Yeah, Who Needs All the Movements of a Symphony?

[Ralph]

FWSO gets an earful

Complaints spark revisions for orchestra's 2007-08 season

05:22 PM CDT on Monday, March 12, 2007

By SCOTT CANTRELL / Classical Music Critic

The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra won't be cutting movements out of symphonies after all.
[Click image for a larger version] FILE 2006/Staff
FILE 2006/Staff
Music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya was part of the dis- cussions that led to changes in the FWSO's 2007-08 programs.

After announcing that some Friday concerts in the 2007-08 season would be shortened by excising movements from works including the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique, the FWSO got what press and publications manager Trish Ciaravino called "more than a handful" of complaints.

So the FWSO's powers that be (president Ann Koonsman, music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, director of artistic administration Matthew Spivey and director of marketing David Hadlock) sat down to regroup.

They decided to tweak the classical programs so none would have more than 75 minutes' worth of music. In addition to eliminating intermissions on Fridays, they're cutting whole pieces out of all performances on four weekends: the Schumann Spring Symphony (Oct. 5-7), former composer-in-residence Kevin Puts' River's Rush (Jan. 11-13), Brahms' Variations on a Theme by Haydn (March 14-16, 2008) and Beethoven's Egmont Overture (April 11-14, 2008).

Starting in 2007-08, all the FWSO's Friday evening classical concerts (dubbed "Casual Chic") will start at 7:30 p.m., half an hour earlier than Saturdays, and last only an hour and a half.

"When we really started looking at our timing, we realized we can do the full shebang," Ms. Koonsman says.

"We are going to run all of the Symphonic Series concerts at a length of 75 minutes. But on Friday they will run without intermission. That gives us time for a stage change, to roll the piano out, for Miguel to make comments."

The Dallas Symphony Orchestra inaugurated a more limited Casual Fridays series in the current season and plans to continue it in 2007-08. Out of the DSO's 21 Classical Series programs, six Friday performances start half an hour earlier and are presented without intermission. The Friday concerts sometimes eliminate a shorter work, such as an overture, that is performed on Saturday and Sunday, but there has been no cutting of movements.

"We've structured and programmed Classical Fridays so that complete works are performed," says Fred Bronstein, the DSO's president and CEO. "That's our continued intention."

The shorter, earlier Fort Worth and Dallas concerts attempt to attract people who want to get home earlier and don't want to kill a lot of time before an 8 p.m. concert. And both orchestras are hoping the casual label will lure younger people put off by some of the stuffiness of traditional orchestral concerts.

The DSO's main-season Casual Fridays grew out of a summer miniseries of earlier, shorter, casual-dress concerts. The objective, Dr. Bronstein says, was "appealing to broader audiences while offering a different feel and experience."

At the DSO's summer concerts, audiences have been noticeably younger and, at least subjectively, more attentive than many during the winter season. In the main-season Casual Fridays there is, Dr. Bronstein says, "a different mix, look and feel" from the more traditional Saturday and Sunday presentations.

Earlier, shorter and more casual concerts aren't yet a major phenomenon among American orchestras, but we'll probably be seeing more of them. After all, what's sacred about a two-hour orchestra program starting at 8 p.m.?

Both the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have experimented with alternative formats, says Henry Fogel, president and CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League, a New York-based service organization. Chicago has an Afterwork Masterworks series of shorter Wednesday concerts starting at 6:30 p.m.

"There are so many issues we're all beginning to think about in terms of marketing," Mr. Fogel says. "There's no question: Compared with 15, 20, 25 years ago, the numbers of households in which both adults work is greater. Leisure time seems to be shrinking, and the idea of being able to get in and out is more appealing. With all of these shorter concerts, one of the main points is that they end earlier."

Earlier, shorter and more casual concerts are only one of a number of approaches orchestras are using to attract new audiences. Other programs are aimed at adults who don't know much about classical music but want to learn more. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra calls its talk-and-music series "Beyond the Score." The New York Philharmonic's comparable series is dubbed "Inside the Music." The San Francisco Symphony has taken its educational initiative, "Keeping Score," to elaborately produced TV programs and DVDs.

"In Chicago," Mr. Fogel says, "the first half of the program is a very carefully scripted explanation of the piece, using film, talking and excerpts played by the orchestra onstage. It takes you through the piece, the social climate in which the composer existed.

"When they did the Shostakovich Fourth Symphony, they used films from the Soviet period. You felt what it must have been like to be Shostakovich at that time."

That sounds something like what the FWSO plans for the opening program of its Mahler festival, which is scheduled for Aug. 23-26.

As to increasingly casual attire, that's a trend that's been going on for some time, paralleling developments in the workplace and elsewhere. Although the majority of FWSO and DSO classical concertgoers still dress like business executives, you see more variety in attire, and nobody bats an eye.

"Orchestras unfortunately have had this stuffy image," Mr. Fogel says. "If you go back in American culture, there may have been a time when they cultivated that image. Now it's biting us in the rear end."

[karlhenning]

Well, what if they made it like a "hymn sing," and members of the audience get to choose whch movements of which symphonies they play that night?

Cheers,
~Karl

[Jack Kelso]

I wouldn't expect that something like this would catch on here in Germany, and - personally - I don't miss it.

I'm a full concert-lover. The longer the better....

Jack

[anasazi]

No more slow movements, no more minor chords. Classical karoake.

Scary thought isn't it?

[dulcinea]

Remember when I told you about a performance of the KRONUNGSMESSE that omitted the Gloria and the Credo?

[Jack Kelso]

While it's normal on recordings to have "excerpts" from famous operas, the same does should NOT hold for masses and cantatas---not to mention symphonies, concerti, etc (unless it's a "pops" concert).

I once bought a record* of Liszt's "Hungaria" (symphonic poem no. 9), which had been "cut" by about 400 bars (c.a. 7 minutes) right in the middle. Trouble was, I didn't know it until years later when I heard a complete recording (Haitink's).

(*I think it was Ferninand Leitner/Bamberger-Sinfoniker on Decca)

Jack

[jbuck919]

Well, what if they made it like a "hymn sing," and members of the audience get to choose whch movements of which symphonies they play that night?

Cheers,
~Karl

I hate to break the news to you, Karl, but we would never hear anything but the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth.

Seriously, the phenomenon to which Karl is referring is a feature in some churches and was practiced (only during the summer thank God) by my last church in Maryland. It is a good thing I am a good reader because I sas expected to be able to handle any hymn in the hymnal at the drop of a hat. That turned out not to be very relevant, however, since every single Sunday and twice on most Sundays someone requested the ghastly neo-hymn "Here I am, Lord," which is not Methodist or even Protestant (I am sorry to report it is Catholic).

I am not reporting anything that virtually everyone here does not already know, but during the time when the great pre-modern classical composers were actually composing, it was not unusually to hear individual movements at a public concert. Our modern sense is that there is an integrity to a multi-movement work, sometimes at the deepest structural levels, that should not be violated, and often enough that is true, but in my opinion the main reason we don't (and should not) perform individual movements is out of respect for composers who are simply too fully our masters for us to attempt to second guess them.

[SamLowry]

Is it not truly annoying when orchestras refuse to perform Haydn's London symphonies in their entirety? I mean, the guy named them as a group, didn't he? I've noticed when I hear the 97th out of sequence the effect is shockingly different, I don't recommend it even for seekers of the avant garde.

I sure hope people here don’t think bad of me, but at home, in my car, or walking around listening to MP3s, I often don’t listen to a symphony all the way through without interruption. I am known to get out of my car to gas it up between movements, well, gosh, even sometimes right in the middle. I miss full service.

I sometimes change a CD before a symphony is over. Or hit the skip button. It gets even worse when I’m listening to opera on the radio -- I might switch to baseball.

[MaestroDJS]

Russian composer Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) didn't get no respect as a composer. His Symphony No. 2 in C Major "Ocean" was originally in 4 movements, although he later expanded it into 7 movements to represent the Seven Seas. However, unkind critics said they preferred the earlier 4-movement version, because "it was only four-sevenths as bad."

Rubinstein is a very enjoyable composer, and his reputation has improved somewhat over the centuries, but of course he does not rank with the very best.

Or to paraphrase Montgomery Burns: "Listen, Smithers! A second-rate composer! Let's go slumming."

[Jack Kelso]

Russian composer Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894) didn't get no respect as a composer. His Symphony No. 2 in C Major "Ocean" was originally in 4 movements, although he later expanded it into 7 movements to represent the Seven Seas. However, unkind critics said they preferred the earlier 4-movement version, because "it was only four-sevenths as bad."

Rubinstein is a very enjoyable composer, and his reputation has improved somewhat over the centuries, but of course he does not rank with the very best.

Or to paraphrase Montgomery Burns: "Listen, Smithers! A second-rate composer! Let's go slumming."

Much of Rubinstein's music is very attractive, but (perhaps like Raff) he had trouble concentrating for long periods----preferring to just rattle the works off without much or any revision.

Writers and composers normally enjoy the task of revising most of all (at least I do in my short stories). I like Rubinstein's ballet music from the operas ("Feramors" and "The Demon") as well as the Fourth Symphony ("Dramatic") oddball scherzo and the complete Sixth Symphony best.

Unfortunately, brilliant and uninspired passages lie side-by-side in many of Rubinstein's finest works.

Jack