Contemporary classic
The Back Half
Nicholas Kenyon
Monday 1st May 2006

The gloom merchants keep predicting the demise of the classical music industry. But, as the 112th Proms programme is launched, the season’s controller Nicholas Kenyon argues that the sector is still vital, innovative – and flourishing  

Classical music has been through seismic changes in recent times, with many questioning whether the classical recording industry can survive in the age of downloads and the internet. However, the good news is that live music and major events are flourishing more than ever.

The ways of delivering music to listeners have been transformed, and this has created some casualties. The areas of the music industry that did not anticipate how the rise of the internet would affect global rights have been caught on the hop by technological developments. But the gloom merchants who wrote, on the appearance of EMI’s much-lauded Tristan und Isolde with Plácido Domingo last year, that they would eat their hats if another complete opera ever appeared on CD have been forced to do just that. Last month, for example, an obscure Vivaldi opera, never before recorded, turned up in two new complete recordings.

What the public is telling us is that it wants to experience great music in fresh ways, and gain access to it by the most convenient means. This was the message of the stunning success of Radio 3’s free downloads of the Beethoven symphonies last year, an offer taken up about 1.4 million times worldwide. There is a huge appetite for more of this sort of material to be delivered in the easiest and most innovative ways possible. The Radio 3 initiative showed just what power broadcasting continues to have in leading the way towards novel methods of consumption. With the launch on 10 April of the Warner Classics commercial classical music downloading site, and the continued existence of sites run by companies such as Chandos and Naxos, this brave (and remarkably cheap) new world is slowly but surely becoming a reality.

The real problem for classical music is that no one expects it to change, because it is steeped in tradition and is too often associated exclusively with the past. Yet it changes continually, both in character and in content. New music, so often thought of as esoteric and unappealing, has never been more varied in style and substance than now.

At the BBC Proms, the repertory that the audience responds to and most enjoys alters in ways that can be surprising. It will astonish no one that Mozart will be prominent this summer in his 250th anniversary year, but who would have predicted a couple of decades ago that Shostakovich, whose centenary it is this year, would turn out to be one of the most communicative and indispensable of 20th-century composers?

The big Shostakovich symphonies will feature strongly in our programme this year. They speak with huge power to the present generation, drawing audiences as did, say, Tchaikovsky a generation ago. Shostakovich’s work, born of a period of immense political repression and acute personal struggle, seems to sum up the 20th century far more potently than the intellectual constructions of the modernists who at one moment seemed poised to carry our musical traditions forward.

Brahms and Beethoven are still staples of the Proms diet, for their mixture of emotional appeal and structural coherence speaks across time. Currently, however, composers with bigger, more expansive Romantic structures are emerging into the limelight. Both Bruckner, who played the organ at the Royal Albert Hall, and Mahler, whose intensely emotional response to the pressures of the times has been one of the great discoveries of our generation, are popular with contemporary audiences.

Because of the existence of recording and broadcasting, the Proms repertory has grown in ways that could never have been imagined a century ago. When Henry Wood first conducted the concerts back in 1895 at the Queen’s Hall in Langham Place (next to where Broadcasting House now stands) he aimed to bring the excitement of orchestral music to a public weaned on worthy choral work and uplifting oratorio. He drew in the very latest novelties by Richard Strauss and Dvorak, both of whom were still alive, and Tchaikovsky, who had died only two years earlier. Wood then became bolder, introducing Debussy, Sibelius and Schoenberg. “Stick to it!” he exhorted his players as they struggled with Schoenberg’s brand-new Five Orchestral Pieces in 1912. “This is nothing like what you will have to play in 25 years’ time!”

Since then, there has been a century and more of new music. It has taken us all the way to the dizzying stylistic diversity of Harrison Birtwistle, John Tavener, Arvo Pärt and Elliott Carter. There has also been a huge revival of early music, which has transformed our understanding of the music of the past. So, today at the Proms, we face an enjoyably daunting challenge in trying to represent the best of this repertory in performances of the highest distinction. However, a summer season can inevitably only show the tip of the musical iceberg.

The past decade of the Proms has coincided with extraordinary technological and musical changes. On the largest scale, big screens have made possible the explosion of Proms in the Park around the country, all linked by television and radio into a communal celebration of music-making. On the smallest, daunted by the size of the Albert Hall for some material, we introduced a Proms chamber-music season. This has grown, and last year it moved to the splendidly renovated Cadogan Hall near Sloane Square, which has quickly become part of the Proms family.

It would be too easy for an institution such as the Proms to rest on its laurels, content to re-engage the world’s greatest orchestras in an annual display of exceptional talent. Of course, that is a vital part of our mission. This year we will promote some of the best ensembles playing the most adventurous music: the Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle, the Philadelphia Orchestra with Christoph Eschenbach, the Pittsburgh Symphony with Andrew Davis, and many more.

Yet we also want the festival to move and to reflect some of those changes in the world of classical music. Above all, we want it to be committed to youth and the next generation of talent. Young audiences have always been a feature of the Proms; now we want to encourage young performers, too. Youth orchestras are a regular feature, from this country and from continental Europe, but last year teenagers from around the country were able to come and play alongside the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This year, we have an ambitious vocal project for singers of all ages and skills, who will work with the charismatic Orlando Gough and his group The Shout in a pair of concerts.

There is a realisation now that classical music is not limited by old certainties, nor does it simply appeal to a committed audience that listens to nothing else. Classical music is flourishing because, partly thanks to its availability and familiarity through film, on TV and even as muzak, it reaches a far wider cross-section of the music-listening public. These are audiences that are not composed exclusively of classical music fans. They mix genres and styles in their listening, and may just as likely choose to go to a restaurant or the cinema as decide to go to a concert.

Clearly this is a huge challenge in marketing (as one guru put it: “If no one is coming to your concert, nothing will stop them”). It should be a fiercer spur to the industry to be flexible and approach- able, and to make potential audiences feel that classical music is for them. At the Proms, thanks to the continual support of the BBC, we can keep ticket prices low. We have the unique informality of the promming areas on the arena floor or up in the gallery, where audiences can come in for £5 and stand (or lie down, or whatever they wish) in order to encounter great music. On any level, it’s a bargain.

But it is more than a bargain: it’s a list-ening situation which, time and again, orchestras and conductors tell us has created one of the best audiences in the world. Prom audiences are open to challenge, not afraid of new and difficult work, informal, concentrated and supremely appreciative. When Henry Wood and his colleagues created that standing space on the floor of the Queen’s Hall a century ago, turning the social conventions of classical concert-going on their head, he could scarcely have imagined what an impact it would still have more than a hundred years later.

We no longer smoke in the Proms, and the music doesn’t include cornet solos and operatic medleys. But in an astonishing number of ways, the vision of the Proms remains completely in tune with what Wood and his colleagues aimed for. We want to lead the way in showing that classical music is vigorous, energetic and open to change. That is what this coming season, as ever, will be about.

The BBC Proms run at the Royal Albert Hall, London SW7 from 14 July to 9 September. The Proms Guide is available by calling 0870 241 5490, or from all good booksellers

Playing for peanuts
New tax legislation means that life in Britain’s orchestras is getting harder – as if it wasn’t hard enough. Jessica Duchen hears the inside stories

Published: 08 November 2005

My husband, Tom Eisner, doesn’t have a job. He has a vocation. He spends his working life making a noise on a wooden contraption in the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s first violin section. At a time when it has been revealed that the Government’s planned changes to National Insurance payments could bankrupt most of the UK’s orchestras, Tom, like his vastly talented colleagues, is determined to keep on making that wonderful noise, come what may.

Orchestral players have greeted this latest financial development with a certain ennui. British orchestras are political footballs: falling down the crack between the floorboards of European subsidy and American, tax-broken sponsorship, they benefit a little from both, yet substantially from neither. They’re accustomed to lurching from crisis to cock-up, as subject to the latest government whim as nurses or teachers; they’re underpaid and undervalued, given the extensive training and expertise demanded by their jobs; worst, they’re often misunderstood by a public who sometimes ask them, “What’s your real job?”

Orchestral life means lousy pay, antisocial hours, extremely hard work and huge stress. But the focus, the excitement, the team spirit and the thrill of making music with up to 99 other people in front of an audience can prove utterly addictive. “Playing in an orchestra is a vocation,” stresses the LPO second violinist Fiona Higham. “If you thought of it simply as a job, you wouldn’t do it.”

British orchestras have a unique system for appointing new members: after auditioning, several prospective appointees are taken “on trial”. The process can take a year or more. Still, most musicians are convinced that this system works.

Once a player is in, the pressure is on. The French violinist Philippe Honoré recently joined the Philharmonia as principal second violin, a half-time post in that orchestra. A long-time member of the Vellinger Quartet, he hasn’t been in a symphony orchestra before. “I’d never thought I would enjoy being part of such a big noise so much,” he laughs. “I’m enjoying the social aspect and the repertoire. But we have very little rehearsal for a demanding schedule and difficult programmes. British orchestras work two or three times faster than any in continental Europe, and the amazing thing is, they are better, too. Working under such pressure gives the concerts an edge; but the downside is that there isn’t time to explore the music in more depth.”

That’s the musical side, but life outside is equally pressured. Orchestral players are finding it increasingly hard to make ends meet. A rank-and-file player can earn up to £40,000 per annum in the London Symphony Orchestra, but the equivalent post in the London Philharmonic and Philharmonia orchestras is unlikely to be more than £30,000 – in the North it’s nearer £25,000.

Musicians in the self-governing orchestras are on Schedule D, and if they don’t work, they don’t earn. These orchestras offer their members no pension schemes, no health insurance beyond in-house benevolent funds and, in some cases, no fixed retirement age. Players in salaried positions with the Hallé and BBC orchestras, for example, have increased stability, but less flexibility and less ready cash. Money was more plentiful in the 1980s; now there are fewer recording sessions, less sponsorship and more competition for work such as film scores and advertising. With house prices high and instrument prices soaring, players are increasingly turning to alternative sources of income: teaching, property development, massage and more.

Bringing up a family becomes a logistical nightmare. One LPO violinist, a father of two, found an orchestral job in Germany, where life is duller but more practical. Another dad now installs bathrooms for a living. Some couples decide not to have children. Miranda Davis, a freelance orchestral viola player, is among them. “I couldn’t think how I could do it,” she says. “You only earn enough money if you work extremely hard. And kids can feel absolutely bereaved if their mother vanishes off on tour.”
Performance stress and stage fright can take a huge toll, especially for a principal player, whose personal sound is constantly exposed. Annie, a veteran, says: “It can be terrifying. We had 10 years of difficult 20th-century repertoire under Simon Rattle, which was hard for the percussion – and you’re on your own at the top of the orchestra!”

That’s one reason healthy living plays a bigger part in orchestral life than it used to. The old drinking-culture has disappeared. Increased competition for jobs means that nobody can afford to rest on their laurels.

The oboist

Emma Ringrose
Sub-principal oboe, BBC Philharmonic

I’ve been playing the oboe since I was nine. By the time I was 15, I hoped I might be able to play in an orchestra, but it seemed like a distant dream. I studied at the Royal Northern College of Music, in Manchester, graduated in 1995, then freelanced for six years before joining the BBC Philharmonic.

My twin boys are just over a year old. I took a year off when I had them, the maximum time that I could, to get some sanity back into my life. It’s tricky to manage the schedule, but we’re incredibly lucky to have a flexible part-time nanny – without her, we’d struggle, because two nursery places would cost more than my salary.

I don’t tour at the moment, as I can’t travel with the boys; the orchestra allows me unpaid leave. Fortunately my partner is an accountant and is supportive. It would be much more difficult if we were both musicians.

I do feel secure in my job in terms of the warmth and emotional support among my colleagues, but with any orchestra in the current climate you can’t be certain where it’s going to go in the future – with all the movement, you’re never sure what’s going to happen. The whole orchestral scene is like that: we love it, but sometimes other people don’t see the necessity for it.

The double-bassist

Matthew Gibson
Double bass, London Symphony Orchestra

I’ve been playing with the LSO since 1990 and have been a full member since 1992. I studied at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London. I started the cello aged eight and was so bad that my teacher said I should try the double bass. Once I started playing in groups with other people, I caught the bug.

I’m involved in the LSO’s education programme, Discovery, which is wide-ranging; 60 to 70 per cent of the orchestra participates. I think orchestras have become much more flexible in what we offer the community – which justifies our existence.

The sheer talent of all the musicians, hearing what we can do together on a daily basis – that’s very inspiring. The effort and dedication are amazing.

The violinist

Fiona Higham
Second violin, London Philharmonic Orchestra

I grew up in London and studied at the Royal Academy of Music, but was launched into the profession accidentally, when I was offered work touring with an excellent chamber orchestra. When I had my first taste of playing with a symphony orchestra, that was it.

For the past 13 years I’ve been a single mother to two daughters. This is a hard profession even if you have a spouse who can cover the antisocial hours; my children both play instruments, but they don’t want to become musicians.

One huge reason why orchestras struggle is because conductors’ fees are so high – a conductor can earn up to £15,000 for one concert, while we’re paid around £100.

HAL ROBINSON: The bassist is featured in the film ‘Music from the Inside Out.’
ANKER PRODUCTIONS

By Peter Rainer | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

In the new documentary “Music from the Inside Out,” the players of the Philadelphia Orchestra who are interviewed seem lit from within. Whatever their life’s difficulties have been, they know they are blessed.

Musicmaking isn’t simply a job to them, it’s a calling. Individually or in groups, on the road or at home, they talk about the sounds they create as if they were discussing living tissue – which, in a sense, it is. As one violinist says, “Music is what we are composed of.”

The great virtue of this film, which was directed by Daniel Anker (“Scottsboro: An American Tragedy”), is that it doesn’t attempt to neatly summarize the musical experience. Anker gives the players free rein to express their wonderment. “Music moves me very deeply,” says a violist, “but I don’t know why it moves me.”

The musicians – including a trombonist who plays after hours in a salsa band, and a Japanese violinist who says she first picked up the instrument as a child because the sound annoyed her mother – are presented as regular people who have been anointed with a gift they do not fully comprehend, or want to. The ineffability of their musicmaking is central to their passion. They are in the throes of something greater than themselves.

Anker is not trying for a backstage story or a muckraking inside job. He doesn’t get into the competitiveness that must surely govern the orchestra, and he barely includes its guest conductors. Instead, this movie about great musicians in a great orchestra is told almost entirely through their love for music.

Ultimately, they play for themselves even as they play together. The paradox of performing in an orchestra is that it is an intensely private experience in a public arena. “I love saying something that only I can say,” says Kim, the principal second violinist. “I’m not doing it for anyone, I’m doing it for me.”

Anker has had extensive experience in the music documentary field, and he gives us extended, unbroken passages of Brahms, Beethoven, Schubert, and Stravinsky on the soundtrack. It is vital that he include these masterpieces so that we can understand what it means when one of the players says that “great music gets at something inside you that you didn’t know you had.” You don’t have to be a master instrumentalist to connect up to that sentiment. Grade: A-