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LOL! My sentiments exactly! Guess what we played last season? Bartok Concerto for Orchestra!
snort!
Unfortunately, the Music Director doesn't care about what the musicians think. We're at the bottom rung of the ladder. I agree with your ideas...but the Music Director does what he wants, not what we suggest. I sure wish we could make those changes!

LOL. In my last year of performing with a really good group, we played the Bartok. I had two violin strings break on me during the performance, and I had no spares with me on stage. It was a pretty miserable feeling. Not only is the piece a pain in the rear to play, but after all that work I didn't even get to play it, other than what could be played on two strings... lol.

I think music directors in general are pressured by critics and some of the well... more snooty benefactors, to program music that appears to be intellectual, strange, avant garde, and difficult to grasp. Some directors get caught up in this group too. I have this suspicion that most of them (except for the directors, of course) actually don't "get" music at all, at least not in an emotional sense. It is like art to them, and the more bizarre things are, the more credit and attention the arts community will give them. They view "pushing the envelope" as a level of success. But this can never replace how people emotionally react to an interpretation of a well known work.

Beethoven and Mozart have been played over and over and over again, but a great performance is NEVER boring. That being said, I have nearly fallen asleep during performances of great works that were performed without any fire or passion. Listen to Carlos Kleiber's recording of the Beethoven 5th and 7th -- two that have been played to death. Kleiber manages to make them sound new and exciting, and all while staying true to Beethoven. It's absolutely sublime.

One of my favorites is the Rachmaninoff Second Symphony. It takes a director and an orchestra with a lot of passion and a lot of guts to pull this one off, and if they do it right, it makes for an almost magical evening. You can't say that about Phillip Glass. Ever.

re the most accessible piece is Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra. (which IMHO is one of the greatest compositions of the 20th century)...I hear you. This year's subscription to the BSO concerts was all warhorses. A reaction to past ultra-challenging repertoire. Me, I was on the music committee of a church with an acoustically beautiful sanctuary. OK visually, too. We brought in performers of all sorts of music, never pleased everybody, but raised the money for the church's music program.