JGUST 21, 1998
rts review
Innovative
orchestra
aims to
convince
doubters
IF the proof of the pudding is in the eating,
Guildford - Philharmonic
is dishing up a successful
menu.
The orchestra has just
launched the brochure for
its new season of concerts
starting on October 10, a
mix of large and small
works in large and small
venues, offering a wonderful selection of styles and
genres from opera to
dance,
percussion,
medieval - jam session,
Viennese waltz and blockbuster choral works.
It follows the shape of
last year’s ground-breaking season which saw not
only record-breaking 92%
box office sales, but also
the orchestra’s most successful Guildford concert,
with an audience of 3,600
in Stoke Park.
But the almost total
disappearance of the old
GPO format of overture,
concerto, interval, major
symphony, has inspired
outrage among some of
the orchestra’s former
friends.
Their letters to the
Surrey
Advertiser
this
week mourn the passing
of this traditional diet and
pass somewhat snide comment on the choice of
such a populist pot boiler
as the Dvorak New World
Symphony as the symphony of the whole season.
Orchestra ~ manager
Nicola Goold relishes the
opportunity to explain
just why she has changed
that menu.
She was faced with
budget cuts, as Guildford
Borough
Council
was
keen to reduce its funding,
but that was only one factor. Far more important
for the survival of the
orchestra was the survival
of its audience,
and
despite the loyalty to the
old ways portrayed in the
letters, the pathetic ticket
sales and the ever-rising
age of
the audience
argued terminal decline.
orchestras throughout the
country are having' to
devise ways of enticing
completely new punters to
their concerts.
And Nicola is confident that she is bucking
the trend. The age of concert-goers is coming down
in leaps and bounds, people never before seen at
GPO events are buying
tickets, and council fears
that the orchestra wasbecoming an expensive
and elitist drain on public
funds have been stemmed.
This has to be good news
for the GPO’s future.
After all, no-one is criticising the professional
quality of the recent concerts (the standard was
actually very high), just
the scale and choice of
repertoire.
Nicola
argues
that
bringing new people to
concerts means that they
are listening to works very
often for the first time and
an introduction to the
New
World
Symphony,
nobody wants to listen to
them.
" And the inclusion of
“outsiders” in the GPO
season does not necessari-
medievalists
the
Dufay
Collective will be bringing
music
to
the
newly-
orchestra. It enhances it
at the time the barn was
by dint of the sheer quality of the guests. The Tallis
Scholars rarely perform
outside London, but they
were so impressed with
the Holy Trinity audience
and acoustic last year
they actually asked to
come back.
Ensemble Bash is the
UK’s leading percussion
group and its programme
Slimming down the
huge orchestra for chamber works is not the end of
the world either, provided
the potential is there to
bring everyone together
for the big moments, and
a look at the season shows
that far from being uniformly disappointing, it is
a good mix of trusted
favourites and exciting
innovation.
Bach and Vivaldi by
Candlelight
in
Holy
Church,
For it is absolutely useless to put on concerts of
This was not a problem
worthy music that “ought
confined to Guildford. It
performed” if
is universal in Britain, an< —+~—tha
African
Well known
restored
experience.
Guildford, Carl Orff’s
dramatic Carmina Burana
at the Civic, music from
opera and dance, and
guest
appearances
by
internationally
famous
ensembles balance the
need to please, to fill seats
and to inspire.
West
ly detract from the pivotal
role . of
the borough
Handel’s Messiah (repeated by popular request
from last year) and the
Bach
B Minor
Mass
should be a marvellous
Trinity
includes
drumming.
Ls
—a=n
Wanborough
Barn that was composed
built in 1388.
Conductor
Vernon
developed the
Handley
orchestra in the 1970s
into experts in the English
school. This was brilliant
for the time. But now
it is
time to do something different.
Jane Garrett