The inactivity is not of their choosing. The San Francisco Symphony, which was to have filled those slots, canceled its East Coast tour on Sunday, when its management and musicians failed to reach an agreement on a new contract during a players’ strike, then four days old.  The strike was declared last Wednesday, just a week before the first scheduled Carnegie concert, and it was clear that the tour had become a major bargaining chip. This kind of brinkmanship, long a standard ploy in the negotiations of major American orchestras, often works.  Not this time. And the implications for the institutions involved, financial and otherwise, are widespread.  “There are financial implications in all directions,” said Clive Gillinson, the executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall, “but we can only assess them after the fact. We’ve spent a lot on promotion, and we have to refund tickets for a house going on sold out. On the other hand, we don’t have to pay the fee. I couldn’t tell you at the moment where it will all land. We’ll be behind, but not by a huge amount.”  Mr. Gillinson expressed concern mainly for the disappointed patrons. In this he was joined by Jonathan Kerr, the director of marketing and communications for the Washington Performing Arts Society, which was to present the Kennedy Center concert. The society, which was “on track for a sold-out performance,” he said, is offering refunds or exchanging tickets for other concerts.  It has presented performances by the San Francisco Symphony, one of its most popular attractions, over some 33 years, Mr. Kerr said.  “We look forward to having them back as soon as possible,” he added.  But of course the institution most affected is the orchestra itself. Like Mr. Gillinson, Brent Assink, the executive director of the San Francisco Symphony, said on Tuesday that it was too early to gauge the financial hit. But it will be big.  “We are in discussions with the airlines, the hotel, Amtrak, the trucking company,” Mr. Assink said. “It shows the complexity of touring these days, how many people are involved.”  As for the larger implications for the orchestra’s reputation, Mr. Assink lamented the loss of this exposure for the ensemble, with its music director, Michael Tilson Thomas, in standard repertory: Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, Brahms’s First and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4.  The programs, he said, are “carefully planned to showcase the development of the orchestra and its unique artistic profile.” In their last Carnegie visit, a year ago, Mr. Thomas and the orchestra went all quirky with programs in their trademark series American Mavericks.  The lost concerts were meant to show another side of their profile: the Mahler in particular. “These musicians,” Mr. Assink said, “have inhabited Mahler.” Over the last decade Mr. Thomas has recorded all the Mahler symphonies with them on the orchestra’s own label, SFS Media.  Mr. Assink also lamented the loss of exposure for Samuel Carl Adams, son of the noted California composer John Adams. The younger Mr. Adams’s “Drift and Providence” was to have received its New York premiere, nestled amid those European classics. But Mr. Assink hinted strongly that this loss might be made good when the orchestra — the strike gods willing — returns to Carnegie Hall for two concerts in November (this time with Mahler’s Third Symphony).  There are big issues to be resolved first. The main sticking point in the dispute is salary. The players now start from a base salary of $141,700 a year. With additional media fees, overtime and supplements for key players, the average salary is $165,000.  This, the players point out, places them third, after the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. But they are also ahead of the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra.  Benefits include 10 weeks’ annual paid vacation. They also include options of health care at no cost to the musicians, though management is asking for increased premiums on one of the four health care plans offered, the one most sought after. This is the other main issue in the strike.  The orchestra, which showed an $800,000 deficit on a $79.2 million budget for its 2011-12 fiscal year (a lower deficit than in the years immediately preceding), initially asked the players to accept a wage freeze for the first year of a new contract, with a 1 percent raise in each of the next two years. The latest proposal, turned down by the players, was for a 26-month agreement, with a salary increase of 1 percent during the first year and 2 percent during the second, for a new base salary of $145,979 by the end of the agreement.  A spokesman for the players did not immediately respond to a telephone message.  On their Web site the players point to more than $10 million spent on the orchestra’s centennial celebration last year, though Mr. Assink disputes the figure and says that the cost was mostly underwritten by dedicated contributions. The musicians also point to plans for an expansion of the orchestra’s home, the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, at a cost of half a billion dollars, though Mr. Assink says a project of that magnitude is still a dream, one arrived at by the board and management with the participation of players and likely to be scaled down considerably.  In a separate statement on the players’ site, David Gaudry, a violist and the chairman of the musicians’ negotiating committee, cites “enormous bonuses and compensation to top executives and consultants.” Mr. Assink’s salary is currently frozen at $477,000 annually, which places him at the low end of his profession among top orchestras. He was awarded a one-time bonus of about half that amount for his long service. (He became the orchestra’s general manager in 1990, its executive director in 1999.)  With all that in play, talks continue, though at a slower pace, now that the time pressure of the tour has been lifted.  This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:  An article on Wednesday about a strike by the San Francisco Symphony, resulting in the cancellation of an East Coast tour this week, misstated the size of the orchestraâs budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year. It was $79.2 million â not $70 million, which is the budget for the current fiscal year.  An article on Wednesday about a strike by the San Francisco Symphony, resulting in the cancellation of an East Coast tour this week, misstated the size of the orchestraâs budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year. It was $79.2 million â not $70 million, which is the budget for the current fiscal year.
The cancellation of the symphonyâs East Coast tour will leave some major concert halls empty this week, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.