In 1990, the top 20 American orchestras made 25 albums.
In 1999, those same orchestras made seven. Of the 10 that released new records
in 2004, just two feature new work from living composers.
The Minnesota Orchestra's vast and illustrious recording history, dating to the mid-1920s, includes the world's first record of Mahler's First Symphony (in 1940), a gold record in 1963 for sales topping 2 million and, since 1996, six Grammy Award nominations. Yet its 15 albums through Reference Recordings, a San Francisco-based label, have sold only a combined 200,000 copies.
How has the Minnesota Orchestra decided to shake things up? By recording every Beethoven symphony.
To hype the first disc in the Beethoven series, featuring Symphony Nos. 4 and 5, the Minnesota Orchestra is touring five Minnesota cities over the next week and placing a Beethoven look-alike at, among other sites, Target Center for today's Timberwolves basketball game.
The tour is laudable, but it puts the chicken before the egg.
The Beethoven series does nothing to distinguish the orchestra — countless other recordings of this music exist — nor does it further new music. Orchestras can't afford to ground their 21st-century futures on 19th-century music. People want to hear the music of their time — orchestras simply must do a better job of leading them to it.
Little wonder that American orchestras are slowly relinquishing the burden of record making to their state-sponsored European counterparts and the producers of movie soundtracks. It isn't hard to imagine new American music resting in the hands of Josh Groban.
Before that grisly scene plays out, orchestras should take a cue from rock music. By championing living composers as their own and entwining the recordings of their works with performances, orchestras can establish distinct identities regionally and internationally and ensure the vitality of new music.
A cue from rock
Here's how a typical American orchestra makes recordings today: It seizes upon an idea, usually for music it believes can sell — "We'll make Mozart fresh!" — then records immediately after a string of rehearsals and performances. Many months or even years later, after the public and orchestra have long moved on to other music, the CD emerges in all its magnificent irrelevance.
There's no acknowledgment in concert, scant mention in the press and little distribution beyond niche clearinghouses. The result: Even the most vaunted American orchestras struggle to sell more than 10,000 copies of a new CD, a figure topped by countless obscure rock bands.
Now, here's the rock music model: A band seizes upon an idea — "Let's make music!" (immediately followed by another inspired idea "Let's buy beer!"). After a period of rehearsals and anonymous performances, the band releases a record to equal anonymity. But here's the critical detour: Rock bands then perform the very same music found on their records. This simply doesn't happen in the classical world.
Rock fans inspired by the evening's fare buy copies on their way out of the club or on their next trip to Cheapo. They listen to and learn the music, develop some favorites, then bring friends around for the next live performance. A little buzz, a little airplay and the rest, as lore has it, is Nirvana.
Cover bands
There's a little talked-about cousin within rock that, in one vital area, shares far more kinship with American orchestras than with the world's Nirvanas. This species is known as the dreaded "cover band," usually found in its native habitat of suburban bars. The key similarity with classical orchestras: They perform music belonging to other artists.
Orchestras may not want to face the family tree, but they, too, are essentially cover bands. They make their way with music already performed and recorded countless times, usually dating decades or even centuries.
The problem? None, if filling seats is the immediate goal. Cover bands notoriously draw far more people to performances than do embryonic rock bands. People come out to hear tunes they know, and their enjoyment — alcohol notwithstanding — is predicated on the cover band's ability to deliver mirror-image representations of music made immortal by somebody else.
It's no different for orchestras. Audiences come out not for any exclusive allegiance to the hometown orchestra but to hear favorite compositions by favorite composers. Sure, better orchestras carry the prestige that comes from supreme musicianship, and people are willing to pay top dollar to hear them. But that's no different from the following for the Atomic Punks, a band known across America for its faithful representations of the band Van Halen.
In both cases, audiences just want to hear a memory-perfect, authentic representation of the music they know.
In rock, musicians plying their trade with new, original music face a front-loaded challenge — creating music that compels people to pay attention. From there, they have a landscape all to themselves. People wanting to hear this music must turn to these specific musicians, by attending their concerts and purchasing their records. These musicians build unique trust with their audience and create anticipation for more new music.
Orchestra checklist
Classical orchestras wanting a piece of that action should work from this checklist:
- Develop exclusive relationships with specific composers, perhaps even through salaried positions, and commit to recording their work. Audiences would come to associate composers and orchestras by name.
- Coordinate album releases with a string of local concerts featuring that music, then commit to performing at least one concert the following season with the same music. This would create a market for these albums, develop new audiences and distinguish the orchestra from others.
- Commit to short, regional tours focused on new music. This will generate media attention and boost the orchestra's reputation as a contemporary force.
The Minnesota Orchestra has tapped into each ingredient but never combined them.
Its relationship with Aaron Jay Kernis as a "new music adviser" led to Colored Field in 2001, but no recording since. In 2003, the orchestra released John Tavener's Ikon of Eros, commissioned by concertmaster Jorja Fleezanis, but has never performed the music since.
Osmo Vänskä, the Minnesota Orchestra's music director, was initially resistant, understandably, to recording the Beethoven symphonies. His Swedish recording label, BIS Records, sold him on the rationale of documenting a major cycle with a major orchestra. The upcoming tour is an unprecedented marketing step and will certainly boost sales, but it does nothing to distinguish the orchestra or further new music.
Orchestras can't and shouldn't turn their backs on the classical canon. Among other reasons, classics from the repertoire help audiences place new music in artistic and historical context. But orchestras must create an atmosphere of desire and expectation for new music, and that can only come from taking risks on emerging composers, the music they have yet to compose, recording that music and promoting it.
Who knows? Someday, in some far off concert hall, another orchestra might pay tribute to this music by covering it.
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