"Reassigned" Critic Donald Rosenberg Sues Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland Orchestra

Remember the sad case of Don Rosenberg, the classical music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer who kept panning Franz Welser Moest until he got "reassigned" and his editor , Susan Goldberg, assigned someone else to cover the Cleveland Orchestra?

Yeah?

Now Rosenberg, in a sadly predictable development of the situation, has sued the newspaper  and the Cleveland Orchestra.

(via artsjournal)

***update***

Tim Smith, who broke the original story, spoke with Rosenberg
 who says: "I was just not going to let it ride. I had to make a statement about a lot of issues."

The suit charges that the editor and orchestra officials conspired "maliciously, intentionally, willfully, unlawfully ... retalitorily ..." to remove the critic from his duties. In fascinating detail, the suit lays out a scenario that begins with an article by Don that appeared in the Plain Dealer in August 2004 reporting on an interview Cleveland Orchestra music director Franz Welser-Most had given to a Swiss magazine. In that interview, the conductor was quoted making some cutting remarks about Cleveland's provinicialism, its audience of "blue hair ladies," and the "rich widows" needed to fund the arts. Welser-Most also was quoted as favoring a system of charging money to get an audience with him (it sounds rather like something that Illinois Gov. Blagojevich might have thought up) -- more than $5,000 before the donor would get a handshake, but, for $10 million, "of course, you go to dinner."

"I was just being a dutiful reporter," Don said today. But once those comments hit the Cleveland paper, orchestra officials reacted angrily; the suit alleges that the p.r. director told Don he would suffer "consequences." The suit goes on to describe efforts over the next few years to "besmirch Plaintiff's reputation as a music critic"; various meetings held between orchestra administrators and the paper's editor to discuss critical coverage of Welser-Most; the supression of an article Don wrote and another he planned to write that would have contained negative assessments of Welser-Most's tenure at the orchestra; and, finally, in September, the demotion to arts and entertainment reporter.

In Smith's Baltimore Sun blog, Clef Notes, there's much more.

Comments

[Miguel]

Can't say i blame him. This is just a mess now.

[Login]

Rosenberg's a good journalist but this lawsuit could set a very dangerous precedent, inasmuch it could seriously cripple editors in their decision making.

[Linda]

I wish someone would run Peter Dobrin of the Philadelphia Inquirer out of town the same way Dobrin ran Christoph Eschenbach out of Philadelphia.

Sometimes critics have agendas that can be ruinous. Sounds like Rosenberg had the hate for Welser-Most the same way Dobrin had the hate for Eschenbach.

[Diva In Training]

Donald Rosenberg is a trained classical musician, unlike many critics. There are a great deal of people who agreed with his assessment of WFM, and who wrote letters in support of him. Go Don...!

[val]

Hate to break it to you, but here is news from yesterday :

VIENNA (AFP) — Austrian conductor Franz Welser-Moest, Vienna State Opera's chief-conductor-to-be, was the star of the show in the new production of Wagner's "Twilight of the Gods", which premiered here on Monday. ...

_____________________________

WTG WFM!

[Coloratura Tempura]

Looks like FWM won't have the AFP reporter fired! This time! LOL

[Victor]

It's immaterial. A bunch of AFP dispatches can't change the nature of this lawsuit; the plaintiff alleges threats, undue influence of the Orchestra board on the Plain Dealer's editors (the conflict of interest has already been proven), a smear campaign. European reviews have little to do with this. Hostile work environment, harassment, conflict of interest, age discrimination: and Welser Most and all the others have not even been deposed yet...

I bet this will be quietly settled out of court, and all parties will sign a non disclosure agreement.

If they show in court that the Plain Dealer really caved in on some orchestra conductor and broke the law by harassing and reshuffling an employee, this will go beyond a little classical music drama few care about. The reputation of the paper will be destroyed, if Rosenberg wins. If they roll over for a conductor, imagine what the mayor, the governor, a CEO can do to the Plain Dealer. He wants fifty thousand dollars, a pittance for these people. Settle and make it go away.

[A Blue Hair Lady]

The newspaper publisher and the one who came before him are on the orchestr'as board of directors, their names are Egger and Mc something, don't believe me, ask around. It's a banana republic.

[4mica]

Just think if something like that happened in Italy when Muti was bossing around the Milanese output! At least now the Milanese public is free to voice themselves. Maybe now little by little that theater will get itself back into some kind of artistic shape!

[Diva in Training]

Val--hate to break it to you, but Rosenberg did write positive critiques on FWM when he deserved praise, which was, apparently--not often. This is about censorship, freedom of speech, etc. (oh, and sorry for the WFM instead of FWM above!)

[R.A.D. Stainforth]

I remember when Welser Möst conducted the London Philharmonic, players and critics referred to him as “Frankly Worse Than Most”.

[Constantine A. Papas]

It's well known all over that FWM is a "B" conductor. He will never be a Muti, Barenboim, or Maazel that the Cleveland orchestra deserves. No secure conductor will ever be bothered about negative criticism. It's part of the game in all performing arts that it has been accepted by all, artists and public alike. The firing of Rosemberg puts Cleveland, Cleveland PD, and Cleveland orchestra board back to the Stalin era of the Soviet Union.

[T1]

It is interesting that the Cleveland Orchestra received RAVE reviews in Europe this past summer including for their participation at the Salzburg Festival. These were some of the most favorable reviews I've ever read for any orchestra anywhere and at any time. FWM has seemingly not received the same praise in the PD. Even critics in London, which once were very down on a very young FWM, have started to come around and are praising his work. It has appeared to some that Mr. Rosenberg has some kind of agenda and I, for one, would like to know what it is (or was).

[furst]

50K tats all!!! Fie. There's really no sensorship as the government is not involved (the orchestra probably recieves some funding but this would not render it a proxy for the government [probably]). In any event it does seem that Rosenberg has case.

Our own experiences with FWM have been relatively positive and our homies from Cleveland (where we grew up and were dragged with extreme violance to the orchestral concerts which we then generally viewed as less than genial experiences) have also tended to indicate that Rosenbert was a little harsh. Not always though and certainly the demotion in this context seem most inappropriate.

Further, we are stonished if FWM actually uttered that sort of thing in a PUBLIC forum.

[redboat27]

The Plain Dealer claimed people were complaining about Rosenberg's reviews. What bull! Those of us who found his reviews educational, full of historical research and fascinating weren't complaining! We loved them. The current reviews in the Plain Dealer are simplistic, written in an elementary school style, and lack the background and intelligence Rosenberg provided. They are also very boring because it is a foregone conclusion that they will be "good" for the orchestra management. It is a sad shame and Rosenberg is missed. It's time for an old-fashioned boycott of the paper and the orchestra. I think supressing Rosenberg was worse p.r. than his reviews!

[Warren]

It's interesting that the Cleveland Orchestra was ranked #6 in the world in the latest issue of Gramophone (based on a worldwide poll of top music critics). It's hard to believe that Franz Welser-Most wouldn't have something to do with the obviously fine artistic shape of the current orchestra. And there does seem to be an interesting dis-connect between international/global views of FWM and the Cleveland players and the stern, dis-approving opinions voiced by Donald Rosenberg.

Now if there really was pressure put to bear on the Cleveland PD to do something about this music critic, as alleged, then that's totally wrong and something should be done. From what I've heard, it does sound as if Rosenberg was rather obsessed, some kind of mad Captain Ahab, and it makes one wonder whether there wasn't an agenda there on his part. At the same time, a critic is entitled to his or her opinion/perspective, preferably with some reason and analysis underlying it.

[Lea]

Lots of people are losing their jobs - DR can scream all he likes that this isn't fair and that he can't get a job but Ohio is an "At Will" employment state meaning the LAW is that you can be hired or fired for no reason at all. Can't see what the PD done is illegal. Freedom of the press does not mean freedom from consequences.

[David H Spence]

I am late replying here, but even if Rosenberg went a little over-the-top in panning FWM, who I've found a competent musician, craftsman, considerably more often a shallow figure than inspiring on what I've heard him do, it is forgivable next to removing the critic from the Cleveland paper. As for Dobrin and Eschenbach, first off once the musicians got him, many of them disliked him, and Peter Dobrin faithfully represented their views. I heard Eschenbach with the orchestra get lucky with Prokofiev 5, that in a same week of listening over the air and net made Maazel with New York on the piece sound more like Eschenbach than did Eschenbach himself. I however remember little else that found him quite so at ease with what he was doing. Peter Dobrin did us a little more of a service than did Rosenberg, I fear, and I am grateful for the action he took.

Orchestre de Paris, in replacing Eschenbach with Paavo Jarvi - I would just as soon they keep Eschenbach, who apparently has not had an ideal relationship with O de P either, but any trouble there, as anyone can judge, pales beside the difficulties, many of them of his own making, that troubled Eschenbach in Philly - as opposed to having been of Dobrin's supposed fabrications - when all Peter Dobrin did was report the truth as he heard it, and quite consistent with how I heard a good portion of it as well.

Nothing that Dobrin has written, so much of it very fine, quite compares with the brutality that Eschenbach and Houston faced with Butchershop Named Eschenbach in the wake of their 1997 visit to Amsterdam with Bruckner 4. That review is by Erik Voermans and still can be found on the web.

I grew up with Haitink and Concertgebouw on Bruckner 4, the old Philips recording. Four weeks before reading Voermans, I was in stitches to hear via broadcast two days after the fact how Houston was playing the long finale to the same piece in the same hall where the very fine Haitink recording was made thirty years earlier (and as there is no Haitink recording of which I can think that is finer than this one). And now NPR SymphonyCast insists even before it is player two weeks after a new concert is given on broadcasting Eschenbach with Concertgebouw on Schumann 4 and Brahms 1, Brahms of which a retired HSO player commented that Eschenbach conducted it as though it was written in blood.

The very thing to be watching out for now is a bureaucratic cut in funding proposed to DSO Berlin that has discouraged Ingo Metzmacher from extending his contract there past 2010. He is not a darling of the ASOL, which is behind much of the programming on SymphonyCast. One has to look hard however to find much that is comparable in both intellectual and musical depth these days, whether it be Beethoven, Mahler, Bruckner, Schumann, Brahms, Berg, , Strauss, Schoenberg, Carter, Ligeti, Charles Ives, and further international motley of names in the best and most often progressive of 20th century music. Whoever is in the know and can speak up on this is doing music, not only for Berliners and other Germans, but the rest of the world over, a little of a service.

David H Spence

[David H Spence]

After reading this blog at a little more depth, I am solid with whoever else that it is time to restore Rosenberg to full service at the Plain Dealer and at best offer FWM Principal Guest Conductor status (and let Zack practice his trade of reviewing four CO concerts a season and allow Rosenberg the rest. Rosenberg has acted in more than just his personal self-interest - which would interest nobody in particular - in suing the orchestra.
There has, in demoting Rosenberg, been established a dangerous precedent, among a good several in classical music culture in the U.S. If we are to let this go, the art form, for lack of knowledge, could just simply perish, and how many people outside of that small minority here that listen to classical music, are going to look up?