I see the the Vancouver Island Symphony (based in Nanaimo, BC) with a predecessor of which I played a Vivaldi concerto with once, is doing some "virtual" concerts. A number of orchestras have been trying something similar. Now I understand why they are doing this: it is both to give the players something to do and to keep in touch with their audiences. But there is a terrible danger here: One of the reasons you go to hear a local orchestra is because you haven't the time or money to travel to Vienna to hear the Vienna Philharmonic or Berlin to hear the Berlin Philharmonic or Los Angeles to hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic or St. Petersburg to hear the Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater. Right? You go to your local orchestra concert because you really want to hear the sound of a live orchestra.
But what if it was just as easy to hear the Vienna player as your local ones? Well, of course you would catch the Vienna Phillies because, frankly, at many things, they are the best in the world. Just as the Mariinsky players are the best at different things. But the hard truth is that the local orchestra, if your orchestra is like the Vancouver Island Symphony, are not better at any repertoire than the big international superstar orchestras. They just aren't.
But in the world of virtual concerts there is absolutely no reason to listen to the local players when you can be listening to the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra with good sound and an excellent picture. Their virtual concert is exactly as easy to access as the local orchestra's. Does this mean local orchestras are doomed?
Absolutely.
Unless we can get back to real, not virtual, live concerts pretty damn soon.
The lack of live concerts will certainly be fatal to these orchestras if it persists. However I think it is net positive to put out youtube etc concerts for several reasons. First, the orchestra could just disappear from the local audience thoughts otherwise; Two it provides some enjoyment to faithful audience members; Three it provides a means of requesting donations and selling merchandise.
ReplyDeleteThe real issue is that no one in these orchestras understands anything about marketing and they are not asking for help. Perhaps for the same reason they are too passive in asking for local business/political support to devise new ways of holding concerts.
"But what if it was just as easy to hear the Vienna player as your local ones?"
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Some acquaintances of mine ceased to maintain an annual subscription to the local orchestra already a decade ago when the Berlin Philharmonic introduced its virtual concert hall.
However, the Berlin videos have excellent sound. Some of the orchestras that are doing virtual concerts on YouTube are limiting their videos to mono sound, because they don’t want YT to compete with radio broadcasting, or because they don’t want people to be able to download high-quality audio files with the youtube-dl application and pass them around in perpetuity. I don’t see these virtual concerts as a replacement for live ones, and I’m not even one of those audiophile listeners.
Certainly, virtual concerts are no substitute for real orchestral concerts, even if you have high-quality home speakers. BUT, given the choice between a virtual concert of your local orchestra and one of the Berlin Philharmonic, I think Berlin wins.
ReplyDeleteFor a very short season I worked at the Seattle Symphony as a 'caller' - I can't remember the job title but, you know, one of the people who make unsolicited calls to Seattle families about symphony subscriptions, programs, packages, etc. I told myself that I would not be bothering fellow citizens, selling printers or floor wax or other random irritating calls about items for household use; rather, I would be reminding faintly (or very) interested parties about an elevated civic/artistic activity. Turns out I was right. I made hundreds of calls on behalf of the symphony and I never received a rude response from anyone who picked up the phone (pre-iPhone, pre-internet). I wasn't such a good salesman .... I always got sidetracked and ended up talking about music with everybody, or asking questions of people better informed than me. Do you prefer Ravel's piano versions or his orchestrations? Tell me about Mahler ... that kind of thing. I'm sure there was a written out set of important points to follow which I could never follow. After I left, I realized the symphony left out one important point: classical music is live music ... this seems an important detail that symphony fans world-wide miss when trying drum up civic enthusiasm for symphonic music: it is live! Hundreds of talented people serving up their best ... just for you ... I really want symphonies to come back .... sigh ...
ReplyDeleteHeartfelt agreement! They seem to be well on the way to a solution in Europe, Germany and Austria in particular. What is the hold-up in North America?
ReplyDeleteWe want our live music!!!!
The ESO here is offering 'Thursday Nigbt Live with Francesco' each week, featuring Maestro Lecce-Chong. I must confess I haven't watched any of 'em but I expect there are two or three musicians performing this and that and FLC being his ennthusiastic self. There were two out-in-public, in parks, concerts planned for the last week or two but the ESO cancelled them because here in Oregon and specifically here in Lane County the gross numbers of reported plague cases has increased. Pft. I have a laughable photograph saved somewhere of Oregon trying to convince me and my walking companion to wear masks outside on the trail if we might come within six feet of someone else-- utterly ridiculous, in my judgment. When I 'donated' the last three concerts of the 2019/2020 season 'back' to the ESO in July I included a jeremiad about 'overreaction to the plague' nonsense (I exaggerate but...).
ReplyDeleteEven if the ESO schedules a truncated 2020//2021 season, say at the beginning of 2021, all it will take to cause a cancellation of those concerts, apparently, will be another bout of a higher reported number of plague cases.
The ESO folks must have calculated that selling tickets to e.g. 500 patrons, seated across the entire theater with its four levels, with the members of the orchestra seated at a greater than usual distance from each other, won't work here, who knows why. I haven't followed at all closely-- not that there is any great level of institutional 'transparency' (one would have to pay attention to individual musicians et al on Facebook etc)-- because this is in fact a case when my individual voice won't make a dime's worth of different.
But I certainly will continue to subscribe at ESO (and buy tickets to individual concerts of the other local ensembles), when it's possible to do so, no matter how much good music is available via the Internet. I must watch my blood pressure.