Quartet article hits wrong note

IN your article headlined ‘Bowing Out’ (March 12), the demise of RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet is heralded by your correspondent based on views which are inaccurate.

If Jo Kerrigan had sought the views of RTÉ in advance of compiling her unbalanced article, or simply checked matters of readily verifiable fact, all who areinterested in proper debate could have been spared a string of misleading and inaccurate statements.

It is quite wrong to assert that the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet’s income has been cut by 40%, since RTÉ payments to the quartet are not the totality of their earnings.

As the quartet members are not employees of RTÉ, the ensemble is free to undertake other work outside its agreed programme of work for RTÉ.

As such it regularly engages in a broad range of remunerated non-RTÉ work at home and abroad.

In 2001, the quartet achieved increased remuneration for carefully scoped services by changing their status with RTÉ from employees to independent contractors. For your correspondent to refer to the quartet being “put on a fixed-term contract rather that permanent tenure, with further cuts” is simply wrong.

References both in this article and in earlier coverage (December, 18, 2009) fail to explain the nature of cuts in fees to service providers, including the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet, as distinct from reductions in the pay of RTÉ employees who work full-time for the organisation. As the quartet is a VAT-registered partnership which is non-exclusive to RTÉ, with remunerated relationships with other promoters and organisations, comparisons with pay cuts to RTÉ staff members who do not have other sources of income are misleading.

RTÉ has a legal responsibility under the 2009 Broadcasting Act to consider, inter alia, the most appropriate way to provide chamber music services.

In the current economic climate where RTÉ has experienced unprecedented revenue contraction of approx €70m per annum, this is an onerous responsibility which RTÉ takes very seriously indeed. In this context, and with assistance from an independent expert, RTÉ is finalising a review of its chamber music services.

All four members of the quartet have all been consulted as part of this review – along with Dr Geoffrey Spratt of the Cork School of Music and Francis Humphreys, CEO, West Cork Chamber Music Festival – a material fact which your correspondent failed to point out in the article.

Rather than preempting the outcome of this review with premature comment about the imminent demise of the quartet, the more responsible option for your correspondent would have been to reflect the views of all interested parties, including RTÉ.

It is to be regretted that the opportunity to inform the discussion on the future of chamber music provision has been spurned by your correspondent in favour of a one-sided approach based more on emotion than fact.

Séamus Crimmins

Executive Director

RTÉ Performing Groups

Donnybrook

Dublin 4