anthony Fogg, BSO vice president for artistic planning, have sought to preserve the orchestra’s storied traditions, while gradually introducing more innovative programming. Hostetter and Smith, meanwhile, are seeking more dramatic change, arguing the BSO is in a fight for relevance as audiences shrink, significant deficits continue, and the cost of deferred maintenance mount at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood.

This battle between preservation and change, old and new, musicians and the newer members of the executive team and the board has led to wounded feelings and unusually barbed accusations in the normally circumspect world of classical music and Boston’s monied elite.

“The goal of the new management and the new board, since Barbara Hostetter took over, has been to change the entire Boston symphony,” said violinist Jennie Shames, who retired last year after 45 years with the ensemble. “Gail Samuel was hired for the purpose of changing the whole profile of the Boston symphony. Chad was hired for the same reason.”

Smith repudiated the notion that Nelsons’s brusque removal had been years in the offing.

“I can’t refute that hard enough,” he said. “I also want to say that we want to celebrate Andris for his 13 years as music director.”

Hostetter, who oversaw a major expansion and modernization of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum during her decade as board president of that institution, did not directly address the reasons for Nelsons’s expulsion, saying she is primarily concerned with the continued vibrancy of the Boston symphony.

“I bring to my volunteer role a reverence for this extraordinary institution, profound admiration for its brilliant musicians, and a deep commitment to our audiences,” she said in a statement. My “focus has been, and will continue to be, on ensuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra remains strong in every sense: artistically vibrant, financially sustainable, and deeply connected to the communities we serve.”

Current and former BSO employees said strife over the direction of the orchestra emerged several years ago between Hostetter and former BSO president Mark Volpe, a close ally to Nelsons and Fogg.

“She just saw Mark as not being progressive enough,” said one former executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personal conversations. “It was going to be [a] complete sea change or nothing, and I think for Mark, it just was not in his wheelhouse to think about change.”

Volpe, who did not respond to an interview request, presided over the BSO for some 23 years. The son of a professional musician, he prized the orchestra, and was a prodigious fund-raiser, amassing tremendous power at Symphony Hall. But the BSO also ran up operating deficits under Volpe, who was beloved by some but regarded by others as out of step with the diverse city that had changed around him.

Notably, the former chief executive also oversaw the hiring of James Levine, the now-disgraced conductor whose Boston tenure was marred by numerous withdrawals over health concerns.

So when Nelsons took the rostrum in 2013, he wasn’t just a fresh new face, he was a balm to the neglected ensemble. In Nelsons, the BSO had a charismatic young conductor, who many hoped would settle into the city with his new family.

“Boston is his primary location and primary interest,” a board member insisted at the time.

But it didn’t turn out that way. His head in the score, the Latvian-born Nelsons had limited appetite for the kind of public showmanship of former BSO conductor Seiji Ozawa or the Pops’s Keith Lockhart. His home remained in Europe, and within a few years, the in-demand conductor announced he would take on additional duties as music director for the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Nevertheless, Volpe, Fogg, and Nelsons developed a strong working relationship. The president could squire the young maestro about, smoothing over his spotty English and ingratiating him to the donor class. Meanwhile, Boston audiences grew to admire, if not know, Nelsons, who delivered them a steady diet, rich in the big, canonical works he adores.

“They became a triumvirate,” one recently retired executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity said of Volpe, Fogg, and Nelsons. “They very much functioned that way.”

Still, Nelsons’s lack of social awareness signaled to some that he lacked the cultural sensitivity necessary to lead a modern American orchestra. In one memorable instance in 2017, the maestro was asked whether classical music had a sexual harassment problem. His response, just as the #metoo movement was catching fire: “No ... many things are artificially exaggerated or made too important.”

Eight months later, the orchestra’s former principal flute, Elizabeth Rowe, sued the BSO for pay discrimination, arguing she made a mere fraction of the salary of the ensemble’s principal oboist, a man. The BSO, which initially disputed the claim, settled with Rowe in 2019.

‘‘Money is the one thing that we can look to to measure people’s value in an organization,’’ Rowe, who called the BSO’s initial response “devastating,” said before settling.

The social justice movement was in full swing by the time Hostetter became board chair in 2021. The philanthropist, who co-founded the progressive Barr Foundation with her husband, Amos, and who has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars around the region, moved quickly to consolidate power at the board level.

Volpe left that same year, an ugly split, according to current and former staffers.

By then, Hostetter was already leading the search committee for Volpe’s replacement: Gail Samuel, a top executive at the trailblazing Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Samuel was brought on as a change agent. She was announced to much fanfare as the BSO’s first woman president, and board leadership hoped she’d deliver a little razzle-dazzle to the Boston ensemble, increasing community engagement, taming deficits, and evolving its programming.

“Her understanding of classical music, business, and most importantly, the critical intersection of the two, is impressive,” Hostetter told the Globe at the time. “We look forward to her skilled stewardship of the BSO.”

But Samuel faced steep challenges in Boston. Not only were audiences hesitant to return after the pandemic, but staff morale had cratered after the BSO laid off more than a quarter of its full-time administrative employees in 2020.

Samuel had been passed over for the top job in L.A., and she struggled to garner support for her vision with BSO subordinates. Current and former employees say the new president soon became isolated and tensions flared with Nelsons.

“It was clear to everyone within the first month that she didn’t like Andris,” said the former executive, characterizing conversations with Samuel.

Samuel, who did not respond to an interview request, quickly flamed out: She resigned after just 18 months, a tumultuous run during which many top executives and staff left the organization.

When it came time to select the symphony’s next leader, the board looked again to the L.A. Phil, which under the baton of superstar Gustavo Dudamel was widely regarded as the country’s most important and progressive symphony orchestra.

Its president, Chad Smith, had worked closely with Samuel. Now he would lead Boston, ushering in an expansive new vision for the symphony.

“I think that’s why I’m here,” he told the Globe in 2024. “The critical decisions we’re going to make will set us up for the next 50 years.”

In the Friday interview, Smith said the Boston symphony is today focused on three main areas: the orchestra itself, as well as expanding audiences by investing in “core repertoire” and new works and programs, including thematic festivals and artist-led curation; community partnerships and education; and “renovating and expanding” Symphony Hall.

He added, however, the symphony faces epochal challenges.

“We’ve seen something like a 40 percent decline in classical music attendance at the BSO over the past two decades,” said Smith, who added that its facilities have about $90 million in deferred maintenance. “Our business has been running deficits consistently for nearly two decades, and over the course of those two decades, we’ve de-capitalized our endowment by over $100 million.”

The pandemic has been a force multiplier: Internal BSO figures indicate attendance at orchestral concerts is down 20 percent from pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the BSO’s overall endowment has swelled by more than $180 million over the past two decades to $536 million.

“We’re facing some very unprecedented challenges,” said Smith, calling it a “critical inflection point.”

Hostetter, who expressed confidence in Smith, said her philanthropic energies at the BSO and other cultural organizations have been motivated by one guiding principle.

My “engagement as a trustee of civic, philanthropic and cultural organizations across the region has been motivated by a simple objective,” she said in her statement, “helping vital institutions that contribute to the civic and artistic fabric of our communities to thrive and flourish for generations to come.”

Soon after Smith’s arrival, the BSO announced that Nelsons, who’d previously enjoyed multiyear contracts, would switch to a rolling evergreen contract.

The BSO described the new arrangement in positive terms at the time, saying it could extend Nelsons’s tenure indefinitely. But skeptics wondered if it also gave the organization an easy way to jettison the maestro when the time came.

Meanwhile, Nelsons has maintained his international career with its grueling schedule, leading the Leipzig ensemble and touring with heavyweights like the Vienna Philharmonic.

He’s continued to cultivate fans in Boston and beyond: All told, the orchestra has won six Grammy Awards under Nelsons’s baton, including two earlier this year.

But there have also been some missteps. Some have questioned whether he’s overextended. And critics at The New York Times appear to have soured on him, with one essentially calling for his removal in January, writing: “Something will have to give.”

Anne Midgette, a former classical music critic at The Washington Post, said it’s not unusual for an in-demand conductor to hold positions with multiple orchestras, calling Nelsons one of the era’s “big conductors.”

“Once you’re holding Boston and Leipzig at the same time, and working regularly with Vienna, then, of course you’re one of the big talents,” she said. But “he’s so overextended. How can you possibly do all that repertoire and really delve into it?”

Meanwhile, at Symphony Hall, some current and former employees have criticized Smith’s managerial approach, calling it “one of fear, intimidation, and ridicule.”

They allege the chief executive has “humiliated” employees and had a particular focus on Fogg, the vice president for artistic planning who announced his retirement last month.

An orchestra member who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals recalled a meeting in which Smith “threw Tony under the bus,” while another person, a former staffer, said they had repeatedly witnessed Fogg “berated or belittled” by Smith in meetings.

Fogg declined an interview request.

Smith did not address allegations he has mistreated his subordinates, saying there was a lot of staff turnover when he arrived.

“I joined the Boston Symphony at a period of real transition,” he said. “We’ve been able to stabilize that staff, and, more importantly, we’ve been able to recruit and retain some of the finest arts professionals in the country.”

One current staff member recalled Smith also hectored Nelsons about his health after the conductor, whose weight has fluctuated over the years, withdrew from a concert.

“He made Andris’s life really terrible,” said the staffer, who added that Nelsons at the time confided that Smith’s behavior made him uncomfortable. Smith was “really trying to find any chink in his armor.”

Smith also declined to address those allegations; Nelsons declined an interview request through his management company.

But if Nelsons was losing the support of Smith and the board, the musicians loved him fiercely.

“Andris Nelsons is one of the great conductors I’ve worked with by far, and I’ve worked with anyone you can imagine,” said Edwin Barker, who served as the BSO’s principal bass for nearly half a century before his retirement last year. “I have never seen the esprit de corps in the orchestra so high as it has been under Andris Nelsons’s tenure.”

Current orchestra members expressed similar admiration for the conductor, saying they are outraged at the harshness of his dismissal.

In a letter addressed to BSO leadership, principal flute Lorna McGhee said she was devastated by Nelsons’s removal, calling him “the deepest, most humble, most sincere, truest musician I have ever worked with.”

The “decision not to renew Andris’ tenure is a form of artistic suicide,” she wrote. “It represents the greatest squandering of artistic capital I have ever witnessed.”

Smith, meanwhile, said the coming search for Nelsons’s replacement will be an opportunity for the BSO “to really reimagine the kind of music director that we want,” adding, “I’m very much focused on the future.”

In the meantime, the BSO said it plans to fete Nelsons before he leaves at the end of the 2027 Tanglewood season, an event that typically concludes with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, including the triumphant “Ode to Joy.”

The performance, at this point, seems a long way off.

A.Z. Madonna contributed reporting.

Source: https://archive.ph/HDCK4#selection-1659.0-1879.35 // https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/13/arts/andris-nelsons-bso-ouster-power-struggle/