Fix This Concert

Composer Nico Muhly has been playing a fun and snarky game with violist Nadia Sirota (an old friend of mine, for the record) over at his blog. He calls the game "Fix This Concert," and it was inspired by the New York Philharmonic's season opening program, which Muhly and others have complained was far too unimaginative and lacking any intellectually challenging music. (Orchestras are accused of having no stomach for complex music almost as often as we're accused of assaulting audiences with complex music.)

In Muhly's game, you try to improve the existing program by substituting one or two works for the ones currently on the program, but do so without completely changing the nature of the evening. In other words, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure that Tchaikovsky's overplayed, overwrought 4th symphony wouldn't be Muhly's first choice as a concert anchor, he leaves it where it is on the Phil's opening night program, because he understands the orchestra's need for a warhorse to sell tickets to those who are just looking to hear a big, bombastic piece they don't have to work to understand. But he replaces a similarly overplayed Berlioz overture with a short piece by Jacob Druckman, who is a brilliant composer not enough people know about, and then changes a somewhat treacly Ibert flute concerto to a more forward-thinking concerto by Christopher Rouse. And presto, you've got a better program, at least according to Muhly (and me,) without changing your soloist or your anchor piece.

Now, I'll be the first to defend an orchestra's right to program whatever we think will sell the most tickets (most of the time, anyway.) But I think Muhly makes an excellent point with his game: there's no reason that we can't spruce up our programming without seeming to thumb our nose at more conservative audience members. Half the reason that many in our audience think that they won't like new music is because we're relatively careless in choosing what composers we feature, and under what circumstances. Programmed smartly, a new work frequently garners the most enthusiastic reaction from our crowds, and has the added benefit of making our ticketbuyers more comfortable with the idea of mixing Beethoven with, say, Harbison.

So let's play Fix This Concert, shall we? Below, I'm listing a concert program the Minnesota Orchestra will be presenting this November. It's not a bad program by any stretch (unless you're fundamentally opposed to viola solos,) but it does seem to be a bit "safe." Can you make it better, without completely gutting it? Fire away in the comments, and I'll update this post with my own "fix" in a few days...

The Program:
MOZART Overture to Abduction from the Seraglio
BERLIOZ Harold in Italy
DELIUS "The Walk to the Paradise Garden" from A Village Romeo & Juliet
ELGAR Enigma Variations

Update, 10/11/08: Y'all can feel free to keep chiming in with your own fixes in the comments, but having had a couple of days to think about it, here's my take. Although Harold in Italy is the biggest, longest piece on the program, Enigma is pretty clearly the anchor piece, so it stays. On the viola front, I'm substituting Sofia Gubaidulina's riveting and virtuosic viola concerto for the Berlioz - although a very different kind of piece, I think it pairs well with Elgar's emotional character. The Delius I'm dropping altogether. And as much as I love the Mozart, I'm not sure it fits the character of this program all that well, so I'm substituting Holst's underperformed Brook Green Suite, giving our concert distinctly English bookends, with a challenging but soulful interior work. I'd buy a ticket to that...