Classical Music’s Misguided Quest for “Relevance”
On February 2, 2026, the board of the Boston Symphony Orchestra voted to terminate its contract with conductor Andris Nelsons. Nelsons had served as the BSO’s music director since 2014, following the retirement of James Levine. The decision had nothing to do with financial matters, according to the orchestra’s president and CEO, Chad Smith; ticket sales had risen under Nelsons. Rather, the board had concluded that “Andris was not the right leader for the entirety of our institution and our community,” Smith told Nelsons’s agents.
The termination was publicly announced on March 6, to widespread disbelief. As recently as January 2024, the board had rewritten Nelsons’s contract to renew automatically, citing its “deep confidence” in his “artistic leadership.” Now, just two years later, it had decided that the BSO and Nelsons were “not aligned on future vision,” as the March 6 press release put it.
Orchestra members were not consulted on the decision to oust their beloved maestro. They were as surprised as Nelsons and the public were. A protest movement sprang up within days. BSO musicians started wearing red boutonnieres on stage, in honor of the red-and-white flag of Nelsons’s homeland, Latvia. Patrons distributed the flowers before BSO concerts.
The situation apparently grew intolerable to management. In late July at Tanglewood, the BSO’s summer home in Lenox, Massachusetts, the orchestra announced that the #RedFlowerCampaign violated its rules against the unauthorized distribution of materials. Local businesses in Stockbridge and Lenox took up the slack, handing out the flowers on their own premises.
BSO leadership had hoped to deflect responsibility for the prospective firing. “We want . . . this to be his decision and message,” Smith wrote to Nelsons’s representatives. Nelsons wouldn’t play along. This “was not the decision I anticipated or wanted,” he said in a statement after the March press release.
