Meh?
Posted on 12/19/2005 8:43:27 AM PST by sitetest
IS THERE an audience for classical music? How many times we have asked that question, and never really come up with a compelling answer. As we approach the end of 2005 - a year of typical mixed fortunes for the music scene - I find myself revisiting this old chestnut of a question.
On the one hand, there are ominous signs out there. The Usher Hall struggled yet again this year to fill its 2,000-plus seats in either the Edinburgh Festival or even with the allure a few weeks ago of American superstar soprano Barbara Bonney, as part of the hall's lukewarm International Series. Royal Scottish National Orchestra (RSNO) audiences in Edinburgh have been OK at best, but lean in relation to the hall's considerable capacity.
More worryingly for the RSNO, it's seen the same in its home town, Glasgow, where rows of empty seats at the city's Royal Concert Hall (GRCH) - even for relatively safe middle-of-the-road programmes - have become too regular a sight. The RSNO has been trying hard to warm the concert atmosphere with introductory chitchat from incumbent conductors (some better at it than others), a variety of pepped-up marketing initiatives, and now a move to introduce post-concert chinwags with the conductor.
Fresh faces, including the orchestra's effusive new French music director, Stéphane Denève, are part of the make-over process, but I have my doubts whether these alone will make a huge difference in adding bums to seats.
As for the nation's opera audience, Scottish Opera's enforced sabbatical, from early last summer to next May, has robbed fans of any regular opera to attend. Goodness knows what lies in store for Scottish Opera when the slumber is over and it attempts to restore faith in its following. We know from experience that any lull in regular activity can erode long-standing traditional support.
When the RSNO decamped to the Edinburgh Festival Theatre from the Usher Hall during the latter's refurbishment several years ago, changing its regular concert night in the process, the audience-base began haemorrhaging and has never truly recovered. People acquire new habits.
We've tended to lay the blame for the fall-off in classical music attendances on bad programming, lack of excitement, not enough targeting the young and that woeful branding, favoured by the politicians, of elitism. These are important issues to address. But they don't really explain why, for instance, niche avant-gardist Karlheinz Stockhausen played to full houses in Glasgow and Edinburgh this year. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is more basic.
I was in Perth a fortnight ago for a concert by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (SSO) in the town's impressive new concert hall. It wasn't a typical run-of-the mill programme - Elgar's thick-set Second Symphony is not to everyone's taste. There was some Beethoven, whose five piano concertos are the unifying theme in the hall's exploratory first concert series, featuring all three of the country's main orchestras. More importantly - and to some extent astonishingly - the concert was a sell-out.
The first thing to remember, of course, is the capacity of the new hall: around 1,000 seats. Such a crowd would have only half-filled the Usher Hall or the GRCH. More interestingly, it would have filled only about a third of the enormous Caird Hall in nearby Dundee. Sparsely spread audiences in these giant auditoria chill the atmosphere. In the full Perth Hall - with its bright and personable acoustics - the atmosphere was warm, charged and dynamic.
And where did these 1,000 people come from? The hall's management doesn't have the mechanism yet to identify that information, but my guess is that a good few came from the Dundee direction. Which poses the question: could the Perth Concert Hall become a threat to the Caird Hall?
Transpose that thought to Glasgow, where the city is about to open the lavishly refurbished City Halls. It will be the home to the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO), which will mount its own modest concert series there.
It will also restore the provision in Glasgow of a medium-sized auditorium, with a seating capacity of around 1,000. Outwith BBC SSO use, this facility - run and promoted by the same management as the GRCH - will be available for hire. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra will use it, as will the Scottish Ensemble. Could there be a time, some way along the road, when the RSNO might view the City Hall as a more cost-effective hire for certain types of programme? Word is they have become extremely nervous of the SSO's move into a more prominent public arena than its former hideaway studio in the West End.
Could it be, then, that our concert halls are simply too big? Is the issue perhaps more to do with the incompatibility of the large concert auditorium than the collapse of classical music audiences? Is 1,000-1,500 the magic threshold number? Wouldn't it do more for the cause of classical music to be able to declare more concerts as sell-outs?
It's well known, after all, that RSNO subscribers willfully gave up buying season subscriptions when the orchestra moved from the old 1,200-seater City Hall to the 2,200-capacity GRCH in 1990, on the correct assumption that there would always be spare tickets available.
And here's another point. The new glass-fronted Perth Hall, despite being open for only three months, has spectacularly caught the imagination of those anxious for a good night out. Concert audiences arrive hours before the event to make use of the attractive foyer restaurant and bar facilities, and many stay on afterwards to do the same. When closing time comes, punters have to be kicked out. How cool is that?
You could never say that about the Usher Hall, where the aim is to arrive as late as possible to avoid boredom, and leave briskly to avoid the departing stampede. How that will be addressed in the hall's forthcoming refurbishment programme remains to be seen.
In Glasgow, there's every possibility the City Halls could prove a much greater social magnet than the tepid formalism of the GRCH. Having seen what's being done there, the signs are it will be a very welcoming environment, which includes bar facilities that spill on to the revamped Fruitmarket balconies, and a new café to the rear of the foyer stairs.
There is, I believe, an audience out there desperate for music. Plenty of examples this year prove it. Look at last week's full houses for Glyndebourne Opera at Edinburgh Festival Theatre. I wonder if anyone from the Scottish Executive was there to witness the enthusiasm, among young as well as old, for the art-form they consider "elitist".
Then there was the expanded East Neuk Festival in Fife last summer, which created its own dynamism by matching small and intimate venues with such crowd-pullers as pianist-in-residence Christian Zacharias. Busloads came from Glasgow and Edinburgh for these events. Having to fight for a seat gave an added buzz to these excellent concerts.
Classical music is far from dead. The challenge, though, is to bring it fully alive, and that means presenting it in the best possible light, with the best quality, and in the most invigorating and appropriate environment. The imminent change in the Glasgow infrastructure will, I believe, revolutionise the city's venue and concert profile. Edinburgh, for one, should keep a watchful eye on it.
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=2427482005
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There's one answer....MORE COWBELL!
Worthwhile perspective?... or Whistling past the graveyard?
LOL!!
on ping please.
I can't think of anything man made that has an inherent value. Classical music is not valuable just because it exists. If no one likes it... then it's time has past. The coarsening of our culture marches on, and there is no stopping it.
Put a reasonably priced restaurant in the concert hall and people will make an entire night of it.
Plus, one doesn't have to sit through clang-and-bang atonal pieces to pay additional admission for getting to hear what one wants to hear. (That's my opinion only, but I concede that YMMV--no need to attack or debate it).
Sorry to repeat your point about Gould. Just didn't read far enough. But was it Mendelssohn or Liszt, with the transcriptions?
Well, the last I heard, the Royal Albert Hall is filled with holes.
Reintroduce music education in elementary schools so that kids are exposed to classical music. My 8 year old niece loves classical music because she's heard it most of her life.
I took her to the annual performance of The Nutcracker a couple weeks ago and they used canned music. It was just not the same. The dancers did not connect to the audience like they usually do. I should demand a partial refund because the tickets cost the same as they did last year when they had a full orchestra.
Dear gusopol13,
Certainly!
sitetest
Meh?
Dear TexanToTheCore,
That's an idea!
Or, you could do what my Knights of Columbus Council did. We had an orchestra come play in our church hall, and as part of the price of the ticket, we held a 50/50 raffle. The winning ticket was for $1,000!
We sold over 300 tickets! LOL!!
sitetest
"There's one answer....MORE COWBELL!"
And only the 3rd post!
It's a fine idea. (See tagline.)
Dear jammer,
May be. Personally, I'm grateful to live in an era where we have copious amounts of high-quality recorded music.
But it's nice to go to the symphony once in a while, too. ;-)
sitetest
LOL!!
MORE COWBELL!!
L
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