New principal flautist of the VSO and she's gorgeous.

[fergus]

I am reluctant to post this message on CMG lest I give offence to perfect Henry.

If I was still active over there Seán I would post it just for the annoyance value alone!

[Jared]

that is frankly appalling, Sean.

[Seán]

I am reluctant to post this message on CMG lest I give offence to perfect Henry.

If I was still active over there Seán I would post it just for the annoyance value alone!

It is a very stuffy, Americanised, introverted site. It needs a small coterie of Paddies and Brits to shake it up a bit.

[Seán]

Vienna principal flute speaks out about her ‘sexist, racist’ dismissal
August 9, 2013 by Norman Lebrecht

Jasmine Choi has written to Slipped Disc, clarifying the circumstances of her dismissal from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and challenging the official version. Her account supports previous reports from within the orchestra of sexist and racist elements in her dismissal. It appears the orchestra was, and remains, seriously divided on her case. Here’s what she tells us; we have highlighted a couple of pertinent points:

It is with great regret that I talk about what happened to myself and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. What a strange ending we had, after having such a fantastic time playing together in the past concert season.
Of course it is very disappointing for me because I had given my best possible contribution to this orchestra in every way in the past season, including all the subscription concerts, several concert tours, the Easter concert, and even played as a soloist in the opening concert of the Bregenz Festival (below) just a couple of weeks ago.

I do admit that many colleagues questioned my trial year, mostly because of the things that I could not change – being a foreigner, asian, female, principal position, studied in the United States, never lived in Europe, never studied in Vienna, etc. Some even told me with sincere concern that I had the complete “wrong” package to become a member of this orchestra. It has been an open discussion among the musicians throughout the whole year, holding some official and unofficial meetings about my position, and I was criticized over micro details such as I was too friendly to everyone that it was calculated, or I should not have made my upcoming Mozart quartets recording with the colleagues in my trial year and so on. Even though in the end I was always told that it is nothing against my playing, nothing I should worry about and just be the self-being and everything would be fine.

However, the result is the result- I had 47 positive votes and 66 negative, and I would like to simply embrace the fact. I was also told that in this orchestra’s entire 113-year history, I am only the second musician to be out after their trial year, following the exit of a concertmaster who happened to be a female Japanese a few years back.

Mr.Johannes Neubert talked about the possibility of playing in the fall when he called on the phone with the news last Saturday, saying that I can take some time to think about this until our meeting. And there has been no further meetings yet, because of the high fever I was going through in the past several days.

Thank you very much.
Best regards,
Jasmine Choi

[Seán]

Vienna Symphony: We often discard principal players after one year
August 9, 2013 by Norman Lebrecht

Johannes Neubert, general manager of the orchestra, disputes Jasmine Choi’s claim that she was only the second principal to be voted out after a year in the seat. Here are his statistics:
Dear Mr Lebrecht

We cannot say for sure how many musicians have not passed their trial years in the course of the 113 years of the orchestra’s history. However, what we can say is that in the past 2 decades or so there were many more musicians who did not pass their trial years, for instance 3 concertmasters (one male/Austrian, one female/Austrian, one female/Japanese), 1 principal viola (male/Austrian), 1 principal double-bass (male German), one principal oboe (male/Austrian), one principal bassoon (male/Austrian), one harp (female/Hungarian). These are examples of players on principal positions, only. A list including tutti or second positions would be longer (including both male and female players, the majority Austrians).

Please note, too, that Jasmine Choi was not “fired”. As in the case of all other employments, we advertised the position internationally, auditioned and hired the best candidate with a one-year contract. If there is no positive voting from the orchestra, the contract expires automatically at the end of the trial year. The voting is always anonymous and supervised both by the musicians committee and the management, in order to make sure, that everything is correct. This is common procedure in almost all orchestras we know.

With best wishes
Johannes Neubert

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/ ... phony.html