Linz’s Brucknerhaus director is confronted with new allegations

In addition, the appointment as artistic director and board director of the Linz events company (Liva) is said to have been postponed in 2017.

• About the background: Control office report from the city of Linz does not leave LIVA in good stead (OÖNplus from July 3, 2023)

Kerschbaum prevailed against his competitors in the hearing in 2017. The Burgenlander received seven out of twelve votes, four members voted against him and one abstained. According to its own information, the “Falter” has received emails according to which Kerschbaum had already received the commission’s questions before the hearing, which he did not deny when asked. Liva Supervisory Board Chairman Mayor Klaus Luger (SPÖ) claims to have found out about this in November 2023, it said. A commissioned legal opinion will be presented at the supervisory board meeting on Friday. Luger confirmed this in a broadcast late Tuesday afternoon shortly before the online article appeared. The meeting next Friday will also serve as a detailed consultation “about concrete further consequences that need to be drawn,” said the mayor.

Business within oneself should be pursued

In this session, internal business should also be pursued. Kerschbaum is also a trained tenor. According to the article, the director himself was committed to performances in his own house and may have granted himself special treatment. For example, for the musical Advent calendar, the artists only received compensation of 200 euros, while Kerschbaum is said to have received a fee of 5,000 euros.

It will also be discussed on Friday that the director has outsourced the Brucknerhaus’s program planning to an international artists’ agency as of June 2023. As the “Oberösterreichische Nachrichten” had already reported in September of the previous year, after the departure of the Brucknerhaus dramaturg, an interim and freelance successor was appointed. However, that artist agent continues to work for the private company and at the same time refers artists to the Linz Concert Hall. In order not to give the impression of a crooked look, it was contractually stipulated that artists who are represented by that agency may not be scheduled beyond the “usual extent”. However, according to “Falter”, it is unclear whether this also applies to the large artist agency in Europe to which the agency in question belongs.

The control office had already expressed criticism

Last year, the city’s control office primarily criticized the fact that there was no regulation for the allocation of free tickets and spoke of a proliferation of subscription offers with a sharp decline in the number of subscribers and increased representation costs. The “Falter” first reported this.