wiener fest 2006

Last night, the community of Champaign-Urbana had the luxurious opportunity to see the world's most ethnocentric orchestra right here in the middle of the cornfields. The Wiener Philharmoniker played here for the first time ever. Like that should be a surprise. Some benefactors paid handsomely or they never would have come, obviously.

I don't think I've ever seen more white, male fuddie-duddies in my life. These Austrian men in tuxes wandered around looking for food before the concert and I felt sorry for them--I don't think I've sampled restaurants worse than the ones in the immediate vicinity of Krannert. In fact, these restaurants are my examples of How Restaurants Suck Really, Really Bad in Champaign-Urbana. (That's another rant entirely--there is absolutely no excuse for the townships of a Big Ten school to have such deplorable restaurants--the restaurants are undoubtedly why Indiana has such a pull on many good students over Illinois--if I'd had the choice, I certainly would have chosen Bloomington, if only for the restaurants. But to be fair, there are a few restaurants over in Champaign that I don't have any complaints about--if only the Wieners could have known!)

Back in March of 1997, it was announced that the Wiener Philharmoniker had finally allowed women to be in their ranks. They'd already been paying a female harpist per diem for about twenty-five years. Of course, they've only added one or two women since then. And they're all white, white, white.

The funniest cartoon I've ever seen in The New Yorker appeared that month, too. I kept that issue for years. I have an electronic copy of it on my Complete New Yorker, but it's not copyable. The text, however, is here:

Hazing in the Vienna Philharmonic
First, “Somebody” coated Anna L’s harp strings with Vaseline. ("Was ist das?")
Shortly thereafter “a person” stuck a piece of Sacher torte in Olga N.’s oboe.
Lena S. was surprised to discover that “an individual” had welded a tiny wheel to the bottom of her cello.
And, just last week, “it could have been anyone” replaced all of Sophie T.’s sheet music with works of Andrew Lloyd Webber. ("Gott im Himmel!")

But, all said, they are of course one of the best orchestras in the world. They kicked the shit out of Schubert's Great Symphony, which did in fact merit a standing ovation. Not that that says anything in these parts--some folks will stand for someone playing nose flute around here (lest we forget that we are, in fact, in the middle of the cornfields--they're not the regular season-ticket holders in Symphony Hall, after all), but it was deserved this time. The audience embarrassed me quite a bit from time to time but at least they didn't clap between movements.

An aside--I first recognized how overly generous audiences are here when I sang in Haydn's Creation last spring. It was a terrible performance, and of course, we got a standing ovation. It was embarrassing, because I could see Professor Temperley in the audience and he had to stand because everyone else was. He is a well-known scholar on the work and in fact edited the vocal C. F. Peters score, which we were NOT using. Yeesh.

Back to the performance at hand--Riccardo Muti kicks ass. He's pretty unbelievable. I've seen quite a few famous conductors in my time. I've even sung under some of their batons (the choruses I sang in in New York had gigs in Carnegie Hall (where we also rehearsed), Avery Fisher (the home of the New York Phil), and Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center). But much of the time, I don't see why they're so special. This guy is pretty special. He's extremely dynamic and charismatic. Although I suppose to get anywhere in the conducting field, you need to be born with some charisma--it's arguably the most difficult field anyone could ever go into.

However, in summary, I shouldn't be so hard on folks attending these performances (the CSO was here last year). After all, it is a privilege to go to performances of great orchestras even in Chicago--you need to have the money and the time to do it if you live in central or southern Illinois. And it is nice to see all the folks who you can tell never go to performances like that making an effort (they stood out in their formal wear). Truth be told, I am among the handful of youngest people at most performances I attend. The Lyric is usually full of septagenerians. I find myself to be the youngest woman in the women's restroom by about thirty years at any given time. This needs to change.

There are two big possibilites here. One is that art music needs to be made more accessible to younger people. That could be helped by horrible snobs like myself relaxing more about audience behavior. And I have relaxed more in the past couple of years. I used to glare at anyone who coughed or rustled their programs before. I'm a lot more forgiving now, which is kind of essential.

Another possibility is that people become more interested in art music as they get older. I can't tell you how many people I've met through working in music libraries, CD stores, and a CD recording label who have starting "getting into 'classical' music" at the age of forty or so. I think people tend to calm down and get more introspective as they get older, by default. I know so many people who can't deal with noisy music anymore, even though they admit that they probably more or less shot their eardrums when they were in their teens and early 20s. And yet another thing to consider is that geriatric people are more often retired and have time (and money sometimes) on their hands to go to such events on a regular basis.

I do sincerely wish that more people my age knew what they were missing out on.