Discord in the Hall

The silence was deafening. For nearly two months, the musicians of the St. Louis Symphony refused to pick up their instruments after their contract expired. Then last week, after the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the stoppage was an illegal strike, the musicians and management finally agreed on a new 3 1/2-year contract, to be ratified by the orchestra this week. Base pay for orchestra members will rise by a small amount, to $74,000 next year (still far less than the $100,000 paid by the Chicago Symphony and other top ensembles), and the prestigious orchestra, the nation's second oldest, will get back to the business of Beethoven and Brahms.

But the woes of America's symphony orchestras are hardly over. The St. Louis dispute was just the latest in a string of contractual standoffs that have shaken the orchestra world lately. Four of the so-called Big Five U.S. orchestras-- Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia--came close to lockouts last year. Others, in cities like Cincinnati, Ohio, and Buffalo, N.Y., have had to cut pay, eliminate positions or shorten the season. The sour notes stem from aging and diminishing audiences as well as insufficient endowments and rising administrative, production and health-care costs. Philadelphia Orchestra management once referred to the skyrocketing costs as "a road map to extinction." An overstatement perhaps, but the chords are growing more ominous. --By Jeremy Caplan