It’s just been announced that Riccardo Muti has been awarded the Birgit Nilsson Prize 2011 for exemplifying “all of the qualities that were so important to Birgit Nilsson: extraordinary work, dedication and passion for music over many decades”. That’s probably true though Muti seems to be one of those conductors more admired by orchestras of the top flight than by audiences – and his repertoire has always struck me as being safe in the extreme and his commitment to new music virtually negligible. But what does seem questionable is the cash sum that comes with the prize – $1 million, the largest sum given in the world of classical music. 

The gap between conductors’ salaries and those of the musicians they conduct is dubiously wide – in a report a few years ago, it was revealed that of the 10 top-league American orchestras six rewarded their conductors with a salary of over £1m (highest grossing maestros were Maazel in New York: $2.2m; Levine in Boston: $1.5m and Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco: $1.5m. With Levine’s Met salary added to his Boston remuneration his earnings about five years ago totalled $3.5m according to an article in the Boston Globe). 

It’s hard to imagine that the Chicago SO have offered Maestro Muti a substantially reduced salary from his predecessor Daniel Barenboim who took home $1.9m, so we can assume that he must earn more than $1m for a minimum of ten weeks subscription concerts per season (that would work out at $25,000 per concert if Muti conducted four concerts each week in those ten). And I’m sure he doesn’t run Rome Opera for pocket-money either. 

Now, I don’t begrudge Muti his prize – his concerts with the Philharmonia when I was a teenager were the most exciting events on the London musical scene and his work in the opera house has generally been very fine – but what good does a $1m gift to Muti do for the world of music? How many new pieces of music could that commission? And more pertinent to Birgit Nilsson’s legacy, how much good could that sum do if directed at musicians at the other end of their careers? How many potential Isoldes and Brünnhildes could be allowed to nurture their voices and dramatic skills free of financial worries, and leave a genuine memorial of Nilsson’s art? In these times when arts organisations the world over are feeling the squeeze as never before how good it would be to hear that Maestro Muti were putting his wind-fall to genuinely creative and altruistic use.