The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: The Minnesota Orchestra will try performing shorter and more informal concerts next season. What do you think? Should that be tried here in Madison and elsewhere?

By Jacob Stockinger

You may remember that at the beginning of November, The Ear posted a series of 10 suggestions  to improve orchestral concerts (below bottom) intended to draw in bigger, newer and younger audiences.

The suggestions were made by conductor Baldur Bronniman (below).

I added two suggestions of my own: Make concerts shorter and make tickets cheaper.

The post drew a lot of strong responses, mostly con but some pro, from readers. You should check them out.

Here is a link:

https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/classical-music-an-orchestra-conductor-suggests-10-ways-to-improve-concerts-the-ear-adds-two-more/

Now I see that, with the help of a grant, the Minnesota Orchestra will try putting on some shorter and more informal concerts. The orchestra recently returned from the brink of bankruptcy and disaster under Finnish Grammy-winning music director Osmo Vanska, who took the same percentage pay cut at his players. (He is below and at bottom in a YouTube video conducting symphonies by Finnish composer Jean Sibelius), 

While The Ear proposed 90-minute concerts without intermission, it seems the Minnesota Orchestra will try out the 60-minute formula in three concerts between this coming January and June. The programs look pretty good.

(Thanks for directing me to the story goes to Steve Kurr, below, the Middleton High School  music teacher and conductor of the Middleton Community Orchestra, which generally follows a short and more informal programs  for its concerts.)

I will be anxious to see the results. So will a lot of other orchestra maestros and administrators, I suspect.

Just maybe we are beginning to see the start of a trend in bringing concert hall practices up to – or down to? — the standards of a high-tech and very busy society that is both timed-deprived and driven by a shorter attention span.

Here is a link to the story:

http://m.startribune.com/entertainment/music/280257972.html

What do you think of the ideas in general and the experiments in Minnesota?

The Ear wants to hear.