Fine Tuning

Illustration by Jillian Tamaki

“Like a garden beset by blight, orchestras across the United States and Canada are under attack. Regardless of the plant’s age or hardiness, nearly every variety is affected.” So began a 2003 article in the Montreal Gazette on the state of symphonic affairs in North America. At the time, some 47 ensembles were in dire financial straits. Many well-regarded smaller orchestras in the U.S. were on the brink of closing (including the San Antonio and Tulsa symphonies) and even the most venerable and formerly rich ensembles (including two of the so-called “Big Five” orchestras, the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Symphony) had to retrench.

North of the border, the once-robust Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra had run up a debilitating $3-million deficit and the Toronto Symphony was reeling from a three-fold humiliation: in a cluster of events around the turn of the millennium, the ensemble nearly went bankrupt, the players walked out, as did the conductor, Jukka-Pekka Saraste; for a time, no suitable candidate could be found to take up the baton.

In 2003, the experts agreed that an orchestral ice age was in the offing.

They were wrong. “Three years ago, all around there were these sob stories — orchestras were complaining that everything was on the wane and dying,” says Bramwell Tovey, music director and conductor for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. “We’ve turned a corner, though.”

After more than a half-century of resolutely resisting change in the name of purism, our symphonies, with nothing to lose, began experimenting, and have largely succeeded in bulking up their audiences and making a start at balancing their books. Insiders remain edgy, worried about the future. They voice concerns about the efficacy of subscriptions (younger people tend not to book in advance) and the increasing scarcity of patrons willing to donate money and time to orchestras. But overall, the mood has become markedly more bullish in the orchestral world.

Courtesy Universal Music.

Some have belatedly turned to technology, using live video during concerts and setting up internet chat rooms for their often amusingly rabid fans. Others are expanding their playlists to include, for example, the various Star Wars themes written by Canadian-based film composer John Williams, or putting on concerts with pop artists (as the VSO did in recent gigs with Jann Arden and Spirit of the West). They’re also offering pre- and post-concert discussions with audiences to make the experience less daunting to the uninitiated. In this time, even maestros with credentials from the oldest of old schools have given themselves makeovers, learning to downplay the hauteur that was their traditional stock in trade and transforming themselves into amiable hosts of an evening out.

The change began quietly, almost a decade ago — before the crisis really erupted — at one of the nation’s oldest orchestras, the Regina Symphony. Their conductor and music director, Victor Sawa, started introducing the pieces to be played, sharing with concertgoers gossip about the composers, discussing the artistic movements that gave rise to the compositions in question and commenting on the music to follow (“note especially the shift in mood when the cellos come in”).

This may not seem so revolutionary, but traditionally, the maestro’s job was simply to pace majestically onto the stage and conduct the pieces, not to coddle the audience with impromptu music appreciation lessons.

“We’ve done a great job of selling a certain idea of classical in the last 100 years,” says Rob Gold, senior marketing manager at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra. “The vision is one with a dark and stormy maestro, grand soloists with flying capes and long white hair, and in the audience, furs and tuxedos.” The crowd of upper-crust habitués also knew what was required of them: that they worship politely, clap at the right moments (never between movements), donate generously (so as to see their names in the program) and dress snappily (to show their respect for the privilege conferred on them).

The fastest baton in the east: Peter Oundjian conducts the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Courtesy TSO.

No longer. At a spring concert by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, its new music director and conductor — Canadian-born, English-bred Peter Oundjian — introduced an evening of Viennese music by speculating idly on why the Austrian capital became the classical powerhouse it did in the 18th and 19th centuries. The crowd was noticeably younger than in days gone by, many taking advantage of the symphony’s cheap-tickets-for-under-30s program.

“Perhaps if Mozart’s father hadn’t been so difficult, he wouldn’t have left Salzburg for Vienna,” began Oundjian in his slightly English accent, an accent that still bestows cultural authority on its user. “If Beethoven hadn’t become so disillusioned with Napoleon,” he continued, “maybe the composer would have left Vienna for France.” Little thought-provokers; nothing too heavy.

Of the most challenging pieces on his program, he declared, “It’s not easy, not a quickly appreciated piece, but the orchestra just loves it.” With that intro, we’re left puzzling as we listen, trying to figure out what, precisely, these seasoned musicians admire about the piece. Oundjian is a man with the most blue-chip of classical educations (from Juilliard and London’s Royal College of Music); a former violinist with the world-renowned Tokyo Quartet, he’s trying to entice us, without condescension, into his world.

Still, the indoctrination isn’t always so painless. When asked what sorts of questions he has to field in post-show meetings with audiences, Tovey snorts, “It’s stuff like, why do all the violinists turn the page at the same time, what does the conductor really do, why are viola players playing bigger instruments than the violinists?”

When I point my finger, that means a tympani solo: Conductor Bramwell Tovey. Courtesy Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

More revolutionary still than the pre- and post-concert talks (at least, in this traditionally reactionary sphere) are the technological experiments essayed by Tovey at the VSO. In an effort to bolster dipping attendance, two years ago the Vancouver ensemble (with the help of local film schools) introduced live video at several of their concerts. “There were some glitches at first,” Tovey admits, on a break from a summer tour conducting the Luxembourg Symphony and the prestigious New York Philharmonic. “Early on, we had a camera that inadvertently focused for a long time on my shoes.” But the glitches were soon corrected, and audience numbers for the video concerts have taken off. The screens show close-ups of performers during the performance and, for new compositions, often feature interviews with the composers beforehand.

A former conductor of London’s Saddlers Wells orchestra and the Winnipeg Symphony, Tovey remembers a particularly effective use of the screens. “When the violinist Vadim Gluzman came to Vancouver in the fall of last year, he played the Tchaikovsky Concerto,” Tovey recalls. “The [Stradivarius] that he plays used to belong to Leopold Auer, who was the violinist who played most of Tchaikovsky’s material but told Tchaikovsky that the concerto was unplayable. Everyone in the building wanted to look at the violin — the instrument so connected to the music — which they could, over the screens.”

Conductor-violinist Pinchas Zukerman, one of the leading figures in the international classical music establishment, has also been an unlikely convert to the technology, using video screens for Ottawa’s National Arts Centre Orchestra’s habitually sold-out children’s concerts.

Not everyone is a fan, however — the TSO’s Oundjian finds the live video, with its several seconds of delay, distracting for the players. As yet, no ensemble in Canada has gone as far as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which recently played a program of video-game music, displaying graphics above the troupe and speeches between sets by leading game creators.

Let's do it for the kids: Conductor Pinchas Zukerman with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. Courtesy National Arts Centre.

Concerts for children, like those offered at the NAC, have also become commonplace across the country. Some troupes are considering going further along the get-them-while-they’re-young road. England’s London Symphony Orchestra recently pioneered a set of hands-on workshops for babies and toddlers, and several Canadian ensembles are considering trying them out after seeing them in action at a conference held by the umbrella group, Orchestras Canada, in the other London — London, Ontario.

“When I first heard that I needed to recruit 10 babies between six and 12 months of age for a hands-on workshop to be delivered by the visiting members of the London Symphony,” says Katherine Carleton, executive director of Orchestras Canada, “I thought, ‘Good God, what mayhem will break out.’” But the babies behaved, shaking their rattles in time, learning about loud and soft, and moving to the music. “I have to believe they’ll grow up enjoying the music more,” Carleton says. “Most people who enjoy classical have that door opened sometime in their youth.”

Again, this trend is getting its legs first out west — a high-rise developer near the VSO’s home, the Orpheum, has reserved two lower floors for a state-of-the-art education centre.

But for all the positives, there’s still some naysaying in the orchestral community. Some groups aren’t yet out of the woods — this spring, the players with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal walked out, leaving one of the nation’s top two groups (the OSM and the TSO share bragging rights) in limbo, at least until incoming music director Kent Nagano arrives next year. And Carleton is particularly concerned with whether the younger portion of the symphony audience will continue to support the symphonies beyond buying tickets. “The new audiences,” she says, “tend to think of orchestras more as providers of entertainment than as charities. They don’t see why they would give donations to the Toronto Blue Jays or to the Mirvishes or the Rolling Stones, so why give to symphonies.”

She’s also worried about the change in listening habits.

“How do we deal with moving away from mass culture, with people looking for an increasingly personalized iPod-shuffle kind of approach?” she asks rhetorically. “I know some sophisticated music listeners who include classical music in their diet of songs going through their earphones on a regular basis, but in the context of an incredibly diverse array of music: electronica, world music, jazz. A lot of that music is just fantastic.”

Still, in an unguarded moment, Carleton admits happier days are, for the present at least, here again for the orchestras. “There’s this superstition in the orchestral community — if things are going really well, you never admit it.”

Alec Scott is a writer based in Toronto.