Play It Again, Ludwig

By Michael Walsh

Summer festivals cling depressingly to Top 40 programs of classics

Nothing LikeItI Under the Stars," boasts this year's Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony. On the contrary, there is too much like it. When it comes to programming, major American orchestras apparently operate on the principle that what their audiences don't know will scare them away. The depressing result is coast-to-coast classical Top 40, a play-it-safe season of interchangeable concerts that is as stultifying as the humidity on an August dog day.

Those with a hankering to hear, say, Beethoven's Seventh Symphony or his Fourth Piano Concerto this summer not only could encounter these works at Ravinia, where Beethoven runs rampant, but could scarcely avoid them elsewhere: in upstate New York at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, played by the Philadelphia Orchestra (during its Beethoven festival); at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony's Berkshire retreat (during an all-Beethoven orchestral weekend); and at the Hollywood Bowl (during the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Beethoven festival). Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Los Angeles are each playing Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra and Stravinsky's The Firebird this summer. Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto? The Cleveland Orchestra is serving it up, and so are the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The beat goes on.

Excessive reliance on war horses is hardly limited to the summer. At the turn of the century, European and American orchestras drew on the Beethoven symphonies, the Tchaikovsky concertos and the orchestral music of Brahms to form the foundation of their regular concert seasons. The problem is, they still do. An iron repertory preserves masterpieces but chokes vitality.

When pressed, conductors and chairmen of orchestral boards will bombinate about the importance of hearing new and different works, of keeping musical culture fresh. But the talk rarely leads to more than token action, like scheduling a contemporary work between a well-known overture and a famous symphony or concerto. If new music is occasionally recognized, another category is nearly always overlooked: lesser-known works from the past. Why should concertgoers be force-fed a steady diet of chestnuts when, with a little brio and imagination, music directors could offer them something fresher and equally palatable? Instead of Zarathustra, for example, why not Strauss's eloquent valedictory, the Metamorphosen for 23 solo strings? Instead of yet another oft-encountered romantic symphony, how about Austrian Composer Franz Schmidt's dark, troubled Fourth Symphony? Instead of one more go at Dvorak's "New World" Symphony, why not his exhilarating tone poem The Wood Dove?

It can be argued that summer is no season to challenge audiences with the new and unusual, that all they want to do is sit back and let the celestial strains of the classics waft over them. The big festivals certainly seem to subscribe to this philosophy. But, luckily, not all of them do.

There is some adventure to be found. Summer is often the season for the offbeat in opera. The enterprising Santa Fe Opera will present the world premiere of American Composer George Rochberg's The Confidence Man this week, and is staging Strauss's rare Die Liebe der Danae as well; the Opera Theater of St. Louis in June presented the premiere of Stephen Paulus' ambitious The Postman Always Rings Twice, which it commissioned, and unearthed Prokofiev's youthful one-act shocker Maddalena.

Fortunately, there are summer festivals of instrumental music that satisfy hardier listeners seeking sustenance for both mind and ear. In California, the Cabrillo Music Festival, observing its 20th anniversary this year, will present world premieres by composers like Conlon Nancarrow, 69, an American expatriate who has lived in Mexico City since 1940 and who writes his music for player piano. On the programs of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, works by living composers like John Harbison, Richard Wernick and Yehudi Wyner coexist peacefully with those of Haydn and Smetana. And for devotees who must have their daily dose of Beethoven, the Minnesota Orchestra is staging an imaginative Sommerfest lasting through Aug. 14 that features all 16 of the composer's works for solo instruments and orchestra. The repertory includes such oddments as the Romance in E-Minor for flute, bassoon and piano and Beethoven's own piano arrangement of his violin concerto.

Occasionally, the major festivals display some enterprise. The Hollywood Bowl last week was the site of an unusual program of Polish music, including works by Stanislaw Moniuszko (the 19th century composer of the popular Polish national opera Halka) and Shostakovich, who was of Polish descent. That program, however, was performed by the visiting Warsaw Philharmonic. At Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony has responsibly programmed two new works it commissioned for its centennial last year. And at the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Orchestra performed a piano concerto believed to have been written by Franz Liszt, and orchestrated by Tchaikovsky.

Such events are exceptional. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff are still the rule, from the rustic expanse of western Massachusetts to the urban refuge of the Hollywood Hills. This summer, like every other summer, is the season of the "Emperor" Concerto and the Fifth Symphony. Perhaps U.S. orchestras take their programming cues from that musical connoisseur Ulysses S. Grant, who once observed, "I only know two tunes; one of them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't." --By Michael Walsh

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.