Is This Any Way to Run the European Capital of Culture?
Tallinn, Estonia
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Having Neeme Järvi return to Estonia to head the Estonian National Orchestra was like Bill Gates coming to work in the computer industry, said concertmaster Mihkel Peäkse in comments to the Estonian daily Postimees on November 27, 2010. “Such a thing has been taken from us now.”
Neeme Järvi
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Why? The answer for what must have been a deeply painful action by Järvi escapes firm detection – “many objective reasons” was his only comment when contacted by Music in Cincinnati -- but clearly something is rotten in Tallinn (translated “Danish city”). No stranger to Estonia myself, I caught up with Siitan on a visit in February to cover a master class in conducting led by Russian-American conductor Leonid Grin in Pärnu, the lovely resort town south of Tallinn on the coast of the Baltic. What emerged was a tale of the struggle for power and of tactics that have been compared to “Soviet times,” the half-century during which tiny Estonia (currently 1.3 million population) was occupied by the Soviet Union.
Andres Siitan, photo by Artur Sadovski, Postimees
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Background is in order. Born in Tallinn in 1937, Neeme Järvi is one of the world’s most distinguished conductors. He built the Estonian Radio Orchestra into the Estonian National Orchestra (Eesti Riiklik Sümfooniaorkester or ERSO) and put it on the world map. After emigrating in 1980 (in search of artistic freedom), he served as music director of Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Detroit and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras in the U.S. where he took citizenship. With over 400 recordings, he is now music director of The Hague Residentie Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Järvi has contributed much to Estonia since its independence in 1991, in both talent and resources, and returns every summer to lead a conducting master class in Pärnu (see www.jarviacademy.ee).
Bill Gates indeed.
So it was with great joy and satisfaction that Järvi decided to return to his roots and to the orchestra he nurtured. The move was universally hailed, and despite rumors of problems reaching an agreement, he took up the baton again in September, 2010.
Unfortunately, things were already on a collision course.
“The whole story actually started in the summer of 2009 when we said in public that Neeme is going to be our next music director,” said Siitan, ERSO’s director since 1999. Everyone was very happy.” No one more than Järvi, who relished the task of taking the orchestra to even higher levels of accomplishment. (In honor of his country, Järvi wears a blue handkerchief in his breast pocket whenever he conducts – Estonia’s national colors are blue, black and white.)
“Neeme did have his wishes,” Siitan said. “He has his requirements for the orchestra, not for himself: touring, recording, but also unsolved questions about the concert hall in Tallinn (the Estonia, a handsome Jugendstil structure built in 1913). We have all our rehearsals and concerts there, but the hall actually belongs to the National Opera.” Under the arrangement at the Estonia, the Opera rents one-half of the building to the state concert bureau, Eesti Kontsert, which in turn rents it to ERSO.
“Basically, Neeme wished that the hall would belong to the orchestra, which is not possible because the real estate belongs to the National Opera. This is fine, but he was meaning that the orchestra should rent the hall directly from the National Opera so there would not be any Eesti Kontsert in between. “
Another character enters the drama here. “Eesti Kontsert is the big state concert bureau,” said Siitan. “We are all art institutions. We are not direct competitors, but we are state competitors because we work in the same field. We fight for the same audience. The audience of the Opera is a little bit different than the audience of the Symphony, but still . . . We are quite direct competitors with Eesti Kontsert.”
This gets particularly complex when it comes to the Estonia concert hall. “If we have some important concerts, we want to advertise them, but if Eesti Kontsert has something very important at the same time, we cannot put ads on the building. They have the possibility to say no to the orchestra, and they set prices quite high. So we are renting a concert hall, we are renting the space for advertisements from another state institution, and the price is quite high. It’s weird.”
Järvi wanted to end this and sever the relationship with Eesti Kontsert. “Eesti Kontsert should be separate. They do not need the building. They can do their work wherever,” said Siitan. Making matters worse, the orchestra has very little space in the building. “The hall is fine, the stage is okay, but the backstage is horrible. There are two dressing rooms. Both of them are about six or seven square meters (65-75 square feet), where all the ladies and all the gentlemen have to dress. Also, there are few rehearsing rooms. Members of the orchestra have to practice at home because it is not possible to practice in the building. Eesti Kontsert does not need their offices in the building. As a management, it is not so important where your office is.”
The hall was one of Jarvi’s wishes, said Siitan. “The other was that we have a mixed choir (male and female singers). “There is no professional mixed choir in the country. We have a very good chamber choir, but it’s a chamber choir. We don’t have a big choir.”
More background. Estonia is a singing country with enough choirs to fill a 15,000 seat amphitheater for the country’s national song festival every five years (the recent film “The Singing Revolution” about Estonia’s fight for independence is illustrative). It has some splendid professional choirs, including the world famous Estonian National Male Choir (Eesti Rahvusmeeskoor or RAM) but there is no choral adjunct to ERSO. ERSO has done many recordings with RAM and with the Ellerhein Girls Choir, including the Grammy-winning “Sibelius Cantatas” with Paavo Järvi (Neeme’s son) in 2004. Still, it is difficult to organize because RAM belongs to Eesti Kontsert. “When we want to do our plans we have to combine with the plans of Eesti Kontsert. Also, Eesti Kontsert can say you cannot have the Male Choir on certain days.”
An attempt to resolve the choir issue was made in 2009, said Siitan, when the Culture Minister (a former choral director herself) agreed to a merger of RAM and the early music ensemble Hortus Musicus the orchestra. “Hortus Musicus was very famous years ago. During the Soviet time, it was an ensemble representing the country. Now they do not work that much. They give concerts a couple of times a month, which is actually a problem because they are on a salary all the time. If they just gave one or two concerts a month with the same program, it doesn’t make much sense.”
The merger of the three organizations took place January 1, 2010. So far so good. “I was told ‘Okay, it’s up to you what you will do with Hortus Musicus,’ so actually their fate was in my hands. I could say we don’t need you anymore and we would have some free funds for hiring female singers.” Siitan decided, however, that HM would be a project ensemble. “When we are doing something, they get paid. When they are not, I save money for other things.”
Then came belt-tightening and the worsening world economy. “All the budgets for every arts institution were reduced,” said Siitan. 2008 was the last good year. In 2009 almost every institution had its budget cut by about 12%. 2010 was another 9% which made, if you compare 2008 and 2010, minus 20%.”
To help accommodate the needs of the newly merged organization, the Culture Ministry decided not to reduce the budget for RAM and Hortus Musicus. “This means they stayed on the same salary (budget) level as 2009, which was actually an additional 9% in my hands.“ Siitan needed money for the additional operating expenses brought about by the merger. He could also save money for the mixed choir project, he said.
During this time, the issue of the concert hall faded from view. “No one was talking about it anymore. One reason was that the head of National Opera (Aivar Mäe) said that he will not change his contract. Laine Jänes said okay let him say what he wants but we are still the state. We are the Ministry and we will do what we need to do. But they didn’t. All plans for the concert hall were left out.”
Then the salary issue began to rankle. “Hortus Musicus and the Male Choir told me the Minister herself promised that their salaries would remain on the same level as 2009. So the information I had and the information they had was -- can I say -- slightly different. We never came together to sit at the same table to explain things to make sure one understands in the same way. The promises the Minister was giving to the Male Choir and Hortus Musicus and what she was giving to me were different.”
At this point, Siitan suspected that something was afoot. “In the beginning of 2010, it was becoming more and more clear to me that it was not by accident, that they had some plans behind it.” The prospect of ERSO running a deficit also began to loom.
Siitan explained that it was always the goal of Aivar Mäe (former head of Eesti Kontsert, now head of the Estonian National Opera) to merge all of the arts institutions, and that “more and more I had this feeling that this was the thing. We had to run into this problem.”
And run into it they did. “During the first half of 2010, these organizations (RAM and Hortus Musicus) were eating the budget of the orchestra. I had to pay for everything, their phone calls, rent, electricity, heating, and this was not coming from the 9% I was promised because I had to keep their salaries on the same level they were promised. If I cut their salaries, I would have a big problem because it’s not ten persons, it is the whole National Male Choir, 55 members, and Hortus Musicus with 12.”
During this time, Siitan had to reason to believe he had additional money on the table, however.
“In October, 2009 Tõnu Kaljuste (founder and former artistic director of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra) and I went to the Prime Minister (Andrus Ansip) and asked for additional funding. (The trials of the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra is a story in itself and beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that it had to do with labor problems and a compulsory audition for its members.)
“We asked for money for a full-time chamber orchestra and full-time mixed choir. We asked for 20 million kroons, but we got 4.1 million kroons (about $372,000). (Note: currency conversion rates are as of March 23, 2011.) The money was given for ‘philharmonic activities.’”
Given the difficult situation he was in at the beginning of 2010, Siitan was sure he could use the money for the projects he and Järvi envisioned. “A couple of times, the Minister of Culture asked me to make a budget for what purposes we wanted to spend it. I made several budgets but got no reply.”
Time was running out, he said. “The beginning of 2010 was absolutely the last time to plan all the concerts for the end of 2010, the next concert season. I was making the plans keeping in mind that I can use the money.” He was assured, he said, through repeated phone calls that, yes, he could use the money.
What’s in a name? A lot, apparently. There was a concurrent fight over the name of the merged organization. Siitan and Järvi wished to re-name the orchestra the Estonian Philharmonic Orchestra and the merged organization (with RAM and Hortus Musicus) the Estonian Philharmonic Society. It was hoped that as a new entity, they would not have to suffer the budget cuts that were taking place. The proposed name change raised the hackles of the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, a completely separate group, which objected so strongly that the idea was eventually dropped, though with many bruised feelings, including members of ERSO who liked their name as it was. (Again, the final decision was up to the Ministry of Culture, which owns both the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and its name.)
Relations between Siitan and Jänes, never really good, got even worse, he said, with Jänes accusing him of flip-flopping on the name issue. “I felt there was something behind it. The name of the orchestra cannot be so much, so if she got angry about not changing the name, there has to be something behind it that she is not telling me.” The feeling intensified in February, 2010 when the board of the Estonian Music Council – heads of music organizations and some people from the Ministry of Culture – gathered to discuss new proposals from Jänes about how to rearrange the new organization. “All the things were very obviously moving towards merging everything with Eesti Kontsert. At some point, Aivar Mäe was also invited to one of those meetings. He has a very good contact with Laine Jänes from the beginning of her career (Mäe gave her the job that launched her career, Siitan said). Aivar started to fight against me and the organization I was leading. He said that Andres was not coping well with this new organization. Aivar is a very powerful and charismatic person. When he says something, people believe. Then I started thinking what happened?”
About the same time (February, 2010) Jänes sent her final proposal to the board of the Estonian Music Council for discussion. “It was nothing we were talking about before. It was about complete merger of ERSO with Eesti Kontsert. This is nothing that Neeme wanted to do. The board of the Estonian Music Council did not support the idea.”
An important contact person in this maneuvering was Sirje Endre, Jarvi’s representative in Estonia and founder of a new board for ERSO. “Sirje Endre was playing games and my question more and more was is Sirje Endre representing Neeme Järvi or is she representing the Ministry of Culture? She was the contact person all the time for me and for Neeme.” (For the record, Music in Cincinnati tried to contact Sirje Endre, but was turned down.)
In March, Siitan and three key members of ERSO met with Jänes. “We wanted to say that the orchestra is behind me, they trust me and what Aivar was saying, that Andres is not coping with this organization anymore, is not true. This was a really hard meeting because at that time the Minister was pretty sure I was having a conflict with the orchestra, and it was quite the opposite. She was amazed that, okay, it’s a strong entity, we belong together, they still trust me. We asked her what’s happening, why are there no decisions. It’s already March and no one knows about this 4.1 million kroons that is meant for ‘philharmonic activities.’”
Jänes told Siitan that the Estonian Music Council was advising a merger with Eesti Kontsert, he said. “I am a board member of the Estonian Music Council and I know exactly that it was just the opposite, that the Estonian Music Council said we do not recommend to have this one very big entity that will have power over everything in Estonia. Separate organizations work better. It was not true and it was a very emotional meeting. At the end, the Minister stood up and left the room. We stayed at her table not knowing what would happen. We waited for some time and then we also left. This was the last time the Minister ever talked to me. This was March 3 and there was a big silence for two months. No one knew what would happen next. The Minister did not reply to any of my letters anymore. I sent her a couple of letters that we needed to know because we are doing our work. We need to know what we have or what we do not have. We had no reply to these questions. Silence, complete silence.”
The annual meeting of the Estonian Music Council was April 30, at which time Jänes announced that there were so many people against all the changes we had proposed “that maybe it was really wrong. We will bring the National Male Choir and Hortus Musicus back to Eesti Kontsert again and by the way, some days ago I transferred 4.1 million kroons to Eesti Kontsert (the whole sum meant for "philharmonic activities"). They will be responsible for these projects that will happen at the end of 2010.”
“It was a collapse,” said Siitan. “There was absolutely nothing to do.”
Siitan hoped that when Järvi came to Estonia he would have the power to put things back together. “He was here for all of July and the beginning of August. Nothing helped. We had a lot of meetings with Sirje (who is no longer his representative or a board member of the orchestra). It was so obvious that Sirje wanted to build a conflict between me and Neeme. I got several phone calls from him asking why is this and that undone, ‘Sirje told me that . . .?’”
The truth is, said Siitan, that he and Järvi “worked quite strongly together. We didn’t run into conflict. He stood with me.”
Of course, the bottom line kept raising its head. “In the summer it was absolutely obvious that we would run into a serious deficit. The Minister did not talk to me. She did not talk to Neeme. We tried to arrange a meeting, all of us, me, Neeme, the Minister, maybe Sirje, but no reply.”
What to do? “I contacted some lower people in the Ministry and it was quite obvious that, ‘yes, we know, but to be honest, you have absolutely no chance to get additional funding.’” It was a moment of truth for Siitan. He had the choice, he said, to start a public fight or wait for the ax to fall.” (“There’s no money, so we must fire you.”)
He decided to fight. “I wrote a public letter (to Jänes) and this had a huge response from the press and was very, very public for several months.”
The upshot? “I wrote my letter on September 7. Two days later Aivar Mäe said in an article in the newspaper that the only reasonable solution is to merge the organizations, but there is not enough money. We have to do something and merge the organizations.”
The merger has not happened and Siitan believes the public fight helped. True, he lost his job, but immediately afterward, “the orchestra got the money they needed and now in 2011, the budget is back to the level of 2008, almost. It’s very close, an additional one-and-a-half million kroons in 2010 and an additional 5 million in 2011, which is actually what the orchestra needs” (about 390,000 ϵuros total or $554,000 – the Estonian kroon was replaced by the ϵuro on January 1, 2011).
The fight went to the highest level, involving Prime Minister Ansip who said in public “if the director of the National Symphony Orchestra could not manage with the money he is given by the law, it’s going against the law.” The conflict grew inexplicably nasty, to the point of calling Jarvi’s compensation and integrity into question. “What the Prime Minister says, then people believe. Many journalists also tried to give the feeling that the deficit was the big cost of Neeme Järvi, that he is too expensive for this small country, when no one really knew what Neeme’s fee was. To a lot of people in the press, he was like a monster, just wanting to have the money. I can say that I was promising Neeme the same amount of money I was paying for the previous chief conductor, nothing more (Nikolai Alekseev left ERSO in 2010 after nine years).”
Ultimately, the issue -- and the story -- returns to the figure of Neeme Järvi himself. “There are many people in this country who do not want to see Neeme coming back. He’s too powerful a person. He’s an artist. Basically, we have to dig the ground for the artists so they can make it happen. We do not create, but we have to form the basis, to make it possible to happen, but many people think differently. That I am the boss, I am hiring, and I am making the projects. Neeme is the one who makes the art.”
It’s not a conflict as far as the orchestra is concerned, said Siitan. “Almost everyone really wants Neeme back.”
Update: In the March 6, 2011 Estonian elections, the ruling coalition, with Andrus Ansip of the Reform Party as Prime Minister, remained in power. On March 15, it was announced that Estonian Kadri Tali, manager of the Nordic Symphony Orchestra, had been named the new executive director of ERSO.