The Netherlands. Land of tulips, windmills, deep-fried cheesy treats and one of the world's most enviable music scenes. Although not all of them for much longer – and I'm not talking about the windmills. Dutch music is under threat, from its orchestras to its opera houses, its new music ensembles to its small-scale touring outfits. Late last year, there was the cartoon-like extremity of the culture cuts proposed by Geert Wilders. (Wilders wanted the €800m arts budget cut to just €200m). Arts and education ministers have now come up with revised plans, reducing the overall culture spend to €600m in return for raising VAT on concert tickets from 6% to 19% – proposals which will be debated and voted on by the Dutch parliament a week today.
Oh frabjous day! Er, not quite. In a cackhanded strategy that the British government seems to want to emulate, the big boys of Dutch culture currently get off pretty much scot-free, with only minimal cuts to the Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Dutch National Ballet and Netherlands Opera, and the rest of Dutch culture taking the biggest hits. The idea is, presumably, that people won't notice too much if the nation's biggest institutions keep on trucking while other, smaller organisations go to the wall. But the most threatened institutions aren't exactly small beer. The Nationale Reisopera is the Netherlands's touring opera company, which is – or rather was – putting on a complete Ring cycle in instalments before the Wagner centenary in 2013. They'll get away with a Götterdämmerung next year, but plans for performing the whole cycle in a single season have been abandoned.
The Reisopera is having to stomach a 60% cut in its funding, which will come into force at the start of 2013. "I will have to dismantle my company completely and build up a production unit instead," the company's Intendant, Guus Mostart, told me. "We won't bear any resemblance to the Nationale Reisopera as it is as the moment. We'll tour to fewer cities, put on fewer productions necessarily of lower quality. We should probably change the name, since we can't guarantee what the company will look like in the future."
Mostart – who had decided to leave his job in 2013 before news of the cuts – understands the need for greater private investment, but you can't just foist a completely new funding model on the arts without first creating a culture of corporate giving.
There's a lesson for our own coalition government there too, but in the Netherlands there's even less philanthropy than there is here, with such institutions as the Reisopera funded by the state to the tune of 85%. Quality, repertoire and reach aside, there's another huge benefit of that state funding: the top ticket price for a normal Reisopera show is €50. Even if you need your Wagner fix, you'll still only pay €75. "The only way I could do a show like the Ring in the future would be to charge Covent Garden prices," Mostart says. This would make opera precisely the elitist art form the right wing of the Dutch coalition government seems to think it is, reaching fewer people as the prices rise and thus mattering less.
It's a similarly self-fulfilling prophecy of cultural irrelevancy at work in the settlement for the Dutch radio performing groups (who you often hear on Radio 3 thanks to the agreements of the European Broadcasting Union). Their budgets come from a different pot, but the effect is the same. A proposed 55% reduction to the Netherlands Broadcasting Music Centre (NBMC) would mean the amalgamation of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic (which plays the Proms this year) and Netherlands Chamber Orchestra, in addition to the probable loss of the Metropole Orchestra, its jazz and light music combo, and the centre's education and library resources, as well as the loss of 200 musicians and administrators. The effect would be devastating for Dutch and international musical life. Both orchestras are among the most adventurous anywhere in the world, commissioning and playing new music that simply wouldn't exist without them. Anton Kok, the NBMC's general manager, says he plans a lawsuit again Marja van Bijsterveldt, the culture minister, because of inconsistencies in arguments she used last year to support her plans.
But there could be a glimmer of – well, not hope exactly, but at least some kind of amelioration. When the budgets are debated in parliament next Monday, Mostart and Kok both hope that internal tensions within the coalition and an opposition united against the cuts will lead to a softening of the blow and a fairer swinging of the financial axe. If the Reisopera had €6m to play with it could still exist as a company, and if the Broadcasting Centre could wangle another €8m, the orchestras could all survive as independent entities.
Whatever the case, the idea of the Netherlands as a place with one of the most visionary and innovative environments for the arts is under threat this week. As Mostart says, "the loss of smaller companies who support younger artists and young composers is even more worrying than what's happening at the bigger companies. They are the breeding ground for the future of music." What happens next will shape a generation in the Netherlands – and we'll all be the poorer if the cuts go ahead as planned.
Ever since the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra offered up such a stunning performance of Bartok’s Divertimento a few weeks ago, I’ve been wrapped in an all-Bartok-all-the-time cocoon, vacillating between New Century Chamber Orchestra’s Romanian Dances and various versions of Piano Concertos 1-3. Despite this preparation, Thursday’s open rehearsal of Bartok and Tchaikovsky’s Music from Act III of Swan Lake was full of surprises.
The man is simply brilliant. He will be missed greatly! Thanks for you time... 
