Take a look at the display cases outside Orchestra Hall and you will notice a small but symbolic change in what directions Symphony Center is heading these days.
This is the time of year when all these cases normally would contain posters touting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s upcoming subscription season. Now, there is only one such advertisement and it’s tucked to the side of the main entrance on Michigan Avenue. The rest of the cases promote the new Summer at Symphony Center jazz, pop and world music events.
Orchestra musicians, speaking off the record, consider this an example of the Orchestral Association trustees downgrading the classical music that is the CSO’s artistic lifeblood. Management insists the orchestra remains its No. 1 priority and that it hasn’t abandoned its artistic mission, just expanded it a bit.
“When expenses are exceeding income, it is crucial that we explore every possibility of bringing in new and larger audiences in ways that are cost-effective,” says CSO Association President Henry Fogel. “This enables the association to be meaningful and relevant to a far greater proportion of Chicagoland’s population.”
$4 million deficit, at least
Fogel is working to contain a $4 to $4.5 million operating deficit that could, according to insiders, rise as high as $7 million next year. He vows the association will return to a balanced budget in fiscal 2003. Under Fogel’s watch, the CSO had been deficit-free for 15 years prior to the 2001-02 season. At a time when classical music in the U.S. must contend with competition from more popular forms of entertainment and the busy lifestyles of its customers, the CSO, like every other American symphony orchestra, needs to supplement its earned and contributed income, attract younger audiences and break out of its endemic conservatism.
But keeping its profile high in a shifting cultural landscape has become more difficult with the recent loss of both the orchestra’s longtime radio broadcast series and its Teldec recording contract: Twin blows the institution could have shrugged off during the 1990s boom years feel like artistic insults added to fiscal injury today.
Those who worry that the orchestra’s musical product will suffer because of a decline in contributions and a drastic rise in red ink may take comfort in the knowledge that it hasn’t happened — yet. The CSO remains one of the world’s preeminent orchestras. Ticket sales remain strong even if empty seats are often evident. Although no box office figures are available for this past season, the CSO sold 88 percent of capacity in 2000-01, which is well above average for U.S. orchestras these days.
Despite the internal grumbling about ancillary activities stealing the limelight from the CSO, I don’t get a sense that classical music is being devalued at Symphony Center. I say this despite management’s decision to scrap principal guest conductor Pierre Boulez’s scheduled performances of the complete Stravinsky “Pulcinella” in November so that it might save $40,000 in soloist fees.
Efforts are being made to bring classical music, world music and jazz under the same roof, see what they have to say to one another and build events around them that will attract younger, more adventuresome audiences. Such cross-cultural dialogue, if done right, can be both enjoyable for the public and healthy for institutions commonly perceived as resistant to change; last season’s visit by cellist Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble, and Daniel Barenboim’s classical and jazz takes on Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” Suite, proved as much. (It’s good news that the Silk Road group will be back in October for an extended residency with the CSO.)
If the CSO’s 2002-03 season looks positively spartan compared to the one just ended, it must be said that 2001-02 — “the most expensive season we have ever put on,” says Fogel — was something of an anomaly. “In the good years when the money was there, we stretched. From a financial point of view, you could say we stretched too far,” he admits. But, he insists, “our overall financial health is good and I think it will continue to be good. Cutting a significant amount of expense from next season is actually not that difficult.”
Last season’s big-ticket items — the complete Wagner “Tristan und Isolde,” Part II of Berlioz’s “The Trojans,” Britten’s “War Requiem” and Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius” — cost a total of $750,000 to $1 million. All four works were planned near the end of the high-flying ’90s when management was budgeting expenses based on large donations from foundations and corporations — funding that eroded once the economy began to slide.
What appears, in hindsight, to be extravagance also seems ironic in light of the loss of the CSO’s radio broadcasts, which could be back on the air for roughly the same amount the four vocal blockbusters listed above cost the orchestra.
New music is still there
If there are pressures from inside and outside the institution to dumb down the programming in deference to listeners who don’t know much about classical music, Barenboim must be given credit for continuing to integrate challenging contemporary works into the repertory. Not every listener, of course, has to like every piece of new music the CSO performs. But allowing them to discover music they’ve never heard before is an essential part of any orchestra’s mission.
The stereotype of the aging classical music audience is a myth that refuses to die. Most orchestras (including the CSO) have conducted surveys to show that the average age of patrons of symphony concerts has held constant in the mid-50s; there’s no documentary evidence to suggest it’s getting older. The problem is that the Baby Boomers who have grown to middle age with little or no exposure to classical music, at home or in school, are not as interested in classical music as their parents were at their age.
In 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts found that people under 40 made up almost 27 percent of classical audiences; in 1997, the figure had dropped to less than 14 percent. Orchestras including the CSO must do some hard-nosed strategizing if they hope to stop the attrition before it’s too late.
Bring it on
That’s why I’m not bothered by the fact that management is bringing a slate of pop and jazz events to Symphony Center this summer. Does this cheapen the classical music the orchestra is playing at Ravinia the same time? Of course not.
If the profits help to subsidize, say, a future CSO commission from a major composer, restore a portion of the funding that has been slashed from the CSO’s educational programs or enable the orchestra to produce its own recordings, so much the better for everyone.
When an arts institution is hemorrhaging red ink and is being challenged from outside to prove its relevance to society, the old rules no longer apply.
To be sure, symphony orchestras should and must keep classical music at the forefront of what they do. But they also face the imperative of broadening their mission for a rapidly shifting culture. Once they figure out how to reach people where they are, rather than where they think people should be, they will be a lot better off.
