The Philadelphia Orchestra at The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. Photo: Jessica Griffin.
When I was but a young stripling of an elitist, my father took my brother and me to afternoon concerts at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music to hear Eugene Ormandy conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra. At the time, the orchestra was particularly known (for both good and ill) for the sound of its string section — a lush romantic blanket laid over orchestral works both appropriate and inappropriate to it. It was also known for Ormandy’s rather daring programming: along with the old warhorses that kept the long-time audience coming back (Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Berlioz and Prokofiev), he wasn’t afraid to program new work by Shostakovich (especially the great Symphony No. 15, of which I heard the American premiere at the Academy of Music), Copland (the Third Symphony; even this rather conventional piece had audiences leaving the hall before the first movement was complete) and Ligeti. So it was with some sentimental sadness that I followed the announcement of the orchestra’s bankruptcy earlier this year.
The Philadelphia Orchestra, however, has now announced restructuring plans. Goodbye, Shostakovich and Ligeti; hello, John Williams and Danny Elfman. Peter Dobrin described the details of the reorganization plan, which includes a 15% cut in its subscription performances and its artistic budget, in The Philadelphia Inquirer last Sunday:
The orchestra’s board aims to recapture its “status as the premier nonprofit board in Philadelphia” and “attract and retain the best thinkers and influential members of the community.”
The musicians will branch out into light classics and film scores, exchange white tie and tails for something less “stuffy,” and perform in an environment that is more theatrical and accompanied by extras such as digital program notes and after-concert events. …
Patrons will be able to count on a relationship with the orchestra on every level — on its website, by phone, in the concert hall, in the restaurants and lobby of the Kimmel Center — that makes them feel more valued than they do now.
Well, because of the risk of inviting populist vitriol into the comments section of this post, I’ll let this stand without further characterization (though if this constitutes a decision by some of Philadelphia’s “best thinkers,” the bar for this is apparently lowering year by year). But it is not the Philadelphia Orchestra that I knew; and it has clear implications for theatre as well, which I also won’t characterize. Appreciation to A.C. Douglas of Sounds & Fury for the link.
The reorganization plan sounds unfocused and misguided, giving the impression of an artistic institution out of touch with itself and any potential listeners. The basic concept of assembling a creative “team” for planning with rotating celebrity members (such as Lang Lang, Leila Josefowicz, and Tan Dun) is sadly reflective of this — what any artistic project needs to survive is visionary and committed leadership, not programming by committee and a kind of “flavor of the month” approach to repertoire. One has to shudder when the president emphasizes this as “absolutely front-forward behavior,” describing enormous cutbacks as “frisky ways of thinking about being a great orchestra.” Where is the artistic identity in an orchestra presenting a “light classics, Baroque, Broadway music, film scores, and ‘other pop genres’” … what, in today’s environment, could these terms even mean, and how could their use in this context indicate anything but a lack of direction? What a tremendous missed opportunity, absolutely neglecting build on the history you mention.
When I was attempting to master the clarinet (with only modest success) in the 70s, the Philadelphia Orchestra was one of the great orchestras in the country, along with Boston, New York, Chicago, and LA. That an orchestra of that status should go bankrupt speaks to the incompetence of its management. I don’t know the details, but bankruptcy doesn’t happen all of a sudden: the orchestra must have been mismanaged for years.
The New York Philharmonic in recent years has demonstrated that a great orchestra can reach out to a broader audience without dumbing down. NYP has instituted a series of shorter “rush hour” concerts, while continuing to produce full-length concerts and programming new works. And during the summer New Yorkers can enjoy many free concerts by NYP at city parks and, last night, at St John the Divine Cathedral. While these summer concerts don’t feature daring new works, the audience is at least not submitted to a suite of Led Zeppelin tunes.
Marilyn is probably right. The Philadelphia experiment might bring in a handful of new listeners, but will likely lose its old listeners. Penny wise, pound foolish.
Given that this is a response to an economic disaster, I suppose I find it most grimly amusing that among the first goals of the new plan is to “fund the bankruptcy,” as Dobrin has it — paying off the bankruptcy consultants and lawyers — which has already cost at the very least a half-million dollars (for the lawyers must be paid first), according to this ArtsWatch blog post by Dobrin last week:
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/artswatch/Philadelphia-Orchestra-bankruptcy-judge-approves-lawfirm-others.html
Only in tandem with that can the bold new vision be pursued: in addition to the new repertoire philosophy Marilyn quotes above, there’s also “great emphasis on shaking up the concert experience with multimedia elements such as theatrical lighting, pre- and postconcert events in the lobby, work with designers to create new concert attire for the musicians, and concerts at venues such as the Navy Yard, ‘an airport hangar, or warehouse,’” according to Dobrin. Among his other quotes from the plan, he lists these:
“Be bold. Do not let fear control the future, but – rather – remember the saying, ‘Who dares wins.’ ” [Which daring includes "light classics, Baroque, Broadway music, film scores, and ‘other pop genres’"]
“The orchestra needs leadership to integrate it with the community and to bring young people to the concerts. It is terribly sedate in its marketing and programming. It is also terribly exclusive and highbrow in its ‘image.’ . . . You have to make it easier to attend, less of a hassle . . . and you have to develop your relationships with us.”
“Bring on the charisma. . . . Be creative, have fun – classical music is the soundtrack of life. Stop stifling it.”
“Make the orchestra concerts truly memorable events and I will have no problem paying full price for tickets. Show the community that the orchestra’s management and board governance is fully in the 21st century, and not fixed on the past.”
“I love the Philadelphia Orchestra, but it needs to love itself and accept who and what it is before things will get better. What does that mean? I can’t tell you. Only you can figure that out.”
A maudlin and short-sighted self-help manual and a reorganization plan all in one. As I said: grim.
Since when does “truly memorable” equate to “easily digestible”? Someone shoot me.
Well, if the Philadelphia Orchestra really wanted to be daring, bold and memorable, they could do no better than to look back to the legacy of Eugene Ormandy. According to the Wikipedia biography of the conductor, Ormandy regularly commissioned and performed new works by then-living composers, both American and international, among them works by Samuel Barber, Paul Creston, David Diamond, Howard Hanson, Walter Piston, Ned Rorem, William Schuman, Roger Sessions, Virgil Thompson, and Richard Yardumian. He also conducted American premiere recordings of work by Paul Hindemith, Carl Orff, Carl Nielsen. Anton Webern, Krzysztof Penderecki and Gustav Mahler. You couldn’t get much more bold or daring, especially in the American symphonic concert hall, than that.
Philadelphia was — and is — a great music town; this coming weekend alone there are three major new music events going on (along with the Feldman festival, there’s the U.S. premiere of a Hans Werner Henze opera, Phaedra, from the Opera Company of Philadelphia and the “Month of Moderns” festival). But it remains so in spite of the closure of WFLN and the bankruptcy — both financial and aesthetic — of the Philadelphia Orchestra, not because of those two institutions.