In August 1987 Tennstedt, taken ill at a rehearsal, felt so unequal to continuing in his post that he resigned on the spot. He continued to appear with the LPO as a guest, with the title of "conductor laureate"; in 1989 Richard Morrison of "The Times" wrote that the LPO still played better for Tennstedt than for anyone else. Tennstedt's resignation was a severe blow to the orchestra, and there was no obvious successor: Morrison observed that the best-known conductors – Barenboim, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle – with whom the orchestra was then associated were committed to other projects until the 1990s, and those possible contenders such as Semyon Bychkov and Franz Welser-Möst were largely unknown in London. No successor was appointed until 1990 when Welser-Möst was named as the new principal conductor. His tenure was controversial; he received the nickname "Frankly Worse than Most" and many harshly critical reviews. He brought with him a recording contract with EMI, but management turnover, financial stresses, and political disputes at the Southbank Centre at the time contributed to the difficulty of the working atmosphere in the orchestra. There were complaints that the orchestra's high standards of playing were not consistently maintained.