Tomorrow afternoon Edinburgh's Usher Hall has the first of its Symphonies For Sundays of 2015.
The symphony in question is Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique", the orchestra is the St Petersburg Symphony under conductor Alexander Dmitriev, and concertgoers also get to hear Natalie Clein play the Saint Saens Cello Concerto No 1 in A minor. The hall management is confident that the 3pm start will attract a new audience, and the exercise is repeated exactly a month hence with Camerata Salzburg, a feast of Mozart and violinist Nicola Benedetti, which would be a banker even if staged at the crack of dawn.
Although I am writing before it has happened, my guess would be that the performance of Schubert's Winterreisse by Sir Thomas Allen with pianist Malcolm Martineau at the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow yesterday lunchtime was also not short of takers. The lesson you might take from that, I suppose, is that a popular programme will always attract support, but of course it is not that simple. The idea of what constitutes a "popular programme" is in a state of constant flux, with composers and repertoire falling in and out of fashion. And, of course, the same is true of artists, whose stars can wax and wane for reasons that can be as perplexing to their fans as it must be to the performers themselves. Every orchestra, player and music promoter wants to stay ahead of the game and create or anticipate the next trend. Contrary to what is often presumed, audiences can be insatiable for challenge as well as novelty and abruptly bored of what might have been presumed "safe".
With all that perfectly reasonable uncertainty, the timing of concerts assumes a greater significance, but it often seems that any research into this is haphazard, although experimentation is rife. I'd guess we will see some when the totality of Fergus Linehan's music programme for the EIF is revealed, even if the portion we have seen so far sticks to the familiar morning recital/evening concert/teatime chamber music formula. At the moment Scotland is relatively bereft of "rush hour" concerts elsewhere in the season, although such experiments by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Edinburgh and at Oran Mor in Glasgow seemed to be well-supported. The Herald has also noted the popularity of the BBC SSO's afternoon performances with older - and younger - people, but these are usually dictated by the orchestra's broadcasting agenda rather than anything else.
It is not solely in the "classical" realm that such questions are pertinent. The variation in rock gig timings can be vast, with 25th birthday-celebrating King Tuts sticking resolutely to its familiar, later, timetable, while other venues apply a curfew so that the lucrative dancing-to-records crowd can be accommodated later on - even though the hippest clubs are always those, like Optimo, or The Arches' Cafe Loco of fond memory, that have incorporated a live element. Part of the success of Celtic Connections is down to its willingness to swap artists between venues and time slots, but if there is any meaningful analysis of how all this variation translates in commercial terms, I have not seen it.
What seems the norm, however, is that there are no second chances for audiences. Orchestras in the US repeat programmes in a way UK ones never do, and theatre and dance companies provide matinees as well as evening shows, yet even the once-common practice of pop bands playing early shows for younger fans seems to have fallen into abeyance. Has anyone looked at the economics of two shows in smaller venues, in classical, pop or any other genre? Attracting the broadest possible audience is what fills Glasgow Royal Concert Hall or arenas like the Hydro, but that sort of popularity has to be built by wooing its disparate elements on the way.
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