The announcements in the trade journals looked almost too good to be true: high salaries, free furnished housing, no-cost education for your children, no taxes.
A new orchestra was forming from scratch. The catch was the location: Doha, Qatar, a place where few of the young professional musicians from Berlin and Vienna and Budapest and Moscow thought they would end up.
But some 2,400 musicians from around the world auditioned, 101 were accepted, and lo, the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra came into being last summer.
The job has its benefits. The musicians say it is satisfying playing with such high-level colleagues. The pay is excellent: a minimum of about $4,000 a month.
I still wouldn’t be willing to make the move, but the pay isn’t bad.
