"We Bought an Orchestra"

[Brian]

Really engrossing (and rather bleak) new article about the ultra wealthy people who are paying money to become composers or conductors, including one who has created her own freelance "orchestra." The article starts by summing up the history of rich dilettantes, from Frederick the Great to Gilbert Kaplan, before getting to today's crop, including Alexey Shor (previous GMG thread here) and a composer who got the Royal Philharmonic and Jean-Yves Thibaudet to perform a cantata with the words "Robotics, artificial intelligence, it's the new medication."

But the real attention getter in the story is a young heiress who sat in on a few rehearsals at the Berlin Philharmonic, mistakenly assumed that she was being groomed to succeed Kirill Petrenko as music director, and then when she found out that wasn't true, she used a network of billionaires looking to claim tax writeoffs to found her own rival Berlin orchestra! Eventually she wants to build a rival concert hall where people can eat chicken nuggets while they listen to her conducting.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/we-bought-an-orchestra-brown

[San Antone]

File under "The Rich and their Vanities"

I say, more power to them - but I'd never pay to hear/see them.

[relm1]

It's a complicated topic.  Is it that different from conductors starting their own orchestras because they had no opportunities to conduct?  That was Marin Alsop.  What about students who go to expensive universities which allows them to learn with top level performances?  What do you think of highly respected performance groups playing only video game music in a concert?  Ultimately, these are very popular and allow the respected orchestra the ability to do more fringe works later.  That's what ballet companies do when they program Nutcracker or Swan Lake.  Those works practically pay for the season.  I think this isn't black and white but grey.  Some of it is fine, some of it isn't but there is a lot of grey in there too.  It is also an industry ripe with exploitation.  For instance rich people paying starving musicians nothing because the musician is willing to do the gig for low pay in hopes of opportunity to come and the rich person then goes to the next starving musician, never needing to pay.  Exploitation like this happens all the time and I hate it.  If the musician gets paid fairly, then it seems like a win/win.

[Todd]

Really engrossing (and rather bleak) new article about the ultra wealthy people who are paying money to become composers or conductors, including one who has created her own freelance "orchestra."

Not always a bad thing.  Occasionally a great thing - eg, Thomas Beecham, who of course founded the Royal Philharmonic. 

Sun.  Under it.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Is chicken nuggets the only thing on the menu?

[AnotherSpin]

Why be surprised? Money doesn't just call the tune for orchestras; it rules the world. Wagner was convinced that commercialism is the ultimate enemy of true art. He spoke of a power of money before which all our deeds and achievements lose their force.

[LKB]

Is chicken nuggets the only thing on the menu?

Here's someone who knows how to get to the crux of a matter!

( Personally, l would prefer my Brahms with steak fries... )

[(poco) Sforzando]

Here's someone who knows how to get to the crux of a matter!

Thank you. I do my best.

[LKB]

Having given the article a little thought, l wonder a bit about the author's intentions and question his expending so much attention on the young Ms. Quasha.

Ms. Quasha is all of twenty years of age, barely more than a child. When l was that age l was still unsure which musical direction would ultimately prove to have long-term viability: voice, oboe, conducting or composing ( l pursued then all while at university ).

Her youth may very well prove to be the future solution to the problem her entitlement has produced. With her varied interests in equestrian events etc., along with the political and financial dynamics at play within her family, it's easy to imagine her deciding that her time should ( for the moment ) be spent developing equestrian skills, or experimenting with running her own business. In short, she could very well " grow out " of her musical infatuation without anyone's intervention.

Having said that, Mr. Brown still makes a strong point by recounting the activities of Sacher, Lim and the others. But l think he comes off as a bit of a bully by spending so much time on the easy target: a young woman who - while admittedly entitled - is exploring her own identity by engaging with organizations and individuals who could have said, " No."

[DrakeBala513]

Having given the article a little thought, l wonder a bit about the author's intentions and question his expending so much attention on the young Ms. Quasha.

Ms. Quasha is all of twenty years of age, barely more than a child. When l was that age l was still unsure which musical direction would ultimately prove to have long-term viability: voice, oboe, conducting or composing ( l pursued then all while at university ).

Her youth may very well prove to be the future solution to the problem her entitlement has produced. With her varied interests in equestrian events etc., along with the political and financial dynamics at play within her family, it's easy to imagine her deciding that her time should ( for the moment ) be spent developing equestrian skills, or experimenting with running her own business. In short, she could very well " grow out " of her musical infatuation without anyone's intervention.

Having said that, Mr. Brown still makes a strong point by recounting the activities of Sacher, Lim and the others. But l think he comes off as a bit of a bully by spending so much time on the easy target: a young woman who - while admittedly entitled - is exploring her own identity by engaging with organizations and individuals who could have said, " No."

If it's admitted fun and games, it could be good fun!

[Florestan]

Wagner was convinced that commercialism is the ultimate enemy of true art. He spoke of a power of money before which all our deeds and achievements lose their force.

And then he brainwashed talked one of the richest monarchs in Europe into subsidizing him. 

[Florestan]

He who pays the piper calls the tune has been the principle upon which all music, nay, all art, was founded and flourished until the advent of Romanticism, Bach, Haydn and Mozart conspicuously included.  Wipe out from history (cancel, more properly) all the rich aristocrats, churchmen and bourgeois who employed/subsidized/supported musicians/artists and had them creating to order --- and you will have wiped out/cancelled 99% of the Western art, musical or otherwise. No Eszterházy, no Haydn --- it's really just as simple as that. Heck, no Lichnowsky and Lobkowitz, no Beethoven. The idea that there is eternal and irreconcilable conflict between art and money is a Romantic conceit.

[Florestan]

The aesthetic consequences are even more depressing. As Quasha and her ilk build a parallel classical music system where cash is king, meritocracy loses its place as the field's ideal. That confirms what skeptics have always suspected—that classical music is less ravishing art than playground for the elite.

The dichotomy is patently false. Most classical music masterpieces are both. Heck, Eroica was premiered in the salon of Prince Lobkowitz to an audience of a selected few, yet it has become an iconic revolutionary work which has inspired and uplifted lots of proletarians.

[Brian]

You just posted 9 posts in a row...
  

[Florestan]

You just posted 9 posts in a row...
  

Actually, I've removed most of them. 

[Roy Bland]

Today they applaude