where's the good stuff?
Oct. 26th, 2009 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacA well-beloved correspondent came home from a recent potpourri of a concert with mixed feelings, and wrote to ask, "Why do symphony concerts always contain both 'good stuff' and 'bad stuff'? Though of course people have differing tastes, why aren't there ever 'all-star' concerts with just the good stuff?"
I think the opening clause of the second sentence answers the question. One person's wretched misery may be another's honeydew. I know of nothing obscure that will turn up at a symphony concert that somebody out there, if only the conductor, won't like - and likewise nothing common, no matter how popular, that somebody - probably the same people - won't find distasteful.
Looking over the current season of the orchestra in question, I see three concerts that I'd jump at - if only I were in town to go to them - as containing only hoary classics that are also definite favorites of mine: Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Bruckner's Seventh; Brahms's Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Eroica; Sibelius' Violin Concerto and Shostakovich's Fifth. And a concert of the Rossini Cenerentola Overture, a Mozart piano concerto (K. 459), and Tchaikovsky's charming but little-heard "Polish" Symphony is right behind them.
No "bad stuff" by my tastes on any of those, though they might not fit yours or someone else's. (There are other concerts that aren't to mine: you won't catch me going to Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto or Zemlinsky's "The Mermaid" without a shudder.)
Even if those don't fit a sufficiently tight definition of "the good stuff," there's always what are known as "pops concerts" or "family concerts". Most big orchestras have them, and those "all-star" tried-and-true audience favorites are the staple there.
I've been picking at the definition of "good stuff" here, but the perception that most symphony concerts are a mixture of the comfortable and the, well, uncomfortable is not entirely fanciful. Allow me to suggest three reasons for it.
1. Difference of taste, again. The wider the variety of music programmed, the more chance that more people will like at least some of it. I'd certainly be willing to sit through some Liszt piece I don't know in order to catch Brahms's Second Piano Concerto and Haydn's Symphony No. 56, a particular favorite of mine - it's something like the third Haydn symphony I ever heard on record - which I've never encountered in concert.
2. You might learn something. If you hear something you don't know, maybe you'll like it.
3. I shy at mentioning this, but symphony concerts are not just for the occasional attendee. I like all the works I mentioned above, yes, but as I also said they're "hoary classics" - I've heard most of them in concert many times. What will really bring me out are the ones I like just as much but aren't heard so often, like that Haydn or the Tchaikovsky "Polish". To begin with ...
Feetnote: Here's my review of the concert I attended on Saturday, as previously cryptically alluded to. Of the three works, one I'd heard only rarely in concert and one not at all. Given that they're the kind of works I like, which they were, that's the kind of concert I most find worth taking trouble to attend.
I think the opening clause of the second sentence answers the question. One person's wretched misery may be another's honeydew. I know of nothing obscure that will turn up at a symphony concert that somebody out there, if only the conductor, won't like - and likewise nothing common, no matter how popular, that somebody - probably the same people - won't find distasteful.
Looking over the current season of the orchestra in question, I see three concerts that I'd jump at - if only I were in town to go to them - as containing only hoary classics that are also definite favorites of mine: Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Bruckner's Seventh; Brahms's Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Eroica; Sibelius' Violin Concerto and Shostakovich's Fifth. And a concert of the Rossini Cenerentola Overture, a Mozart piano concerto (K. 459), and Tchaikovsky's charming but little-heard "Polish" Symphony is right behind them.
No "bad stuff" by my tastes on any of those, though they might not fit yours or someone else's. (There are other concerts that aren't to mine: you won't catch me going to Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto or Zemlinsky's "The Mermaid" without a shudder.)
Even if those don't fit a sufficiently tight definition of "the good stuff," there's always what are known as "pops concerts" or "family concerts". Most big orchestras have them, and those "all-star" tried-and-true audience favorites are the staple there.
I've been picking at the definition of "good stuff" here, but the perception that most symphony concerts are a mixture of the comfortable and the, well, uncomfortable is not entirely fanciful. Allow me to suggest three reasons for it.
1. Difference of taste, again. The wider the variety of music programmed, the more chance that more people will like at least some of it. I'd certainly be willing to sit through some Liszt piece I don't know in order to catch Brahms's Second Piano Concerto and Haydn's Symphony No. 56, a particular favorite of mine - it's something like the third Haydn symphony I ever heard on record - which I've never encountered in concert.
2. You might learn something. If you hear something you don't know, maybe you'll like it.
3. I shy at mentioning this, but symphony concerts are not just for the occasional attendee. I like all the works I mentioned above, yes, but as I also said they're "hoary classics" - I've heard most of them in concert many times. What will really bring me out are the ones I like just as much but aren't heard so often, like that Haydn or the Tchaikovsky "Polish". To begin with ...
Feetnote: Here's my review of the concert I attended on Saturday, as previously cryptically alluded to. Of the three works, one I'd heard only rarely in concert and one not at all. Given that they're the kind of works I like, which they were, that's the kind of concert I most find worth taking trouble to attend.
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Date: 2009-10-26 11:13 pm (UTC)It's a big problem with opera, because of the entrenched core repertory. I am grateful that this year's Puccini offerings at SFO are the major Puccini works I've never seen in performance. I love La Boheme but don't need to see it live again for a few years. Unfortunately David Gockley is mostly interested in putting on 19th c. Italian opera and middle-of-the-road new works.