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Could this be in Severance Hall’s future? (Severance photo: Richard Scheinin; composite by the author)
Once upon a time, success in classical music, as in business, was pretty straightforward. If an orchestra played good music well, and infused it with commitment and emotional involvement, people came to their concerts.
A few ads in the newspaper, on the radio, and maybe (if the ensemble were well-heeled) on television, sufficed to remind folks of their previous good experiences in concerts, and keep them returning. Now and then the ads reminded somebody that he or she used to like concerts, say, back in college; or even persuaded a neophyte to give classical a try. The classical audience expanded. Success!
When these listeners decided that they liked the way the orchestra played most of the time, they became subscribers. Then the orchestra could assume that they’d attend most of the concerts, and count on their yearly payment as part of the budget.
Most orchestras had modest PR staffs (staves?). The folks on the artistic side of the operation spent their time between concerts researching history and interpretation, preparing the score, practicing, and rehearsing. Now and then, they took time out for an interview in the newspaper, or on the local classical radio station.
Life was pretty good.
Along came the world wide web, and soon every well-connected orchestra had to have a website.
Nearly instant information about programs surely made it easier for concertgoers to make last-minute decisions about which concerts to attend and which to skip. Online ticket sales made impulse purchases easier: you’re suddenly free tonight? Why not go to a concert? It worked that way for me, and still does. I can’t help but think that this may have had a hand in the trend away from subscriptions and toward a la carte concert attendance. (So did hectic lives and personal schedules.)
That first generation of the web brought us a flood of information. As "Web 2.0" arose in the early 2000s, the internet evolved from a chaotic public library to an equally chaotic two-way communication medium. Blogging became the thing to do, and the savvy orchestras joined in. Following the example of their kid brothers, the rock bands, they posted audio and video clips.
In this interactive, nearly-universal-access medium, orchestras’ management, and even the music director and musicians, now can be — in some cases, almost have to be — "accessible." That means at least blogging about upcoming concerts, posting on events in the music world, and responding to the inevitable comments and questions. Some have become podcasters.
Now the interactive buzz is moving from blogs to social networks. These make it even easier for "friends" to respond. The Chicago Symphony, to name just one, is on Facebook. So is the Cleveland Orchestra, though they’re not as active as Chicago. During their recent US tour, members of the London Symphony kept fans at home apprised via Twitter. British conductor Ivor Bolton "tweets" about his recording sessions.
I don’t think anybody doubts that this new, more direct involvement gives concertgoers (and potential concertgoers) a more solid connection with orchestras. But the downside is that it takes chunks of budget to pay for web development, produce audio and video, and handle rights issues. It takes orchestra staff time to do all the writing. If musicians join in the fray (and if I were an orchestra player I’d be sorely tempted), every hour they spend typing or recording is an hour they can’t spend on rehearsal, practice, program preparation, and research.
But what can the orchestras do? The media din is getting denser. They have to shout louder, and more effectively, if they want to be heard.
Are the new media really working for orchestras? Does all this activity bring in more listeners? Has it really made a significant proportion of their audiences more satisfied, more connected? Putting it in blunt economic terms, has the investment returned measurable and attributable increases in attendance, ticket sales, and subscription renewals?
I obviously don’t work in an orchestra’s office, but my impression is that trying to answer these questions isn’t easy — and like the new media effort itself, it doesn’t come free. It means yet more labor hours, more software, more surveys, and more contracted services. That represents still more resources that aren’t going to the core business of making music — but it seems to me that, even in the best of times, well-managed arts organizations have to be sure they’re using their limited resources effectively.
Meanwhile, the commmunication revolution continues apace at the other end. No longer are the consumers of all these tweets, blogs, and podcasts — the listeners, we hope — tethered to their desktop and notebook computers. Now they can interact with "content providers" anywhere, thanks to smartphones and wireless PDAs.
And here is where I get uneasy.
It used to be that listeners moved by a concert would talk about it with their companions on the way home, and with their friends the next week. But who needs friends and companions when the whole online world is hanging on your moment-by-moment responses, delivered wirelessly via Twitter as the orchestra plays?
When orchestras were merely diverting resources from making music to making PR, the most dedicated music lovers might have worried about declining musical standards (or not, depending on how well the orchestra handled the logistics). But how many are going to sit still while some cretin three seats over clicks the keys on his smartphone during a pianissimo passage?
You don’t think it will happen? It already has in rock concerts. Increasingly, bands find themselves playing to cameras, while the fans chat on their mobile phones and wirelessly tweet about the concert. Worse, this trend seems to be headed our way.
To my astonishment, our own Cleveland Orchestra is, in a sense, actually encouraging this.
They’ve just announced "Trivia Challenge." You don’t even need a smartphone or wireless PDA; an ordinary mobile phone will do. Take it to their community concert at Public Square in Cleveland on Thursday (2 July 2009) and "text" (when did that noun become a verb?) the word BLOSSOM to the phone number the orchestra provides. During the concert — yes, while the orchestra is playing — you’ll get to answer trivia questions about the orchestra via your phone. "Every participant will be a winner," they say. The prizes? Tickets to Blossom concerts, where I fervently hope they will NOT use their mobile phones.
(UPDATE: The folks at the Cleveland Orchestra contacted me Thursday (2 July, the day of the concert) to say that despite what the news release said — "Fans can play the trivia game on their mobile phones throughout the Festival and Concert" — they didn’t really mean to suggest that listeners in the Public Square audience should answer these questions during the performance. However, they say they think it’s OK for folks listening live on the radio to do so. Presumably they submit the questions to the different groups at different times, though they didn’t say how that works. I’m not familiar with the system they’re using, so I emailed them for clarification. When I hear back, I’ll post it.)
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m all for anything that expands the audience for classical music. I’m all for increasing attendance at Cleveland Orchestra concerts, and for listening to listeners. (I have to admit, I was impressed at the caliber of the audience dialogue that I saw on the Chicago Symphony’s Facebook page.) And to be fair, the Public Square concert is after all a very casual setting, far removed from the elevated mood of Severance Hall.
But I wonder what their core audience will think of this. These are the folks who attend concert after concert, year after year, because they know they can expect outstanding interpretations of great music. Many ante up something close to (or in) the three-figure range for a pair of Severance Hall seats. How will they react to someone nearby clicking keys, or engrossed in a brightly glowing screen? Just as importantly, how much of the concert is that tweeter really hearing?
Maybe I’m concerned about nothing here. Maybe this experiment is a one-time deal. Maybe it won’t encourage more concert distractions. Maybe the response won’t be strong enough to make it worth pursuing.
Maybe it’ll even lead to positive uses for this technology — for example, transmitting program notes, translations of sung texts, even bar-by-bar interpretive guides, to listeners’ wireless devices. Now that would be a good use of new media.
Still, it seems to me that when the folks at the Cleveland Orchestra suggest that their listeners need to stay busy with gadgets while they perform, they’re not exactly demonstrating confidence in the power and value of the music. If they don’t, will their listeners?
Over a half-century on, the ensemble that was arguably the world’s most famous piano trio is no more. In August of 2008, when this article first appeared, they played their finale where they made their 1955 debut — the Tanglewood Festival.
It was a poignant moment for me, as a classical announcer and music director. "Beaux Arts" was one of the first names I learned to pronounce when I first started announcing classical music almost 35 years ago! But of course what I really remember them for is their unflagging musicianship. They brought Haydn’s trios to my attention, infused Schubert with an unmatched poetry, and captured the anguish and intensity of the Shostakovich e-minor trio like no one else ever has.
The Beaux Arts Trio I remember best is that group — Menahem Pressler, Isidore Cohen, and Bernard Greenhouse. They’ve been through several personnel changes since, most recently landing the promising young violinist Daniel Hope in 2002.
It was partly Hope’s career trajectory that helped to seal the trio’s fate. It certainly wasn’t Pressler’s. At 84, founding pianist Menahem Pressler is still going strong and is forging ahead with a full performance and teaching schedule. But Hope left to pursue his developing solo career. Pressler and cellist Antonio Meneses said they couldn’t face "breaking in" yet another violinist.
I’ll miss them, and I’m sure you will too. But every end has its concomitant beginning. With luck their departure will spur reissues of the trio’s voluminous older catalog on CD, or at least on downloads.
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This article was originally published on 22 August 2008.
Russian Julius Block was a music-lover. His German ancestors left him with a prosperous international business, and he built on it as he travelled the globe. Block loved the newest inventions — he introduced his country to the bicycle and the escalator. When he read in the papers about the phonograph, he had to go New Jersey to meet Thomas Edison and see it.
Edison thought of his invention mainly as a way to record voices, especially famous ones. However, Block didn’t want to limit this new contraption to being a simple voice recorder or dictating machine. He wanted to do more. Block was a good pianist, and knew Anton Arensky, Anton Rubinstein, Alexander Taneyev, and — most importantly — Peter Tchaikovsky. He wanted to record these people not just speaking, but performing.
After Block passed away in 1934, his recorded cylinders ended up in an archive in Berlin. When that city was almost totally destroyed at the end of WWII, it was thought that the recordings had been lost. Even Block’s own son had no idea they might have survived. But the Soviets didn’t let that happen. The cylinders were removed to the Pushkin House — where they’d originated in St. Petersburg.
Enter Ward Marston. Marston plays the piano and conducts his own orchestra, and is known for his restoration of old recordings. He lives outside of Philadelphia with his service dog, Vinnie, and nearly 30,000 records. Marston travelled to Russia and was able to access Block’s archives. He’s issued some of Block’s recordings on 9 CDs.
Today (Friday 12 June 2009) you’ll hear a recording made in 1890. In order of their appearances (or sounds, if you like), the voices are composer Anton Rubinstein, singer Elizaveta Lavrovskaya, composer Peter Tchaikovsky, pianist and conductor Vassily Safonov, pianist Alexandra Hubert, and our host Julius Block. Expect to hear Tchaikovsky speak after each time you hear someone sing. He is the one you hear whistling at the end — and Peter Tchaikovsky is the answer to our Friday Quiz.
Bloomberg’s, poking through the New York City Opera’s tax returns, berated them for their eleven million dollar 2008 deficit.
London mayor Boris Johnson will distribute 31 free pianos to public places round the city, complete with laminated songbooks, in the hopes of encouraging impromptu sing-ins.
The Basel Schola Cantorum used computer analysis to make a modern reproduction of an 8-foot-long trumpetlike medieval instrument, the lituus, of which no examples survive.
Philadelphia Orchestra musicians volunteered to take a pay cut of almost five percent.
The Cleveland Orchestra’s assistant director of choruses, Betsy Burleigh, started her new gig as music director of Boston’s Chorus Pro Musica.
Kempton Park in Sunbury announced that they’d engaged England’s Royal Philharmonic to play Rossini’s William Tell Overture at a July horse race, to see if it would encourage the horses to run faster.
Stanley Drucker (World Clarinet Alliance)
But the big news is that this weekend the New York Philharmonic’s principal clarinetist, Stanley Drucker, will play his last concerto performances with the orchestra.
The clarinet and I go back a long way. It was the first orchestral instrument I ever heard and saw up close; I wasn’t even yet in school. In the half-century since then, I’ve grown to love the clarinet’s split personality, its dark chocolate low register and its scotch-on-the-rocks high register.
Few composers have exploited that timbral flexibility better than Aaron Copland did in his clarinet concerto, swinging the instrument from his trademark spare lonely-open-plains sound to a jazzy Chicago speakeasy jam and back again. Our own Cleveland Orchestra’s principal Franklin Cohen played it at Severance Hall almost exactly a year ago (May 2008), but the performance I’ll never forget was a Blossom concert in the early 1980s. Cohen was perhaps a half-dozen or so years with Cleveland then; he’d signed on in 1976. The season was late, the night cool, the audience a bit sparse, and that was exactly the right setting for the Copland. Unforgettable.
So I nodded when I read that Drucker would be playing the Copland for his last Philharmonic solos. Not only is it the clarinet personified, it’s one of Drucker’s trademark works. Stanley Drucker’s been an almost unprecedented 60 years with the Phil, and when he steps off that stage for the last time, he’ll have played the Copland in concert at least once for every one of those years.
Sixty years, 10 music directors, over 10,000 concerts. Stanley Drucker has played every one of them with enthusiasm and joy, and I’m betting he’ll apply the same attitude to his post-Phil musical life. (You don’t really think a musician stops playing when he retires, do you?)
Thanks for the long run, Mr Drucker. Thanks for the music. Thanks for the Copland, the Mozart, the Brahms, and much more. Enjoy your free time. And may our own Franklin Cohen give Northeast Ohio as many years of his artistry as you’ve given New York.
This month (June 2009), the Cleveland Orchestra’s assistant director of choruses begins her newest gig, as music director of Boston’s Chorus Pro Musica. She succeeds Jeffrey Rink, the ensemble’s director of 17 years.
In addition to her eleven years with Cleveland, Burleigh is music director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh — a position she inherited from the great choral director Robert Page — and is professor and coordinator of choral and vocal studies at Cleveland State University.
Betsy Burleigh also directed the Akron Symphony Chorus from 1997 to 2002, and the Canton Symphony Chorus from 1997 to 2000.
Christopher Wilkins, the well-regarded music director of the Akron Symphony orchestra since 2006, has signed up for another 3-year tour of duty, through 2012.
Wilkins says he’s "thrilled" — as are concertgoers. Under his direction, the orchestra has drawn critical accolades, including a review from Daniel Hathaway of Cleveland Classical for their early May performance of the Brahms German Requiem with the Akron Symphony Chorus and soloists.
The Thomas Hall podium, however, comes with a thinner pay envelope this time round. Wilkins calls his ten percent salary reduction part of the "new reality" in the difficult times facing arts organizations everywhere. Indeed, according to board president Thomas J. Clark, it’s part of an across-the-board $400,000 budget trimming effort. Clark says that "everyone, from the music director, to the musicians, to the office operations, has shared in these cuts."
The upcoming season’s classical series shows little evidence of the belt-tightening. The September season opener includes Canadian-born pianist Philip Thomson performing the Grieg concerto. Benjamin Zander, who led the Akron Symphony Orchestra and Chorus’s memorable performance of Mahler’s "Resurrection" Symphony in early 2008, will return in March 2010 to guest-conduct the Mahler Ninth. Expect an all-Mozart program in January and Carl Orff’s bang-up "scenic cantata" Carmina Burana in May. Three vocal soloists will appear in a November opera gala. The February concert will include a concerto for steelpan (steel drum) by Illinois-born composer Jan Bach. Other symphonic repertoire on the list includes Beethoven’s Third and the Sibelius Second.
Cincinnati Symphony and Pops conductor and Telarc recording artist Erich Kunzel will be undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic, liver and colon cancer.
"It was totally unexpected," Kunzel said. He was in Naples two weeks ago and thought he might have food poisoning, but tests revealed the disease. Kunzel says he feels fine now, "but there’s a devil inside of me."
"I’ll stay as active and strong as possible. I’ve taken nothing off my calendar. I’m full blast ahead," Kunzel said.
A year ago, the Akron Symphony Orchestra announced that executive director Margo Snider, on the job since 2006, would step down this spring. The Greater Akron Musical Association (GAMA), the orchestra’s parent organization, immediately set about finding a replacement. This week, they named Phil Walz as their new executive director.
Walz has years of experience in arts management. He’s served as director of development for the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine; executive director of the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts; director of development for Plymouth State University; executive director of the New Hampshire Music Festival; and assistant and acting manager of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra.
Walz also has a solid musical background. The Akron Symphony’s music director Christopher Wilkins says, "Having trained first as a concert pianist, he knows music well. He will be a terrific advocate for our artists and programs."
According to GAMA executive vice-president Ted Good, "Mr. Walz rose to the top of our list due to his extensive experience in fundraising and development, his demonstrated business acumen in running successful arts organizations, and his status as an award-winning orchestra manager."
Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman stunned his Los Angeles audience Sunday evening (26 April 2009) when he announced that he would no longer perform in the US.
According to this piece in the UK newspaper The Guardian, this is the second time Zimerman has renounced performing in our nation. In 2006 he vowed not to play another US recital until then-president George W Bush had left office. This time he expressed his opposition to the current administration’s plan to construct a missile defense station in his native land.
Audience members reacted predictably. Some walked out, some booed, some applauded. That’s interesting but academic: Zimerman is welcome to express his opinion in this way — or any other he chooses. That freedom is one of the great strengths of our nation.
What I find unsettling is some of the history behind Zimerman’s earlier performances in the US, as revealed in this article.
In 2001, security officials at JFK Airport confiscated and destroyed Zimerman’s Steinway piano. The officers reportedly thought the piano’s glue "smelled funny" and might be explosive.
In 2006, airport security again held up his instrument. This time they returned it to him, but five days later — too late for him to adjust it to his satisfaction in time for his concert.
I realize that airport security officials have a job to do. I don’t know whether they may have later issued an apology and financial compensation for the destroyed piano (a new customized Steinway grand can easily run into six figures). Regardless, I can hardly comprehend such an action. Did they not know who Zimerman was? Did they not know the value of his instrument, not just in dollars but in musical terms? What on earth were they thinking?
That Zimerman even returned to our country at all after such a heartbreaking experience is almost unimaginable. Would you? And with such a background it’s not at all difficult to imagine that a point of political disagreement could easily become a reason to never set foot in the US again.
Let’s hope the situation changes. Zimerman is a powerful and compelling musical presence, and his absence from these shores will be both our loss and Zimerman’s.
Steven Witser, principal trombonist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, died unexpectedly Monday night (27 April 2009), of an apparent coronary accident.
If Witser’s name and face seem familiar to you, it’s because until joining the Philharmonic in 2007 he was a member of the Cleveland Orchestra. There he served as assistant principal, acting principal, and assistant personnel manager.
Witser also played in the Center City Brass Quintet.
Steven Witser was born in Oakland and studied at the Eastman School of Music. Christoph von Dohnanyi tapped him for the Cleveland Orchestra in 1989.
Cleveland Orchestra media relations manager Jennifer Schlosser says, "Steve was a pillar of strength and support over his years here in Cleveland and helped people in countless ways. After joining the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007 he continued to touch people with his selfless sacrifice of personal time and energy and genuine good humor that we all loved."
The Los Angeles Philharmonic concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall on 30 May 2009 will be dedicated to Steven’s memory. The orchestra will perform the opening work in his honor.
In the days when most classical music was written, you heard it when someone played it. Unless you were a class A VIP with an orchestra on call, that meant you left home, went to the concert hall, and paid for your ticket.
If you wanted music at home, you had a few choices. You could hire musicians. This was obviously an option mainly for the Person of Means. More often, you played it yourself, or someone else in your family did. Or you might have spent an evening with friends, reading through chamber music.
From at least the 18th century, inventors have been looking for ways to bring the concert home. They’ve given us such efforts as flute-clocks, barrel organs, reproducing (player)pianos, phonographs, radios, and compact discs. Every development was another effort at making virtual virtuosi, musicians that anybody can afford to "hire."
Only the wealthiest tycoon could finance a private concert by George Gershwin, but thousands of more modest means came pretty close when they furnished their living rooms and parlors with Aeolian and Welte reproducing pianos, and bought the piano rolls that Gershwin made for those firms. The music was affordable because they were sharing the cost of Gershwin’s performance with all the others who bought his recordings. A few fine musicians could serve more listeners than ever before. You could call this a "few-to-many" system.
Comes now the internet. (That’s a bit of a leap. Sorry!) One of its fundamental principles — built into it quite deliberately — is that nobody is the master. Every node on the net is equal (please support net neutrality to keep it that way). If you think of the net as a community, it’s probably as close as any society has come to being truly egalitarian. It’s just about as easy to be a content provider as it is to be a content consumer. Anybody can have a website or a blog (and sometimes it seems as if everybody does). The internet is a "many-to-many" system.
If the player piano was music’s mass medium for the late 19th century and the compact disc the one for the late 20th, what’s the musical mass medium of the early 21st century?
Could it be the internet — and Youtube?
Well, now, let’s think about this. Big media companies try to use Youtube for their "viral marketing," but what really predominates? Homemade video clips, with the emphasis on homemade. There’s no audition for this talent show. The viewers are the gatekeepers, such as they are, and about the only post that will earn you the hook is something lewd or deeply offensive. All you need is a cheap digital video camera and something to say or demonstrate. You too can show the world how to electrocute a Furby or unlock a mobile phone.
Or how to make music. The corporate media often rail against Youtube because some users post copyrighted material, and you can’t blame them. But try a search for, say, Stairway to Heaven. Sure, a few are performances by the original artists, but you’ll find page after page of fuzzy videos shot in living rooms and bedrooms round the world. Here are people you’ve never heard of, playing (or attempting to play) the tune on electric guitar, classical guitar, harp, even ocarina. Here are anonymous musicians who say they can teach you how to play it, and fiery orators who claim to expose the secret symbolism of its lyrics or its fiendish back-masking.
But is it good? Are these performances that a music lover would enjoy, or that a music student could learn from? That depends on how persistent you are. Not long ago I was trading email with a friend who’d never heard Aaron Copland’s "I Bought Me A Cat" (from Old American Songs). I found about two dozen performances of it on Youtube, from one by an unaccompanied six year old girl (pretty cute, but what she sang didn’t quite match up to Copland) to a spirited reading by the men’s chorus of James Madison University.
You can’t be too fussy, though. Even when the performance is top-shelf, often the clip’s been recorded from the audience by somebody documenting his kid’s or friend’s performance. The visual excitement is usually limited to zooming in and then out again, and panning across the stage just in time to miss the solo. The sound is often tinny mono from the camcorder’s rudimentary sound system, accompanied by the rustling and whispering of nearby listeners. Youtube’s digital bandwidth compression makes matters worse, often adding a swishing, watery effect.
But who says that has to be the only way Youtube makes music? Seventy years ago, radio was the medium, and NBC was the channel that gave us the NBC Symphony and Arturo Toscanini’s timeless interpretations. Now the internet is the medium and Youtube is the channel. Why can’t we have a Youtube Symphony?
Indeed, why not? With all the performances available — including some historic ones — Youtube has become a go-to resource for music students and young musicians all over the world. What better way to reach them? And in early December (2008), conductor Michael Tilson Thomas decided to try extending Youtube’s reach. The Youtube Symphony Orchestra became the first collaborative online orchestra, and the first ensemble to audition its members by Youtube video.
This evening (15 April 2009), all the IM, email, and practice bears fruit, as the Youtube Symphony Orchestra gives its first public performance at Carnegie Hall.
Now, with worldwide auditions, what state do you suppose has contributed more members to the Youtube Orchestra than any other? WKSU reporter Vivian Goodman has the answer.
To look at the 2009-2010 concert schedule The Cleveland Orchestra has just released, you’d never guess that they were staring down the maw of a potential $7.5 million budget shortfall.
If you tried to get tickets for this season’s The Marriage of Figaro, you know how enthusiastically Northeast Ohio concertgoers responded to hearing their orchestra in the pit. In 2010 Cleveland will take on another Mozart opera — this time, Cosi fan tutte.
Guest conductors will include Vladimir Ashkenazy, Iván Fischer, Semyon Bychkov, and Pierre Boulez, whose involvement with The Cleveland Orchestra dates back to 1965.
Mitsuko Uchida (BBC)
Mitsuko Uchida is always welcome in Northeast Ohio, and next season she’ll be featured in two concerts — Beethoven’s 4th in October, and two Mozart concertos in April. She’ll conduct the Mozart works from the keyboard.
Yefim Bronfman and Richard Goode are also among the visiting pianists we’ll hear. Violinist Leila Josefowicz and cellist Truls Mørk will appear. We can also expect a return visit from soprano Measha Brueggergosman, among others. Over a dozen more returning and new-to-Severance singers will join the orchestra.
The orchestra won’t reduce the number of programs they offer, although some programs won’t be played as many times as in past seasons.
The orchestra will also introduce three new concert series. Severance Fridays will combine an early-evening concert with a reception featuring drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and live music. Musically Speaking Sundays will begin with a detailed analysis of a work, including live musical examples, and conclude with a complete performance of the work. The Baroque and Classical Series will comprise three concerts — the Uchida Mozart performances; Handel’s Messiah; and an all-Baroque program, including Handel’s Water Music. This last will be led by Bernard Labadie, music director of Les Violons du Roy.
The new series are part of The Cleveland Orchestra’s renewed effort to connect more closely with Northeast Ohio. The centerpiece of this strategy is the week-long Community Music Initiative. It includes music director Franz Welser-Moest conducting a benefit Beethoven Ninth, concerts in Cleveland schools, and a family concert.
How are they doing all this in a down economy? Every element of the season is designed to maximize revenue and/or reduce costs. In addition to the slight trimming in total number of performances in Cleveland, when the orchestra tours, they’ll concentrate on the stops that generate the best return. And as I mentioned a few days ago, they’ve taken some large whacks at administrative costs.
The season’s repertoire delivers a mix of new experiences and familiar friends. Joerg Widmann’s Chor, the violin concerto of Thomas Ades, The Dreams and Prayers of Isaac the Blind by Osvaldo Golijov, and John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony and Son of Chamber Symphony will be among the works receiving their first Cleveland performances.
Complimenting them are many well-known standards of the repertoire, including the Shostakovich Fifth (and Beethoven’s and Tchaikovsky’s); Brahms’s German Requiem, second symphony, and second piano concerto; the Schubert Ninth; Rachmaninoff’s Second (and Schumann’s); Strauss’s Don Juan and Also Sprach Zarathustra; Orff’s Carmina Burana; Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; and the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique.
WKSU’s Vivian Goodman spoke with executive director Gary Hanson and music director Franz Welser Moest about their plans, and has more information on the upcoming Cleveland Orchestra season.
For at least 5 years, Beethoven has been pianist Andras Schiff’s near-obsession. He had to be, as Schiff joined the ranks of pianists who’ve taken on a monumental task: performing all of Beethoven’s sonatas. If you’re a regular listener to WKSU’s classical music, you’ve probably heard many of his ECM recordings of these works as they’ve been released.
Now he has nearly arrived at his destination — the final three sonatas, the ones Beethoven composed as his hearing failed and he turned ever more inward, the ones that deeply puzzled his listeners and many more for at least another century.
This Wednesday evening (1 April 2009) at 8pm PT, Andras Schiff will take to the stage of Disney Hall in Los Angeles for the final installment in his US series of Beethoven sonata concerts. He’ll perform sonata #30 in E, Op109; sonata #31 in A flat, Op110; and sonata #32 in C minor, Op111.
Public radio station KUSC and NPR are joining forces to stream the concert over the web. If you live in Northeast Ohio you’ll have to stay up a bit late Wednesday night (8pm PT is 11pm ET), but you can hear it live at NPR Concerts.
The belt-tightening continues at orchestras across America and round the world. This month (March 2009) the Philadelphia Orchestra pink-slipped a dozen staffers and the Pittsburgh Symphony released nine. The New Jersey Symphony dismissed three. The Atlanta Symphony announced pay cuts of 5-7 percent and furloughed staff members. Since last fall the Cincinnati Symphony have given 8 staffers their walking papers, and gotten their musicians to take an 11% pay cut. The list goes on, I’m sorry to say.
Many orchestras are planning shorter, simpler, cheaper concert seasons. Increasingly, they’re turning to their own principals for solo work in concertos, and asking guest soloists to moderate their fees. (Pianist Emanuel Ax graciously waived his fee entirely for last weekend’s concerts with the Columbus Symphony.)
Severance Hall Pediment (Wikimedia Commons)
Even the mighty Cleveland Orchestra isn’t immune. The same budget beasts battering orchestras in other cities are now clawing at Severance Hall’s doors. Private and corporate donations are down, ticket sales are down, and the orchestra’s endowment fund is down — this last by over a quarter. They’re looking at a possible shortfall of over $7 million — a tough situation for an orchestra that was already in recovery mode after years of deficits.
In response, the orchestra will trim their season and their touring (though perhaps not their performances in Miami, which so far have proven to be revenue champs). They’ll choose repertore to minimize the need for overtime and substitute musicians.
Unlike many of the others, Cleveland has chosen to cut salaries instead of staff. Music director Franz Welser-Moest is setting an example with a 20% giveback, executive director Gary Hanson is letting go of 15% of his pay, and other top brass are swallowing a 10% reduction. Nonunion lower level staffers will see 5% less in their pay envelopes. The orchestra’s managment also plan to ask the players for more “operational flexibility” when their contract comes up for renewal in August.
All this cost-cutting may balance the books for the upcoming season. I certainly hope it does. But if endowment revenue and business support continue to slide, what will Cleveland and the rest of the world’s music makers do? For most US orchestras, ticket sales now cover less than 40 percent of their costs. Where do you suppose the rest comes from?
I’m far from an expert on these matters — I’m the classical music geek at a public radio station, for goodness sake, not an arts administrator — but I wonder if orchestras might harvest some idea from us — that is, public radio — and maybe even from Hollywood.
In the offices of NPR and at stations large and small all across the country, public radio faces a decline in contributions from businesses and foundations. Just as with the orchestras, those who have endowments have watched them evaporate. And as with orchestras, many stations have had to trim operations and/or release staff.
The good news — and it’s deeply gratifying — is that listeners have stepped forward to help make up part of the revenue losses. As has happened in many (though not all) cases round the nation, WKSU’s Spring pledge drive met its goal, and even exceeded it by a small amount.
Meanwhile, the box office take is up for major motion pictures these days, reversing a long standing downward trend. Of course this has generated an inevitable comparison, with the film industry’s much-noted growth during the years of the Great Depression.
In the early 1930s, Hollywood reflected the grim times on the street — and they watched their box office returns dwindle. Their change of course as the tough times dragged on may have been partly driven by a sense of the public’s desire for more escapist fare, but in part it was forced on them by the rise of the Legion of Decency and the Breen Office. Regardless of the impetus, though, it’s hard to debate the fact that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers brought in more Americans worried about next week’s paycheck than did stories of gangster wars and political sleaze.
Now, consider Chicago Lyric Opera. They’re heading into next season in remarkly good fiscal shape. Why? It’s partly because they’ve been holding costs down for years, and they’ve gotten pretty good at it. But a good part of the reason is their repertoire. Their audiences have come to expect frankly conservative programming. The Lyric’s focus on favorites has earned them some catcalls from critics, but their director thinks the company’s current stability while others are teetering has vindicated his approach.
Other opera companies — and orchestras — are paying attention.
I, for one, am not about to criticize them for it. Hollywood’s experience suggests to me that, in tough times, audiences need and crave the comfortable and familiar. It takes courageous administrators to recognize this, and put their ambitious plans for new music and splashy productions on hold. Those uneasy listeners they thus put in their seats will forget their problems, at least for a couple of hours. Those listeners, and their friends, will help pull the orchestras through these dark times. The orchestras will survive, so they can again take risks and forge ahead in the (we hope!) more affluent future.
It wasn’t just lighter subject matter that filled the cinemas of the last 1930s. It helped a lot that producers and theatre owners slashed their costs and brought the price of a ticket down to between a quarter and a half dollar (depending on how deluxe an experience you wanted). As it turns out, that’s about $3.75 to $7.50 in 2009 dollars. Hmmm.
A music lover who’ll drop $130 for a pair of orchestra-level seats in good times might be a little more hesitant when he’s not sure he’ll have a paycheck in 6 months. For someone in that position, even the top row balcony seats may look unaffordable at half that price.
Although not every orchestra is losing listeners — England’s Philharmonia Orchestra, for example, says their ticket sales are holding up well, thank you — many of them are indeed seeing their attendance fall for this very reason.
In public radio, we’ve found that listeners who’ve been with us for years will often pledge upwards of $20 a month, a dollar a day, or even $1000 a year. They know us, and they know the value of our programs. But others who are just discovering us are, quite understandably, usually interested in making smaller donations. So we try to accomodate them. We offer a range of membership levels for listeners of different means and interest.
It seems to me that orchestras have to go beyond just balancing the books on business as usual. Maybe they can learn a little from our experience, and that of the Depression-era movie theatres. In addition to offering appealing concerts, they may have to further widen their range of ticket prices, fighting box office losses by offering some concerts at the regular price, a few at a premium with premium extras and — here it comes — at least some concerts at prices that folks with very limited means can afford.
Kudos to The Cleveland Orchestra for their plans to offer reduced ticket prices for first-time concertgoers and younger people next season. That’s the kind of flexibility that will help keep people in the habit of hearing music live, even if their finances have tightened.
Can we go still further?
Again, remember that I’m not an expert here, so perhaps I’m being naive. If you’re familiar with the issues, feel free to put me in my place with the comments section below. But I think that, in these difficult times, orchestras need to find ways to lower the barriers as much as possible. I have a couple of suggestions.
First, why not fill space that’s currently unused? In Europe many musical organizations offer standing room in the back of the hall for around $5 to $15 per head (or pair of feet), usually on a first come first served basis, no printed program provided.
I’ve stood in Severance Hall, and no doubt will again, but standing room seems less often offered here in the States than in Europe. Is this an area for growth? I suppose it’s not very practical for a family with kids, but couldn’t cheap standing room tickets — say, five bucks — keep a financially stressed music lover coming to concerts until his or her situation improves, or introduce a penurious student to the pleasures of real live music?
Secondly, what about the scale of the concerts themselves? Not every great work requires a full orchestra. We needn’t go as far as Ernest Fleischmann suggested over 20 years ago in his proposal to convert the orchestra into a "community of musicians," but a little more flexibility in orchestra structure and programming could open the doors for a wider audience.
I’m suggesting that some orchestras might consider converting one or more season concerts into chamber orchestra concerts, perhaps even playing them at less traditional locations.
I don’t mean to tread on any musicians’ toes with this notion. From what I understand — please correct me if I’m wrong — union rules make this sort of compromise tough, and for good reasons, so it may take some stretching all round. But there’s a sizable repertoire of substantial, rewarding chamber orchestra works from the 18th to the 21st centuries. By its very nature, the form is less resource-hungry: a smaller corps of players, a smaller space, and smaller crews all add up to more affordable ticket prices. This could bring in music lovers who otherwise might seldom or never see a live concert because of the cost.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting that I have some kind of prescription for struggling orchestras. As I said above, I’m no insider. But whether these ideas are usable ones or not, I think orchestras should be looking at ways to make concerts more affordable for music lovers whose resources are strained.
One way or another, our musical organizations will work through these difficulties. They have to. We need them, to keep live music available for the next generation and the one after that.
Keeping an orchestra or opera company running in the black — sometimes, just keeping it running — is no mean feat in the best of times. In the current economic climate, the folks who put on concerts for us, in the US and around the world, mostly have little choice but to hunker down and wait for the clouds to part.
It’s been a rough week in the music world.
• The Cincinnati Symphony, faced with a massive 3.8 million dollar deficit and a 25 percent drop in their endowment fund’s value, announced drastic measures. Since September they’ve released eight administrative staff members. Nearly everyone left has swallowed pay cuts — staff, music director Paavo Järvi, and now the musicians. Yesterday (Monday 2 February 2009) the orchestra’s players agreed to an eleven percent reduction in salary.
Cincinnati’s recording program has been relegated to limbo. Cleveland’s Telarc Records was scheduled to record The Pops Goes British next week in Music Hall. It’s cancelled, as are all future recordings, though three already in the can are still slated for release.
• The Philadelphia Orchestra asked next season’s guest conductors and soloists to accept lower fees. Large-scale works such as Richard Strauss’s Elektra were axed from the programs. They’d already cancelled their 2009 tour of European festivals, and decided not to renew their innovative relationship with Finland’s Ondine Records. Internet concert simulcasts are out, too.
• The Rochester Philharmonic joined the red-ink crowd, announcing a deficit of $161,000 on an annual operating budget of $10 million. They blamed staff turnover, an increase in programming and administrative costs, and a $280,000 revenue hit.
• The Met expects a double-digit deficit. Their endowment, like many, has declined precipitously, as have donations and ticket sales. San Francisco Opera, faced with the end of their city subsidy, is looking at a $71 million shortfall.
• The Opera Orchestra of New York was to perform Wagner’s Rienzi on 19 March (2009) and Cherubini’s Medea on 21 April, but this week they cancelled both. They’d already axed a concert with bass Ferruccio Furlanetto, originally set for the 27th of February.
• LA Opera pink-slipped 17 staffers and announced pay cuts of 6-8% for the rest. They hope to slice their budget by 25% for next season, mainly by renegotiating union contracts and reducing the season from 64 to 48 performances.
• The Bolshoi Theatre cancelled a Mexican tour and a new performance of Verdi’s Otello.
But wait! Amid all this darkness, we find a couple of glimmers:
• The LA Philharmonic, riding a giddy wave of elation over its new, much-discussed young music director, Gustavo Dudamel, has no plans for any cutbacks at all.
• Chicago Lyric Opera is forging ahead with their long-range plans and won’t need to change a thing in next season’s programming. General director William Mason gets much of the credit; he’s carried forward the lean, fiscally cautious policies of his predecessor, Ardis Krainik. Although Mason’s been criticized for musically conservative programming, he thinks his approach has now been “vindicated.”
