Innocents Abroad

I have tried to compare our workload with that of other orchestras before and it isn’t so easy: how individual orchestras define “a service” and “maximum allowable” is one thing but what is a normal week? So forgive me if I get into details.

The Oslo Philharmonic’s “maximum allowable” week is 25 hours of rehearsals/concerts. 37 1/2 hours of work a week is the standard in Norway, so the remaining 12 1/2 hours are considered personal practice time. We can work up to 5 hours per day with morning rehearsals having to be between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. and afternoon rehearsals having to be finished by 7 p.m. If we have 2 services in a day, they have to be separated by 5 hours. We normally have weekends free but can play 6 Saturdays a year, as long as we are finished by 3 p.m. A normal week for us is 19 hours with rehearsals 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; 10 a.m.-1 p.m. on Thursday, and concerts 7:30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday.

Tours, of course, have different rules. We can travel up to 35 days a year, cannot travel more than 4 1/2 hours total on a concert day and have to have at least 36 hours of contiguous free time in a week. Pregnant women are not required to go on tour. If I remember right, we can have 4 concert or travel days in a row before we have to have a free day, with a 5-day streak allowed on exception. Our tours, as a rule, have been quite well organized, and staying in posh hotels while playing in great concert halls helps with the perception of how stressful a tour is. Under Mariss Jansons, we had quite an exciting tour schedule- 3 weeks in the States every 2 or 3 years, ditto Asia, 2 weeks of European capitols, etc. Now, with a period of changing chief conductors (Andre Previn for 3 years and, from the current season, Jukka-Pekka Saraste) things are a little quieter: fewer tours lasting more than a week and (a new money-saving trick of the administration) sometimes flying us down to France or Germany to play a concert in the evening with a return the next day. Remember, we’re starting out from Norway! Being able to plan long-term with Saraste, we would like to make touring (more and better) a priority.

We have 6 weeks of summer vacation (the 4 weeks that, by law, all Norwegians have in the summer plus 2 weeks to get back into playing shape), one week at Christmas and 8 days at Easter. In addition, tutti players have 3 “relief weeks”; one that is common to the whole orchestra and 2 that the player can choose when to take, as long as the chief conductor isn’t there or we aren’t touring or recording. And if that isn’t enough, we have bigger string sections (18-16-14-12-9) than we normally play with, so the players that aren’t needed get off for the week, though they do have to be ready to hop in if someone is sick.

Recordings, hmmmm. We did quite a lot with Jansons, but there is not as much these days. In exchange for a fixed addition of salary, the orchestra has an agreement to record 80 minutes of foreign music and 300 minutes of Norwegian music per 2-year period.

As for individual job security, there is almost no way to lose your job once you have it. And the orchestra, while going through a tough financial time right now, really doesn’t have too much to worry about either. Funds from the government make up about 70% of the budget, and of the 8 full-time symphony orchestras in Norway, I figure the Oslo Philharmonic would be the last one to fold.

I was surprised to count as many as 27 of our 107 members as non-Norwegians. You don’t really think about where people come from on a day-to-day basis. Swedes win the contest, with Germans and Americans close behind. Three Poles, two Englishmen and one each from Denmark, Czech Republic, Australia, Spain, and Lithuania rounds it out.

Sorry for such a nuts-and-bolts kind of posting today, but I’m on the orchestra committee so I have to admit this is an area of special interest to me. I’m looking forward to hearing about the conditions in the orchestras of the other panelists!