A pattern seems to be
evolving at Ravinia; begin the truncated summer session with a week
of Christoph von Dohnányi
and end with a week of Lord of the Rings. I'm not sure how many
years the eighty-three-year-old maestro has left, but now that the
LOTR folks have turned The Hobbit into a trilogy of films, we have
five more to go. (If they tackle The Silmarillion, I'll probably
throw myself under a train. If Ravinia ever makes us play LOTR, the
musical, I might self immolate in the parking lot.)
Sometimes it feels as if Sauron himself
takes a hand in scheduling during the summer season. Nothing whips
the Orc-hestra into that deadly combination of boredom and anger like
fifteen hours of rehearsal spent going over (and over) two Beethoven
Symphonies and two Piano Concertos (3, 3, 4 and 5 – don't ask me
which is which; I'm desperately trying to put the whole thing behind
me). Dohnányi, who has
admirable qualities as a musician, also has a disposition which
forces him to leave no turn un-scorned, and makes for some tedious
rehearsals. The ensemble really seemed to hit its stride
sometime around Tuesday afternoon. Unfortunately, with three
rehearsals yet to go before the opening concert, the finest playing
might have been lavished on the fellows cutting the grass or zipping
around the empty park on their Segways.
These weren't the first outdoor
concerts of the 2013 summer season, however. A couple weeks prior,
the {redacted}SO took its show on the road to a local arboretum and
presented three performances in a fairly bucolic setting. The
motivation for doing such a thing, while somewhat complex, has to
include a degree of frustration at the way in which the orchestra
finds itself increasingly sidelined at Ravinia. After spending
nine-or-so months a year as ostensibly the finest orchestra in our
zip-code, it is something of a come-down to arrive at our summer
'home' and discover we are several rungs on the ladder below the
likes of Steely Dan and Brian Wilson. (No offense to Messrs. Dan and
Wilson – I'm sure they are fine musicians.) So, one option for
those chafing under the dominion of the lidless eye is to make like
the Elves of Middle Earth, get in a boat and set sail for friendlier
shores.
During my student days, a friend faced
a dilemma when he wanted to bring a girlfriend home for the holidays.
His religiously conservative parents wouldn't allow any sort of
cohabitation to go on under their roof. But, like the orthodox of
many faiths, they allowed for a giant loophole, one which permitted
my friend to do whatever he wanted, so long as it happened inside a
tent in the backyard. I couldn't help but think of my old college
pal while playing at the arboretum, as our very tent-like temporary
stage groaned, creaked, and flapped like a ship caught in a gale.
The price of freedom, I suppose, is sometimes having to put up with
rustic conditions.
The concerts we put on were 1) The
Music of John Williams, 2) the ubiquitous summer staple, an all
Tchaikovsky program, and 3) a family concert of Mexican, Spanish, and
South American selections that, on paper, looked the most
insubstantial of the three, but which I found to be the most
satisfying of the lot. As often happens when attempting to reach out
to a 'new' audience, the programmers, perhaps showing a lack of faith
in the commodity on offer, aimed low. Modesty and decorum prevent me
from dwelling too much on what went down in the tent my friend
erected in his back yard, but I assume he didn't curl up in his
sleeping bag with a flashlight and a Superman Comic. It is one thing
to win your freedom, and still another to know what to do with it.
To continue banging away at a tired analogy, the consummation of the
relationship between the orchestra and our audience ought to be the
presentation of the finest music by the best musicians. Whatever the
plans for the future, I hope our organization doesn't lose sight of
that. Anything less is not worth leaving the house for, or, in other
words, if you plan on getting busy, get serious.
