Schmidt 4 dropped

[edurban]

...from Fabio Luisi and Vienna Symphony's Nov. 13 program at Avery Fisher Hall.  The rarely-heard Beethoven 7 is replacing it.  I guess all the ticket buyers who didn't flock to hear Vienna's #2 orchestra play Schmidt will now rush out to hear them run through this warhorse...

Good thing I didn't buy my tickets early. 

David

[mbhaub]

I hope it's not because of the Schmidt. I would rather like to think it's to save money, since the Schmidt requires a much larger orchestra than the Beethoven. But what else was scheduled?
I've traveled long distances to hear the Schmidt: Detroit, New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, St Louis, San Francisco, Dallas and Minneapolis. In Dallas, Minneapolis, and Philadelphia I'm sorry to say that there were many empty seats. Even in San Francisco, there were quite a few more empty seats for the Schmidt than the first half of the concert. Concertgoers, at least in the US, just aren't interested in hearing anything different or new. They want the same old warhorses year after year. Record collectors are a different breed, and the gentlement who frequent this site are the ones who keep the fringe repertoire somewhat alive.
I'm glad you sent this message, I was contemplating a fast trip to NY, but won't now. Thanks!

[eschiss1]

may I suggest instead a trip to NY for the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players concerts instead - not all of them, but perhaps the one that has the Thieriot octet in May, or - well, many of them have interesting repertoire? My birthplace is not a total loss. Anyhow. Apologies for digression.

[Mark Thomas]

European concert promoters who can't avoid programming an unknown symphony tend to put it in the first half with a warhorse in the second to keep the numbers up.

[eschiss1]

I seem to recall Liszt recommending doing something like that but finding that it didn't help that much?... not sure.

[jerfilm]

how true, mb, We attended a reprise concert last Tuesday of the Mn. Orchestra's previous Saturday night concert at Carnegie Hall.  Tchaikovsky overture, First piano concerto, intermission, Carl Nielsen 3rd.  Looked like a near sell out despite not  being a "regular" subscription concert.  Guess when folks began leaving?  Hint: they missed a stunning performance of the Espansiva.......

I never can understand that......pay $75 a seat and leave at mid point.   Incidentally (and a digression) I don't see how Hough could have played the concerto any faster.   I wonder if they were paying the musicians overtime.....

Jerry

[Dundonnell]

$75 a seat   That's about £47.

....and they left at the intermission

I thought that the American middle-classes were being squeezed financially (At these prices no one else could attend anyway!)

[jerfilm]

I should qualify that - those are the best seats - you can get down as low as $23 if you like Tier 3, side, restricted view.....I'm guessing they average between 40-50.   But whoever said it above is right - audiences here seem to come for the Tchaikovsky and even Nielsen is relatively "unsung" except that Vanska does manage at least one of his symphonys every year. 

Jerry

[Delicious Manager]

Guess when folks began leaving?  Hint: they missed a stunning performance of the Espansiva.......

I never can understand that......pay $75 a seat and leave at mid point.   Incidentally (and a digression) I don't see how Hough could have played the concerto any faster.   I wonder if they were paying the musicians overtime.....

Jerry

I despise tiny-minded people who do that. I would wager most of those who left didn't know the Nielsen. Such closed-mindedness and ignorance (not to mention appalling manners) makes me seeth.

As for dropping the Schmidt (yes, a TERRIBLE shame), my guess is that, in these straitened times, there simply wasn't enough money to transport the large orchestra needed for the Schmidt across the Atlantic. The costs of flights, hotel rooms, subsistence and fees might have been impossible to realise in the end. I bet the remainder of the programme was for an orchestra far smaller than that required for the Schmidt.

[eschiss1]

Well, it does require a large orchestra- from the program notes to a (hrm. past? possibly also planned and cancelled? future?... I'm clueless here from the information I have...) San Francisco Symphony performance (meant to be conducted by Fabio Luisi, which may be a clue... ah. notes written before Luisi chose not to go with the SF Symphony at all.)-
" two flutes (second doubling piccolo), two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and E-flat clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, contrabass tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, tam-tam, two harps, and strings".

[eschiss1]

... hrm. Ok, I get it, Luisi was in contention for a post with the SF Symphony, was going to conduct Schmidt 4 with them, program notes were written for the concert and are still at their site, and as it is, he's in New York City and neither city is getting what to my mind (yes, I get it, D.M., you don't agree) is a very fine and well worth hearing memorial work...

[Delicious Manager]

(yes, I get it, D.M., you don't agree) is a very fine and well worth hearing memorial work...

Sorry, I think you misunderstood. I LOVE Schmidt 4. My capitals were merely a sincere reinforcement.

[eschiss1]

I did misunderstand, apologies. (I have trouble enough understanding these things in person... sigh. Sorry.)

[Delicious Manager]

I did misunderstand, apologies. (I have trouble enough understanding these things in person... sigh. Sorry.)

Not to worry. This is a prime example how the written word can be interpreted by a reader in a way very different from that meant by the writer (in this case the exact opposite). I discovered Schmidt's wonderful 4th Symphony when a young lad. I bought the Vienna Phil/Mehta Decca (London) recording when it was fairly hot off the presses. I had read about Schmidt, but hadn't heard a note of his music (this is a stimulus for my buying CDs to this day). From that ghostly, sinuous trumpet solo at the beginning I was hooked. And that explosion (or is it an IMplosion?) of the Scherzo into the Finale is simply masterful (and terrifying).

[edurban]

I first heard this symphony in the old Rudolf Moralt version...I believe it was the work's first recording.  The orchestra was Vienna Symphony, which gives them a certain cache where this great symphony is concerned.  I had never heard of Schmidt (the Mehta effort still lay in the future and S. recordings were few and far between.)  Like Delicious Manager, I was hooked by that opening trumpet theme, and I have to say that no recording since then has made it sound quite so desolate. 

The Moralt is available as a download from Naxos, but I'd love to have it on disc.  Alas, I haven't heard it in 35 years, and despite my fond memories, I suspect that neither recording nor orchestra were quite up to the challenge...

David