To all lovers of music, art and culture

We were shocked to learn what the advice of the Advisory Board for the Arts (Raad voor Cultuur) for the Art budget 2001 - 2004 will mean for the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra:

The most outrageous thing about this advice is that the Advisory Board for the Arts has no doubts about the quality of the NRSO. This is in contradiction to the explicit wish of the Lower House of Parliament (Tweede Kamer) to the State Secretary of Education, Culture and Science and Advisory Board for the Arts that quality should be the principal criterion.

Still the NRSO must be disbanded because the council has doubts about the artistic profile of the NRSO and thinks that other orchestras can take over its work.
The NRSO, as do the other broadcasting orchestra's, participates in adventurous and progressive programme's (Matinee op de Vrije Zaterdag, special television programmes, Holland Festival, Gaudeamus, Nationale Reisopera , etc.) and covers a broader repertoire than most other Dutch symphony orchestra's. That is why it is an illusion to suggest that the 45 programmes the NRSO play in Utrecht and Amsterdam could be covered in number, content and quality by other orchestra's.

More than one hundred members of the NRSO are facing redundancy, the broadcasting companies will lose an orchestra for special programmes and you, our audience, will lose a large number of high quality concerts.

Please support the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra!!!!

Sign our guestbook, send us an e-mail or fax at +31-(0)35 - 671 41 71 to support us.
(View guestbook)
Your views will be handed to the State Secretary and the members of the Lower House of Parliament.

In September or October the Culture Policy will be discussed by parliament in the Hague. By responding with your views, you will be showing State Secretary Van der Ploeg and the Lower House that as a music lover you demand an end to the continuous undermining of Dutch musical life and that the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra must be saved.

We thank you on behalf of the members of the orchestra, supporting staff and our chief conductor .

Radio Symfonie Orkest
Postbus 125
1200 AC Hilversum
Fax: 035 - 671 41 71