A Sad Day......

[jerfilm]

This has nothing to do with unsung composers so flog me with a wet noodle and delete if you wish.

But you may have heard that Maestro Vanska resigned as Music Director of the Mn. Orch. last Tuesday and he and the locked out members of the orchestra are giving farewell concerts last night and today at the University of Minnesota.  I fear that this is the end of world class music in Minnesota - the end of a hundred year plus era. 

The lockout is now over a year old.  November concerts in Carnegie Hall are cancelled.  While offering musicians a significant salary cut, the Board was merrily pursuingg a $50,000,000 renovation to the lobby of Orchestra Hall, a move that had to have irritated the musicians (and many of us, as well).  IMHO this organization has been mismanaged for at least 10 years.

But, then, we're just former season ticket holders for 57 years......

Jerry

Addendum:  See also http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/kernis-resigns-from-minnesota-orchestra/
Another great loss......

[mbhaub]

This is indeed very sad and maddening. Growing up, I spent a lot of money on a lot of Minneapolis/Minnesota recordings. Great orchestra, great playing, great conducting. When I could finally afford it, I made several trips to Minneapolis to hear them live. Great memories.

Who's to blame for this? Everyone. Musicians must realize that there isn't the demand for their product that there was 50-60 years ago and that their salaries are not sustainable. The management spends money wrongly. I've heard for years about how superior Minneapolis is to most places because they really value the arts. Really? Then where were they? Did they come to the rescue and open their wallets? They almost lost the St Paul Chamber Orchestra. Now this. We can debate all we want about the relative value of professional musicians and athletes, but to the vast American public, classical music doesn't matter one iota and they couldn't care less if it vanishes from their communities.

[Alan Howe]

I'm sad if a great orchestra and tradition are to go to the wall. Desperate.

[sdtom]

I reside in a suburb of Minneapolis, Columbia Heights or cone city as I call it because of the chronic road repair, and to further sprinkle salt into the wound, the professional football team the Vikings, who recently played a game in London is getting a new stadium. Perhaps the answer is to have the musicians return to part time employment to supplement their income, return to a smaller venue where they use to play on the University of Minnesota campus and have fewer concerts. My very first concert was at Northrup auditorium, a young peoples concert hosted by Antal Dorati and the symphony. It was this concert that gave me my first interest in classical music which has never left me.
Tom

[Mark Thomas]

This seems a desperately sad and badly managed business. I don't know much about the viability problems of US orchestras, but I understand that a number (such as the Philadelphia) have faced similar financial difficulties and have found a way of surviving them.

[sdtom]

I see survival in the way I described in another post in this thread.
Tom

[mbhaub]

US orchestras that have had serious troubles are numerous. Many have had strikes. Some have just closed down. Some survive, but do so by paying low salaries. 60 years ago many orchestras (Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia among them) were made up of part-timers who had regular day jobs - the orchestra gig didn't pay that much. They were still fabulous groups, made a name for themselves and made some great recordings. Pro baseball players were in the same boat. Things really changed in the 1960's. Hiring 100+ people and paying them $100,000 or more is no longer viable, although it saddens me that one baseball player (and there are many like this) makes more money than the entire budget of many of our 2nd tier orchestras. Sadly, Minneapolis is only another orchestra that's going to have to reorganize. What a terrible legacy my generation has left for our children and grandchildren.

[Mark Thomas]

There will be a day of reckoning eventually on the sports fields too, I'm sure.

As for blaming our generation for what happened, I think that we can certainly take our share of the blame, but shouldn't over burden ourselves with it. To my mind, the real blame lies with the way in which serious music was allowed to develop into an art form which has no relevance or attraction for middle-brow listeners (like me). In the 18th and 19th centuries, most new works which people could hear at concerts or play at home in piano reductions were accessible to at least some degree. Even Wagner made sure that The Ring was deliberately peppered with extractable "bleeding chunks" which would popularise his music amongst a listening public which would never tolerate listening to the whole thing. People respond to melody and harmony, its what they crave, at least to some degree. Once they were pretty much abandoned by the avant garde in the early 20th century, mass audiences were progressively lost to other, baser, forms of music, and our concert programmes began to focus on established repertoire: music which was older and older as the century wore on. The lack of new, exciting, accessible repertoire helped make concertising more and more unattractive to younger audiences, particularly when one factors in the cost, and the easy availability of the whole repertoire in high quality recordings. Of course, we know that nothing replaces the thrill of a good live performance, but we are relative cognoscenti.

I look at the shrinking, mostly elderly audiences of our local, high quality orchestra here in the UK, at the desperate attempts of the management to popularise the programmes by bringing in school parties, using TV celebrities as guest compères and the like, and I fear than even here we are going the same way. The problem is the repertoire, which even now is shrinking more and more, and I suspect that it's too late to fix it, because what is needed is not more of the same, not the infusion of all of our favourite unsung works (much as I'd love it), but accessible, exciting music being written by composers in their 30s and 40s, not their 150s and 180s.

I've over-simplified I know, but excuse me, it's early on Sunday morning.

[sdtom]

Both of you are right on the money.
Tom

[jerfilm]

I would just add this.  It seems to me that if in the 1950's, our music directors had started introducing audiences to the Raffs, Ries, Gernsheims, Reineckes, Hadleys and the lesser known albeit lovely pieces by Elgar, Delius, even Dvorak and others who were writing good tunes instead of forcing us to sit through Walter Piston,  Penderecki, Creston and this list goes on and on.  There are alot of folks who believe that only Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and a handful of others ever wrote a memorable melody.

Yes, and the $100K musicians have driven ticket prices up and up.  Younger folks will pay $130 for a poor seat to see Jeff Dunham but not $75 to listen to a great orchestra......

Sad.....

Jerry

[erato]

Well, it's the lack of Pistons and Crestons etc that keep me from attending concerts.

[M. Yaskovsky]

I'm from The Netherlands where we've always had subsidised orchestras. In the 50s we had around 14 in a country of 6 million & now we've around 8 for 17 million. Is it really so an orchestra player in the US can get a salary of 100.000 dollars................ I faint, for that money you get 3 great desk violinists over here. Only the players of our Concertgebouw Orchestra get 10% more. A superb seat? Max 50 Euro's. Somethin wrong over the Atlantic?

[eschiss1]

A lot, where do I start?...

[mbhaub]

Is it really so an orchestra player in the US can get a salary of 100.000 dollars.

Actually, that's low for some orchestras. In many (New York, Chicago, San Franscisco) the rank-and-file member makes upwards of $125,000. Principals make well over that; $150,000 to $175000 is not unheard of. I know one bassoon player of a major orchestra who makes well over $250,000 from the regular orchestra job and then two summer festivals. But that's nothing to what we pay conductors. Even the worst of the worse can easily make over $300,000. Most of them are hardly worth it. Players argue that they worked hard for it (they did), they have expensive instruments (they do) and that orchestras will bid against each other to get them (sometimes). No question, hearing a great orchestra play is an awesome experience. Bands like Clevenland, London Symphony, Concertgebouw, Berlin play so well that the sound is just magical. However, lesser groups, which often appear on labels like Naxos, CPO, BIS and others play nearly as well and most listeners would be hard pressed to hear a difference. And yes, some of the big-name conductors do make a difference. But I have to say, in the last year, there are many 2nd rate orchestras and 2nd rate conductors who have thrilled me in concert and make me question why we all salivate over the big orchestras and over-paid conductors. Gotta quit. Blood pressure rising!

[Alan Howe]

Well, it's the lack of Pistons and Crestons etc that keep me from attending concerts.

It's the plethora of Stockhausens, Boulezes, etc. that keep me away. And I too would go for concerts featuring good, tonal 20th/21stC music. But it's the restricted 19thC repertoire that's the real scandal.