The Philadelphia Orchestra, the first American classical music ensemble to perform in the People’s Republic of China in 1973, is celebrating the 40th anniversary of that event with the latest of what have been many tours — without its new Canadian music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
That’s because the hardworking maestro was in China earlier this month with one of this two other orchestras, the Rotterdam Philharmonic. The Philadelphians are instead on the road with the excellent Donald Runnicles.
Toronto’s Soundstreams has just concluded a Chinese tour. In fact, there is hardly a week in the Chinese music season that doesn’t have pedigreed performers from North America and Europe on the marquees of the country’s many lavish new concert halls and music schools.
All this activity is cultivating the largest present and future source of new classical musicians and audiences. And what was seen by people in quasi-colonial terms in 1973 (we’re going to show these poor, backward Maoists what great art really is) has now become a network of partnerships, where East and West deal with each other as equals.
The Soundstreams efforts are a case in point, mixing new Canadian and new Chinese composers on all programmes and having musicians from each country play the other country’s music.
Philadelphia Enquirer music critic David Patrick Stearns is traveling with the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is posting tour updates on its website here.
Earlier this week, Stearns wrote about not ever knowing who is in the audience, or how the music will affect people:
The impact of such events can be measured only in retrospect. When the Philadelphians were the first U.S. orchestra to play for the seemingly unsophisticated 1973 Chinese audience during the Mao Tse-tung [sic] era, nobody could have predicted that a radio broadcast would be heard by teenager Tan Dun, who became an Academy Award-winning composer (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and is working with orchestra harpist Elizabeth Hainen on a major new work.
In the case of the Philadelphians, the kinds of partnerships that are part of and grow out of touring are not just artistic but commercial. For example, Coca Cola Asia sponsored the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2012 — and is doing so again this year. Imagine: Coke sponsoring classical music.
According to Stearns, the Americans actually made a tiny profit from their tour in 2012, thanks to clever sponsorship deals and intense lobbying of donors back home.
We have to remember that the Philadelphia Orchestra spent most of last year in bankruptcy protection. Bankrupt orchestras don’t usually travel.
I’m bringing this up because I know how much the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and music director Peter Oundjian would like to travel more, but are being held back by finances.
I’m also bringing these Chinese tours up because I was shocked by the Philadelphians’ conservative programming. There are seven concert dates on the tour, starting tonight at the Grand Theatre in Hangzhou. The cornerstone piece is Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 2.
Despite the fact that we can easily come up with the names of at least a dozen American composers dead and living whose music and names are recognised around the world, there is only a single American work on offer in China — and only in two of the concerts — by Gabriela Lena Frank, who was not a year old when the Philadelphians first set foot on Chinese soil.
If this were the Toronto Symphony, I’d be waxing huffy about the absence of national content. But I guess this is a much wider North American problem, centred on the perceived greater worth of the 19th century European symphonic canon relative to the wide sea of programming possibilities lapping at its shores.
In one of his articles, Stearns includes a great anecdote from 1973, when Madame Mao asked the orchestra to play Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, her favourite, instead of the Fifth, which was on the programme. Someone found hand-copied parts for the players who knew the work so well that they immediately saw that it was full of mistakes.
As with our own personal travels, going far away from home allows everyone to get some perspective on what home really means — and what is of value and what isn’t.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
