BOSTON — The bitter rift between the Boston Symphony musicians and the corporate management over the pending ouster of Music Director Andris Nelsons is widening dramatically.

In a public announcement released Friday, the players urged the reinstatement of Nelsons, 47, who performs 16 weeks a year with the BSO and spends part of the year in Europe conducting top orchestras in Leipzig, Germany, Berlin and Vienna.

“Our priority remains retaining the artistic integrity of this storied institution and correcting the course currently pursued by Management and Board, up to and including our support to reinstate Andris Nelsons,” the players declared.

The split, announced with no warning by BSO President-CEO Chad Smith and the Board of Trustees late on a Friday afternoon three weeks ago, shocked the players and many members of the orchestra’s Boston and Berkshires audiences.

Boston Symphony Orchestra CEO Chad Smith, left, and Music Director Andris Nelsons participate in a discussion in July 2024 during The Roundtable program on WAMC-FM Northeast Public Radio. Last August, Smith told The Eagle that Nelsons has been "giving one great concert after another, and I feel like the orchestra has been playing at a level that is just so exciting. He's conducting with such incredible energy and vigor, he's on fire."

Nelsons, who is also head of conducting at Tanglewood, will leave after the 2027 summer season. The departure follows BSO Inc.’s decision not to renew his “evergreen” contract, announced with fanfare two years ago.

At the time, Smith said the agreement aimed to keep Nelsons in place “for years to come” unless or until he decided to move on.

In their strongly worded statement, the players blasted the leadership for failing to respond to or acknowledge “institution-wide dysfunction.”

The Players Committee described a March 19 meeting with Smith and 12 out of 22 voting members of the BSO board of trustees as “very difficult and ultimately frustrating.” Also attending were three non-voting lifetime trustees.

The statement asserted that “the inability to articulate any artistic vision, and the lack of accountability for managerial failure that led to the crisis, all went unaddressed.”

The musicians also cited “glaring omissions from the subsequent public Board statement. We received no reassurance that there is a path to rebuilding trust, and questions continue to persist about whether player positions and opinions were accurately conveyed to the Board leading up to the decision to terminate Nelsons.”

The players asked that the minutes and the musicians’ statements from the March 19 meeting be sent to the entire 42-member board of trustees and 27 lifetime trustees “in an effort to communicate effectively, efficiently, and transparently.”

In a March 6 statement, his only public comment thus far, Nelsons emphasized that the management’s decision was not what he anticipated or wanted, and he noted that his removal “was not related to artistic standards, performances, or achievements during my tenure.”

Last August, in an Eagle interview, Chad Smith praised Nelsons — “he's been giving one great concert after another, and I feel like the orchestra has been playing at a level that is just so exciting. He's conducting with such incredible energy and vigor, he's on fire."

Chad Smith, who began his tenure as President/CEO of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in September 2023, told The Eagle he aimed to broaden the programming at Tanglewood to welcome new audiences while sustaining the core mission of the orchestra's summer home. He also offered high praise for Music Director Andris Nelsons' conducting.

In that interview, Smith also said “our fundraising has been extraordinarily successful for our annual budget and special fundraising to support specific projects.”

Smith also told The Eagle that “people are feeling very good about where we are. It's been a great season of programming, I give our programming team a lot of credit; they've really knocked it out of the park this year. And our subscriptions for the 2025-26 Symphony Hall season in Boston are up 20 percent year to year. Boston Pops spring season sales were up 23 percent, so there's a lot of momentum.”

The trustees, in an “open letter to the community” on March 20, acknowledged that their announcement of Nelsons’ departure after next summer “has been surprising and challenging for many in our community."

While expressing gratitude for the conductor’s 13 years of distinguished service and mentioning plans to celebrate his tenure across the 2026-27 season, the trustees listed challenges such as a “drastic decline” in orchestra concert attendance over the past 20 years, structural deficits, a $100 million drawdown from reserves and $90 million in pending maintenance costs for facilities at Tanglewood and Boston — roughly 50-50 for each venue.