Matters of personal taste loom large this week.
In fact, they dominate. Two weeks ago tonight I was a little agog at what confronted me in Glasgow Royal Concert Hall at the regular RSNO concert. The auditorium looked cavernous. Why? Because it was more than half-empty. In fact, the event was so thinly attended that the orchestra decided to close the upper half of the auditorium, black it out, override regular seating allocations and shift what audience there was downstairs to the arena - the stalls - so that the place didn't look too sparsely populated.
I think this has happened before, but it is an extremely rare occurrence. I can't pretend I was shocked. I knew it was coming. So did the RSNO. And so, probably, did the regular RSNO followers, many of whom, clearly, had voted with their feet and elected for another option that night, or simply stayed at home.
What was the reason for the massive absence of an audience? It's not as though the programme was stuffed with contemporary music, where the scare-factor can wreak havoc with audience appeal and box office sales. Indeed, there wasn't a living composer in sight: every composer on the programme was well-dead. Ah: but they were all French, and in one case Belgian. And that, in my experience, was enough to do it.
I vaguely recall writing about this once before, many years ago, and probably under similar circumstances. It's one heck of a generalisation, but by and large the RSNO audience doesn't seem to have much of a taste for French music. Now there are immediate exceptions to make, of course. Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique will usually draw a crowd.
Perhaps the classics by Debussy (La Mer and L'apres-midi d'un faune) or Ravel (Daphnis And Chloe and, of course, Bolero) might attract folk; though the presence on the programme a fortnight ago of Ravel's gorgeous Mother Goose Suite and the sensationally exciting La Valse made not one jot of difference to the attendance. And nor did anything else in the programme, which included Cesar Franck's little symphonic poem, Les Eolides (Franck's the Belgian in the bunch), Saint-Saens's First Cello Concerto and Faure's Elegie.
If my wholly unscientific and totally unprovable generalisation about the taste of RSNO audiences - at least those in Glasgow, the community with which I am most familiar - is remotely accurate, then that all-French programme was a completely no-win affair, and we all knew it, as did everyone in the RSNO administration.
So if the box-office failure of the concert was so predictable, does that suggest that the RSNO music and planning staff should have ditched it at an early stage in the planning process and gone for any one of a number of safer options, more appealing to audience tastes, whether Russian, Nordic or mainstream Austro-German repertoire? Of course it doesn't. The RSNO has a responsibility to offer a broad selection of music from the repertoire to its audiences, and that should include music from the Gallic countries.
We have to remember that it's not many years since we had plenty of French music in the season, during the reign of Stephane Deneve, including such recondite elements as the symphonies of Albert Roussel. But we also must remember that, long before the big Frenchman left the RSNO, his Scottish audiences were head over heels in love with him, and would have turned out in force if, instead of conducting the band, he had given readings from the Tourcoing telephone directory. The magnetism for the audiences in that period had little to do with French music per se, and everything to do with Stephane Deneve and his gigantic personality.
My feeling about Stephane's view of the French "symphonic tradition", though he was always careful about what he said, is that there wasn't really one in the 19th century. The symphonies of Vincent d'Indy have gone down the plughole into obscurity. As have the four of Alberic Magnard, apart from a flicker of interest from the recording industry. As have the first two by Saint-Saens, with only the grandiose Organ Symphony (the Third) staying the course in the mainstream repertoire. Cesar Franck's single symphony (which I loathe) gets an occasional outing.
Saint-Saens also churned out concertos. He had a natural facility for mass production, which he admitted. But so often, as in the BBC SSO's recent performance of the "Egyptian" Concerto, beneath all the surface brilliance, I can't find much in the way of substance. You will find depth in the chamber and instrumental music of some of these figures. But with no significant 19th-century Romantic orchestral repertoire, French music had to wait for Debussy and Ravel. Ergo the bits and bobs of the recent RSNO programme: and maybe the turnout?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article