News this week from differing venues on the east coast strongly demonstrates some of the straights (I didn't say dire, although it might not be far afield to imply) facing art music (I prefer that term to classical, which implies a specific time period) in the contemporary world. As I have written previously, the time is long past for American musical organizations to remake themselves in a mold that will work to establish ourselves as American institutions, making no apologies for American music and musicians. And that goes far beyond presenting a smattering of Bernstein and Copland every other year or so.
The Mostly Mozart Festival has once again opened in New York City; understand that I revere Mozart like few other composers, but I have to wonder whether or not this model is losing its steam. For the festival's opening concert, (Tuesday evening), broadcast on PBS "Live from Lincoln Center," the program wasn't mostly Mozart, it was all Mozart, the a program including the Figaro Overture, solo performances and the Linz Symphony. In a free preview performance offered last Saturday night, the festival mixed things up a bit, offering Stravinsky's Symphony in C instead of the soloists.
A bold adventure? Hardly so. As Stravinsky--and especially his neo-classical works--is apparently a special focus of this year's festival, the nationwide broadcast should have reflected that. As Anthony Tomassini wrote in the New York Times, "Surely this 71-year-old symphony should no longer be perceived as too risky for public television. But it takes inspired performances to make a Mozart program stand out. This one opened with a lively account of the “Figaro” Overture and ended with a perfectly fine, nicely played “Linz” Symphony. But neither performance was anything special." Enough said.
Full house at Filene--can't be "classical" |
New BP conductor, Alan Pierson |
As Sandow writes, "They're bringing music that's about Brooklyn, including things that Brooklynites already know. Which means that they're doing very little standard repertoire. Some people will of course deplore that. But lt them deplore. Fact is that the Brooklyn Philharmonic has been a troubled institution, and hasn't made any kind of programming work, financially, for many, many years. So why not try something new? And the emphasis now shifts to new music. Aren't we supposed to like that?
And can classical music survive anywhere, in the long run, if most performances are old music? I'm not at all sure of that."
Will this play in Peoria? Or Fargo? Or Dubuque, for that matter? I certainly don't know. What I do know is that we need to cast aside the old models that are drying up our orchestra's creativity, its players, and its aging audiences. The orchestra and the composers who wrote for it (as well as opera, chamber music, etc.) was formerly the agent for cultural enlightenment: people used to whistle Mozart's tunes on the streets, dance to Strauss's waltzes, rise up against totalitarian rule after performances of Verdi's Nabucco. The question remains: Is contemporary art music reflective of the world around us?
Compare what is transforming the Brooklyn Philharmonic to this season, recently published by an unnamed American orchestra, three programs of which are based upon the old "overture-concerto-symphony" model:
Glinka: Russlan and Ludmilla Overture
Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 2
Mozart: Overture to Don Giovanni
Mozart: Symphony No. 39
Brahms: Violin Concerto
New work
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4
Now don't get me wrong; this orchestra should be commended for also programming works by composers such as Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Louis Gottschalk, and Peter Maxwell Davies (albeit in one of his more "populist" works), but still, each of these attempts at a "cutting edge" always will include something safe to allegedly draw patrons into the seats, including symphonies by Beethoven and Dvorak.
Which of these two models will ensure that the contemporary orchestra does not become a relic of its long and glorious past? Surely I pose a rhetorical question...
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