Sunday, April 17, 2011
The Philadelphia Story
That was the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1949, with Eugene Ormandy, in Birmingham, rehearsing a spot of Brahms. Blimey. That, people, is one heck of a great orchestra.
Fast forward to yesterday, when the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra yesterday voted for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the finest orchestras in America, hence the world, and its budget for this season, $46m, sounds kind of huge from little old London. So what's gone wrong? The New York Times has the most informative article I've yet seen, explaining it all.
The news comes only a week or two after the strike at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra was (mercifully) resolved, while orchestras are folding in Syracuse and Hawaii, and while the shenanigans in Brazil around a maestro of mythic-sized arrogance should not bear acceptance by any member of the musical community anywhere in the world.
It's further proof (you'd think we'd have enough by now, but it seems not) that purely private funding is no way to ensure the thriving life of a national treasure: philanthropy and endowments are fair-weather friends. There've been management problems in Philadelphia before now, as the NYT piece shows, but we should take all of it as a timely warning and learn never to rely solely on one means of garnering lolly for anything.
But still, allowing an orchestra like Philadelphia to go bust is like letting the National Gallery do likewise. A great orchestra, like a great gallery, is a showcase - a living showcase - for the wonders created by human beings over the centuries. They remind us we're people, that we have brains and that we have souls and they inspire us to become more than our ancestral apes could ever have dreamed. In a gallery, you walk and look. In a concert, you sit and listen. Breughel or Bach, Titian or Tchaikovsky, Monet or Mozart - you decide.
Art belongs to everyone, folks. It knows nothing about our personal circumstances. Just because you don't have any dosh it doesn't mean you are not entitled to experience the best artistry that humankind has to offer - or, if your natural talent allows, the right to acquire the skills to create it yourself. And don't you ever forget it.
So sit and listen to this: the Philadelphia Orchestra in its glory days, an American orchestra under its Hungarian-born conductor Eugene Ormandy, playing English music. Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis. And if you can't play it (I'm told some readers outside the UK can't), try the extract of Scheherazade from 1978 below.
UPDATE: Peter Dobrin's Philadelphia-based blog has frequent updates on the situation. UK readers may find it intriguing to look at the comments he receives and note the difference in mindset between some American concert-goers and our own. I'm glad to say I've never once heard anyone in the Royal Festival Hall grumble about young people getting cut-price seats.
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7 comments:
I'm afraid I don't quite get this.
If the PO was great in 1949, as evidenced, why does that make it great now?
If we should be sympathetic to the needs of, and fund, a great orchestra because it is great, (I don't buy the National Gallery comparison, but let's run with it) what does that say about whether we should fund not-so-great orchestras?
In what way does the PO situation provide any proof that private funding doesn't work, rather than, say, proving that the PO is just too darn expensive?
Is public money better spent supporting one really great orchestra who are very very expensive, or is it better used to support grass-roots music, younger groups, smaller concerns where the available cash spreads wider and could have a greater impact?
As much as I support the concept of art being a public service to the public, thus funded by the public, I am opposed to supporting orchestras versus supporting musicians. Yes, musicians need to come together in various configurations as required by the works. It's not the configurations, however, that provide the art. The musicians do. Established configurations that are not run by the musician carry a high risk of developing financial demands for totally non-musical purposes, like red tape. And only configurations not run by the musicians require unions, which have nothing to do with music. They even create more red tape, need more non-musical funding.
When money is really tight, publicly paid musicians should run their configurations (orchestras), anything else will just cost and not produce more art.
FMF
Robert, I don't think any of the things you mention are mutually exclusive. I chose the historical recordings because I happen to love them - it's not a comment on how things sound now, but it is proof of how long and distinguished the orchestra's history really is. And the fact that private funding on its own ultimately doesn't work also does not mean that the PO is not too darn expensive - obviously it is. And public money needs to be spent on grass-roots music AND great orchestras, in tandem with suitable sponsorship and philanthropy, ensuring a stable basis at all times.
Thanks for the thoughtful post. The question of how to support musicians so one can have great orchestras seems to me overwhelmingly large. I'm keeping an eye on the Philadelphia situation, though; I grew up outside the city, and so the orchestra gave me my first experiences of a lot of music I love. At rehearsals and after concerts, the musicians were never anything but friendly. I'm an avid (if frequently cut-price) concert-goer, now in New York, and am grateful to Philly for giving me my start, as it were.
I found this wonderfully fantastic blog serendipitously when searching for information on 'great conductors'-seems they're all born in Finland or Estonia or Poland or France or . . . which leads to my point-for Americans, historically, classical music (and I love the stuff, breath it, eat and sleep singing themes from great symphonies -seriously)has been an imported flower. Take a look at our greatest musical institutions and see how they got started.
From Wikipedia
Eastman school of Music Alfred Klingenberg, a Norwegian pianist, was the school's first director. (1912)
Hard to prove scientifically, but it seems we Americans have had trouble accepting of our native born and trained talents.
Which leads to the last point; as part of the Detroit music scene I have noticed a lack of interest in classical (serious art) music that stems to me, (again no statistics, just a hunch) from a lack of participation from early home experiences and schooling.
The schools can't teach what is not honored or revered in the home (including math, writing and the plastic arts)so it is no surprise that Detroit is mainly and always now will be a hockey, football(soccer), basketball and baseball kind of town. Those venues are huge here and the 21st player for the Pistons is paid $30k/yr more than the 21st violin player at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Not one player in the Orchestra earns what the 25 or 30 or even 50 players or coaches of the top sports figures earns for playing at their 'art' forms (using the term art loosely and figuratively)-let alone talk about the commercial venue via the media which is huge-even for Detroit. Yes “even”-take a look at some of the photos for the city’s decline.
Haunting Images Of Detroit's Decline (PHOTOS)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/23/detroit-decline_n_813696.html
So how to we pull classical music up?
Teach great music in the schools, yes!
Teach great music to the minions of greed in the government-yes!
Teach it to ourselves and hold the flickering flame aloft-we can bring much to the fading world of symphony music by just persisting in the belief that we have much that is valuable and letting every one we know what we think and feel with grace, tact, enthusiasm and with all the techniques of the great art form itself.
For Robert, to answer your initial question, the quick cliche to use is "institutional memory". Stokowski created the Philadelphia Sound during his tenure, and Ormandy maintained it during his tenure. If you add both of their tenures, that makes 68 years. The unique sound of the orchestra still carries through later generations.
Regarding private funding, and writing as an American, you omitted the word "private" from JD's description. American orchestras pretty much work from private funds, since, to put it too concisely, the USA is not Finland when it comes to supporting classical music, in terms of government funding (not even close in terms of %). In turn, the private funds tend to be mostly from the very wealthy, even back in the days before the current salaries for the top tier US orchestras at which most UK musicians look askance. Public money for US orchestras is pretty pitiful on the whole. Plus, please remember that in the US, health care, a huge living expense, is dependent on what each individual can rustle up private, rather than the US having a national health care system.
Sorry that in my comment, the word that I meant to highlight from JD's commentary was "purely" in the phrase "purely private funding". But getting back to Robert's post, the fact is that generally in the US, in any given city which has a symphony orchestra, that orchestra will take up pretty much all the oxygen in terms of audience and funding, and be the only game in town when it comes to classical music. Plus, in the case of Philadelphia, the salaries there are not typical for US orchestras, but the exception. It takes years to build up the "Big Five" cachet, even if that "Big Five" title doesn't mean quite so much now with the quality of US orchestras outside of those 5 cities. Any new ensemble will find it tough competition to win audiences when going against such an august organization, e.g. Orchestra 2001, Relache, or the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, to name three smaller organizations with some degree of being established in the Philly area.
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