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What have the musicians of the Metropolitan Opera been up to since they are not playing in the pit? Doing a little busking:
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I was talking to a friend of mine on the weekend who is principal flute in a Canadian orchestra. His orchestra has simply canceled next season. Not just until January, until next September. This means that every member of that orchestra will have been without work for almost a year and a half. Why are North American orchestras canceling instead of incrementally re-establishing concerts as they are doing in Europe? In Germany and Austria, for example, orchestras have started over the last week or so giving normal concerts except that many seats in the halls are blocked off. The Dresden orchestra gave a concert this week in an 1,800 seat hall that was only able to seat 480 audience members. They are only able to do this because of very hefty government subsidies. In Canada, with much smaller government grants, a couple of concerts like that and the orchestra is flat broke, because they are losing tens of thousands of dollars with every concert.
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Here is economist Tyler Cowan with some thoughts on how things for the arts might not be as horrific as they seem at the moment:
Of course, economics is known as the "dismal science."
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A little survey from Slipped Disc of how some concerts are being given with success.
The Czech Philharmonic played last night to an audience of 500, seated 20 centimetres apart and without face coverings, in the open air and intermittent rain. There were no tickets left for sale.The New Zealand Symphony are expecting 2,000 at their Friday-night comeback concert with local hero Simon O’Neill.
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The Guardian with a very British understated headline: The future of the arts: ‘The classical music world has been transfigured’
Still no one knows when, or in what manner, live music will return. Europe is already starting up again, in confined ways. Austria hopes for audiences of 1,000 by August. America and the UK are looking, in many cases, far into next year. All musicians have sustained catastrophic loss. Some will look to other careers: an estimated 20%. Salaried orchestral players have been furloughed. Nearly half of freelancers are ineligible for government aid. Soloists, indeed all musicians, must maintain technique and commitment. Composers have lost commissions, representing years’ worth of income.
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One of the oddest things about this pandemic is that just about the riskiest thing you can do is sing in a choir: Choirs reimagine themselves as singing proves an effective way to spread COVID-19
Early in the pandemic, the Skagit Valley Chorale in Washington State became a cautionary tale after 45 members of a 56-person ensemble became infected with COVID-19 following a rehearsal. Two choir members later died of the virus.
"If you're a professionally trained singer, all the power from the body can really send those particles a great distance," she said, adding the latest research she's reviewed suggests singers would need to be spaced 15 feet apart outdoors to minimize transmission.Erick Lichte, the artistic director of Chor Leoni, a 60-person amateur men's choir in Vancouver, said COVID-19 has "decimated" chorale music, and that he doesn't anticipate group sessions resuming normally until a vaccine is developed.
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Enough gloom! Time to turn to one of music's most angelic delights: Mozart’s infinite riches
One of the more intriguing games which music lovers play among themselves—formerly on long car journeys; now under indefinite house arrest—is to imagine a situation in which they are permitted, for the rest of their lives, to listen to the works of every composer, but restricted to one genre per composer. You can have as many composers as you like, and as many genres, but if you want Brahms’s symphonies, say, you can’t have anyone else’s. The challenge is to find, for each great composer, a format in which he was both prolific and characteristic; there is no point, however much one loves Fidelio, in choosing opera for Beethoven; it would be a waste of an opportunity to hear more (and even better) Beethoven, and deprives you of the operas of Wagner or Verdi, Janáček or Britten (albeit that you can only choose one of these). With a little thought, it soon becomes obvious that, among the great Viennese composers, you would be well advised to choose Haydn’s string quartets, Beethoven’s piano sonatas and Schubert’s songs. Each of these three excelled in those respective forms, and though it will be a wrench for some to forego Beethoven’s 16 essays in string quartet form, the 32 piano sonatas are more than a numerical compensation for their loss.
You should go read the whole thing, but the answer to what should you pick for Mozart is, of course, the piano concertos.
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For our first envoi, the Piano Concerto in E flat, K. 271 by Mozart. From the Grossesaal of the Mozarteum, Salzburg, 1989, Mitsuko Uchida performs with the Mozarteum Orchestra under the direction of Jeffrey Tate.
Another delight, Holst's The Planets with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen in a streaming music concert (i.e. without audience) from last week.
I am often in agreement with you (which is why I comment so rarely), but I have to register my near-visceral displeasure with the Mozart piano sonatas. Have you read Glenn Gould's 1974 interview with Rolling Stone where he said, "Let me deal first of all with the C Minor Mozart. It’s the only Mozart concerto that I’ve recorded because it’s the only one that I sort of halfway like."? That's more charitable than I can be about it, and the thought of having no other Mozart than those dreary sets of sequences and circle progressions instead of Cosi, Figaro, Giovanni--even Il Re Pastore or Seraglio!--is painful, indeed. (Your mileage, as they say, may vary!)
ReplyDeleteYou mean the piano concertos, right, not the piano sonatas? Thanks, by the way for solving the mystery of why I don't get a lot more comments. It's because most readers seem to be in general agreement. Right?
ReplyDeleteThanks again for disagreeing with me re the Mozart piano concertos. Differences of opinion are always informative. I do like them, but my understanding of them was greatly aided by Charles Rosen's books on Classical style and form. He talks a lot about the concertos and their relationship with the opera aria and just how much originality and variation Mozart managed to achieve in them.
On the other hand, even though I listened through the multiple discs in the Mozart Edition of the solo piano music, I can't say that I got a lot of pleasure from them. Just too darn many sets of variations that I didn't really get much from.
But, as you say, your milage may vary!
Hello! I know (because of the wonderful feed reader) that you continue to be on top of things here. Am myself now retired, medical issues, and so on and so forth, but I read faithfully.
ReplyDeleteListened to a 'virtual festival event' Thursday night, I believe it was, from somewhere in California; 'Music in the Mountains'. Gabriel Martins, cellist, performed inter alia Biber's Passacaglia in his own arrangement thereof. Very good etc and because the microphone was about three inches (am exaggerating) away from him one was able to hear all the incidental sounds that are usually missed when one is in the recital hall. Anyway, the point is that at some point in the proceedings, the rather irritating festival fellow asked Martins how he was accomodating to the plague nonsense. It is making laugh as I type but after a few words about practicing and making the best of it and hoping for the future he admitted that he's had "move back home" which, at 22, presumably meant his parents' basement in Bloomington. Such a look of woe on his face as he said that!
Marc, welcome back, we have missed you. So sorry to hear of your medical issues. I hope they are not too serious.
ReplyDeleteTerrible state of affairs that we likely still have not taken the measure of: the whole world of music simply brought to a halt and who knows when most musicians will be able to earn a living again.
Re the economist.The basic problem is psychological not economic. The question is what risks are people willing to take? Any action has a risk associated with it. I made the point earlier that the problem for classical music is that its listeners skew older. Young people notoriously discount risks that are higher than the corona virus. OTOH older people may have the opposite risk assessment. Does the current hysteria mean that even a regular flu pandemic will influence their behavior now where it didn't before? Recognize that even if facemasks or even a mostly effective (but not 100%) vaccine permit regular seating, even a 15% permit reduction in ticket buying would be disastrous.
ReplyDeleteI have 3 thoughts about what can be done but the first is rather limited in benefit.
1. More outdoor concerts. This was mentioned by the economist. The same holds true for movies as outdoor theaters have reopened in the US. Of course the classical season is all wrong for this as they play in the fall/ winter and take off in the late spring and summer. So the schedule would have to be flipped. Also there would need to be more covered audience spaces constructed and better stage shells. The acoustics are significantly worse of course. If the audience has to sit back farther, than it might force something like the Morbisch theater in Europe where the performers wear wireless mics which are not that pleasant.
2. Testing. Performers could be subject to a rigorous testing program and restrictions in physical movement during the season. There are rapid tests now available as well as contactless thermometers. Presumably that could have helped avoid the catastrophic outbreak in the Washington state chorus. Something like this is being attempted for US sports.
3. NetConcerts. There is Netflix so why can't there be Netconcerts. Of course there are the occasional opera and classical concert DVDs. But Netflix has been profitable enough for movie makers even with declining movie theater audiences pre pandemic. So it would be possible to video live audience free or spaced audience concerts and make them available for download for a fee. Why couldn't this be done for every classical concert?
Some modest increase in performance subsidies might come if the classical music scene can demonstrate some basic viability with the above.
Maury, these are some of the best proposals I have seen, actually. The summer classical music festival is (or was) huge in Europe of course, and there are quite a few in North America as well, though they tend to always be second fiddle to the winter concert season. That is not quite the case in Europe where some of the best and certainly the most concentrated music-making is in the summer festivals. But, they are at present, largely in concert halls, not outside. A number of studies are being done on orchestral players in Europe and they seem to have solved the problem with modest distancing. But the problem of getting enough audience in the hall remains a stubborn one. Netflix does have music videos, but I haven't explored them. It may be the case that YouTube has ruined that revenue stream already with their voluminous offerings.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of Netflix vs youtube I think is rather apples and oranges. Amazon has been the one trying to do a Netflix type service with Amazon Prime. The disadvantage of classical music here is the advantage - it's too small to be a fierce object of desire between competing alpha companies.
ReplyDeleteThe bigger problem is that no one in the classical music establishment will lift a finger so it is a question of whether some outside entrepreneur sees an opening for a solid if unspectacular ROI. There is already an existing infrastructure and the product mostly exists. Very few listeners care about new classical content after all, so no paying big money to content producers. The performers are so battered that they will work for less than they got 5 years ago as long as it produces regular work.
The NetConcerts firm could tailor viewing to local, regional, national and premium content. But I think those 3 points together could stabilize the situation if they were energetically adopted. Some modest infrastructure upgrade is needed for outside concert venues but the cost would not be high and probably would be borne by local governments since they are often on public land anyway. I can't think of anything else unless someone has a out of the box concept that can produce a miracle.
Maury, sounds like you are on the verge of an IPO! It really is a good idea, but as you say, unlikely to attract any serious angel investor. But I'm afraid you are correct that new content producers (i.e. composers) will work for virtually nothing and performers for very little.
ReplyDeleteOur local chamber music festival was moved to the end of August, hoping to go forward, but they just canceled the whole thing.