Copyright © 1997 by the Boston Phoenix, Inc. All rights reserved.

This Just In: Media

A gentlemanly shootout in Tuxedo Junction

By Dan Kennedy

A bitter power struggle within the refined world of classical music has spilled over into the media, raising questions about leaks, spin, and side-taking at the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

At issue is last week's resignation of Gilbert Kalish as chairman of the Tanglewood Music Center's faculty. Kalish, a world-class pianist, did not go quietly, writing a letter to Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Seiji Ozawa accusing him of having "made a mockery" of the faculty's efforts to meet concerns Ozawa had expressed about the BSO-run school.

The Tanglewood center has been in turmoil since 1996, when Ozawa dismissed administrator Richard Ortner. Kalish's resignation coincided with the BSO's announcement that Ellen Highstein, who ran the school on an interim basis this past summer, will become Ortner's permanent replacement.

The intrigue began November 3, when the Globe's Richard Dyer and the Times' Anthony Tommasini each learned that the other had a copy of Kalish's letter. Dyer assumed Tommasini had obtained his directly from Kalish, and he wrote that in the Globe the next day. Tommasini says a conversation with a BSO official led him to believe that Dyer, in turn, had gotten a copy from the BSO. Tommasini, who'd been working on a lengthy story for November 5, rushed a shorter piece into print November 4 so that Dyer couldn't beat him.

In fact, Kalish flatly denies having sent Tommasini a copy of the letter, and says he told Dyer that in a message he left on Dyer's answering machine after his son -- Jonas Kalish, an assistant sports editor at the Boston Herald -- read to him Dyer's November 4 article. Dyer's response: "I may not have listened to the whole message."

Dyer, for his part, denies having received his copy from the BSO, and declines to discuss where he got it. But given that Kalish sent copies of the letter to about 60 faculty members and administrators, as well as to musicians Yo-Yo Ma and Isaac Stern, there's not exactly a shortage of suspects.

The spin Tommasini and Dyer have put on the turmoil would support the original suspicions, erroneous though they may have been. Tommasini wrote a tough feature for November 5 in which such eminent musicians as Joel Krosnick, the Juilliard String Quartet's cellist, and Phyllis Curtin, a celebrated soprano, came down decisively on Kalish's side. Dyer aired Kalish's views in his November 4 piece and in a November 7 column, but he gave considerable weight to Ozawa's contention that change is overdue at Tanglewood.

"I think he's bought into what they [BSO officials] said, but nonetheless he gave me a fair hearing," Kalish says of Dyer.

But several observers say Dyer's coverage is just the latest instance in which he's soft-pedaled criticism aimed at the BSO. In an interview with the Phoenix, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Harbison, twice the composer-in-residence at Tanglewood, called Kalish and Ortner "the central figures" of "a devoted faculty of tremendous effectiveness." Harbison also credits the Boston Herald's Ellen Pfeifer with "more vigorous reporting" of the ongoing Tanglewood saga than Dyer has offered.

Until the past several years, Dyer was one of the Ozawa's harshest critics. Asked why his assessment of Ozawa has changed, Dyer laughs and responds: "That assumes that only I have changed. It doesn't make the corresponding assumption that Seiji may have changed."