Russell Steinberg—Concert and Film Music: Blog

Music is being flattened, and no one talks about it. Concert music specifically seems increasingly to have trouble convincing audiences and programmers that it can stand on its own. For today’s audiences, the experience of just sitting quietly and listening to an involved abstract musical work seems no longer sufficient or complete. The ability to discern a narrative in a dynamic musical work is disappearing and addition of other media and crossover music is taking over. Witness the proliferation in programming today to either add visual components or include global or popular music or musicians. The pressure to incorporate or enrich classical music this way comes under the brand of creating concerts more accessible and appealing to wider audiences—to “save classical music,” as we frequently read in media headlines. But enrichment gained simply by multiplying or broadening sensory input is a lie. It markets itself as a hip way to illuminate, ornament, or refresh [...]

In my "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Symphony," I asked the question “What makes us sit still for up to an hour listening to extended abstract music played by an orchestra?”  I am struck how each person discovers a different doorway to this aesthetic pleasure. For me, it was four measures of chords played by the woodwinds in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Fifth. I asked my webmail community, "What specific musical passage first grabbed you?"
 
Here are the stunning responses:
Thinking back for the ''first memory'' I think it was the Mendelssohn violin concerto, a recording of which my violinist uncle played for me in Lincoln, Nebraska.  I was four years old.  The other memory would be the old shellac recording of the Polovstian Dances by the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra on Columbia Records (I EVEN REMEMBER THE LABEL!) which I played on our windup Victrola in the ''music room''.  That would be 83 years ago.  I thought the little [...]

Almost 90 students from over 60 LA area schools perform Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, Beethoven's Egmont Overture, Copland's Down a Country Lane, and more. The LA Youth Orchestra is an incredibly diverse group of students from elementary to high school ages who dedicate Sundays to rehearsing classical music together. Their stories are fascinating and inspiring. They include a flutist who is blind and a 13 year old who attends college. 
 
PROGRAMChamber OrchestraEgmont Overture: Beethoven  Rosamunde Overture: SchubertMusic from Spider-Man: Elfman A Night on Bald Mountain: Moussorgsky 
Concert OrchestraSymphony No.1, mvt. 3: Mahler The Moldau: SmetanaDown a Country Lane: Copland Russian Sailors' Dance: Glière Sleigh Ride: MozartBacchanale: Saint-SaënsSunday December 13, 2009, 4:00 pm      Robert Margolis Performing Arts Center      Milken [...]