Evolving the orchestra
June 2012
It was the big story that got away, or at least that is how it seemed
Late last month The Age and the ABC classical music magazine Limelight Magazine broke the news that the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is to appoint British conductor Sir Andrew Davis to the post of Chief Conductor. The effective artistic directorship of the orchestra, the position has been – to use the words of Limelight Magazine – ‘conspicuously vacant’ for three years following the unamicable departure of Oleg Caetani in 2009.
Premature news it may well have been, but it is certainly very welcome. Whether deserved or not, the orchestra has in the eyes of many slipped behind the standing of its interstate rivals, in particular the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Davis’ appointment also comes fast on the heels of the announcements of the successors to Vladimir Ashkenazy and Paul Daniels to the Sydney and Perth orchestras respectively. One lesson that seems to have been relearned is that strong artistic leadership matters.
Arguably Davis will be the most distinguished and best-known conductor heading an Australian orchestra. Like Caetani before him, he comes to the position with a breadth of experience that sees him as often in the orchestra pit as the concert platform. Currently music director and principal conductor of the Lyric Opera of Chicago, he has also held what surely must be one of the most attractive, if not coveted, positions in all classical music, the musical directorship of the Glyndebourne Festival in the UK. To top it off, Davis also is a suave and articulate public advocate for music. He will be familiar to many in Australia for his humorous and humane speeches from the podium for the Last Night of the Proms concert in London, which he gave from 1989 to 2000 as part of his tenure as Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
In recent years Davis has been a regular guest of the orchestra, and indeed will be back on June 27 to accompany distinguished American soprano Deborah Voigt, in a programme of Wagner and Richard Strauss at the Melbourne Town Hall. Later in the year he will conduct and record a CD for Chandos Records, of the choral and orchestral music of Percy Grainger.
The appointment (all being well) is especially welcome as it comes at a time when the future for orchestras around the world is looking less cheery. For many, like the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in the United States, it is decidedly bleak. In an age where governments are hurriedly withdrawing from public cultural programmes of all kinds, and where recorded music has become so ubiquitous and cheaply available, the idea of getting a large group of musicians together to play a largely historic repertoire to an aging audience seems a low priority for the taxation-conscious politician.
In the United States it has been suggested, indeed, that perhaps the only the top-tier orchestras – say Cleveland, Boston, Chicago, New York – should survive.
The diminishing public interest in live orchestral music in the UK helped prompt Philip Hensher, one of their better-known music critics, to muse whether classical music itself has reached some kind of tipping point. “Something has happened over the past twenty years,” he suggested, best symbolised by the difference in the music performed at the fall of the Berlin Wall and at its recent 20th anniversary. “The first occasion was marked by Bernstein conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The second was marked by a band called Tokio Hotel. The idea that the occasion deserved a moment of dignity, or that a great classic occupied that moment of dignity more convincingly than a passing rock band, had no force any longer.”
Now, pronouncements about the imminent death of classical (or, indeed, jazz) music recall the comment by the scholar and performer Charles Rosen who declared that “the death of classical music is perhaps its oldest continuing tradition.” Nevertheless, the challenges that face both artistic and administrative staff of a modern symphony orchestra are considerable. Above all, an orchestra can no longer rely on continuing cultural currency as a matter of right. A civic-based orchestra has to evolve with, and respond to the needs of, its community in order to be a truly integral part of the fabric and heart of the city in which it is based. Certainly, the days of the “play a concert and go home” model of audience engagement are fast fading, and we can expect the MSO, for instance, to continue to increase its already innovative use of web-based educational and social media tools.
Whether Sir Andrew Davis can be enticed to stay for longer periods in Melbourne than the few weeks a year that are typical for such contracts around the world remains to be seen. As the principal public face of the orchestra he will be most effective in spearheading renewed civic enthusiasm for the orchestra if he can be seen and heard out in the wider community as well as on the podium at Hamer Hall.
Time will tell, but for now his appointment undoubtedly represents a great coup for the orchestra and the city alike.
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