… not because it doesn’t make me angry, but because I’m just so darn lazy and neglected to get to it. But Norman Lebrecht has been reporting on the sad situation in Brazil for quite some time; all orchestra members were required to re-audition. Those that didn’t, it was reported, were fired.

Today Mr. Lebrecht has an update:

A Saturday concert in which a youth orchestra replaced the Brazil Symphony Orchestra, half of whose players were fired, was abandoned wothout a note being played when the conductor Roberto Minczuk was greeted with audience boos and applause.

A member of the youth orchestra then read a statement saying they refused to play in place of the dismissed musicians. The microphones were cut off, silencing his speech.

If you go to Mr. Lebrecht’s website you will find a huge number of entries about this debacle.

I know some will say that we should have to re-audition. Sorry, folks, but that’s not how this works. There are most certainly ways to dismiss a player who should be let go — at least here in the US. What bothers me most, I think is that five musicians from other countries were willing to go and audition these musicians. At this point 44 were dismissed. Pathetic. Sigh. And I’ll just leave it at that.