Photograph by Scott Ferguson
Big news just broke on our Gateway culture scene: September 4 through 7, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will embark on its first European tour in 14 (yes…14!) years. SLSO will make debut appearances at (no less) the Berlin Music Festival, the Lucerne Festival, Paris’ Salle Pleyel, and a performance locale in London yet to be announced. (The Symphony is admirably tight-lipped about where. Conjectural bets cite the famed BBC Proms at Royal Albert Hall, but careful—London has many major venues.) Equally startling: it’s an all-expenses paid trip. This is unprecedented. It also comes at a time when other orchestras have other priorities such as, oh…survival. The SLSO didn’t win this trip, however… they earned it.
Though the adverse economy has reigned malevolently over all things, it’s ravaged the symphony orchestra business especially hard. Drastic curtailments of normal operations have been the rule—even to the point where some have gone out of business. If you think I am speaking of small, third- and second-tier groups, guess again. One of the so-called “Big Five” symphony orchestras—The Philadelphia Orchestra—is in bankruptcy, with a whopping 14.5 million dollar debt. Several other orchestras show multi-million dollar deficits, Detroit, Minnesota, Dallas among them. Even the mighty Chicago Symphony Orchestra has seen red for the first time in five years, with an operating deficit of $927,000.
Financially speaking, running a symphony orchestra has always been a by-the-skin-of-the-teeth proposition in this country, even in the balmy days of the ’30s ’40s, and ’50s, when classical music had greater prominence. Deficit spending has always been the rule, given the fact that ticket prices alone never cover the costs of making the music…not to mention supporting the attendant administrative infrastructure. Touring overseas, nevertheless, remains de rigueur for the big symphony groups. It’s prestige for new world ensembles to go to the great old world music centers of London, Berlin, Paris, or Vienna and strut their stuff successfully. If an American group does Mozart in Vienna to acclaim…well…they’re good! Viennese audiences should know! It’s a legitimizing experience where everybody wins: overseas audiences are happy, and orchestras show they are on par with the august greats of Europe. It also makes for wonderful PR back home, meaning significant fundraising ammo, despite the extra expense.
Current unforgiving economic conditions have revealed the old way of doing business no longer works, and further reveals that traditional deficit spending is being practiced with varying degrees of discipline and/or acumen even amongst the big name groups. Old habits die hard. Some orchestras are still embarking on overseas tours—perhaps inadvisably. Others have cancelled plans to do so. Not St. Louis…but then, it’s not business as usual here. Things are, and have been, trending differently.
The SLSO went through its own dark night of the soul about a decade back, and with it the realization that—as composer Gustav Mahler once said—tradition is slovenliness (or at least can be, financially). In fact, the symphony’s finances were potentially lethal. It didn’t kill them, but it was close. What they learned made them stronger. After an emotionally and fiscally draconian period of declining audiences and revenues—abetted by painful morale downspiraling where the operative byword was “can’t”—new Symphony President/CEO Fred Bronstein came aboard to redefine and show the SLSO a new version of “can.”
The results have been, well…shocking. Delightfully so. Since Bronstein’s start in 2008, precipitously declining ticket revenue and repeatable annual contributed revenue have been dramatically reversed. Ticket revenue has surged upward 36 percent within 3 years to the highest levels in a decade. Structural deficits have been shaved 18 percent, while contributed non-endowment revenue is up 20 percent over a four-year period. A big nemesis for symphony orchestras, declining audiences, was squarely targeted from day one. The aforementioned ticket revenue increase is one measure of success, but more illustrative is the whopping 22,000 new ticket buyers added to the database in just three years. That’s staggering in this day and age. Key to this was shaking up and stretching repertoire offerings beyond traditional categories into distinct concert and/or series products designed to meet a wider range of tastes way beyond the straight Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms lovers.
In addition to still luring those fellows, SLSO is attracting wider audiences with shows like this weekend's “Disney in Concert,” where the orchestra will perform the scores from favorite Disney movies, along with film clips projected on a giant screen behind the orchestra. Hubbard Street Dance Chicago also appears this month, dancing on stage while the orchestra plays. Last year, Circus Flora performed with SLSO, transplanting the big top into the symphony hall. No longer that imposing sarcophagus where moldy masters lie, Powell Hall has become one of the most happening places in town. Those masters live there because their music does, and the present SLSO makes that music— and many other kinds —come alive with a dazzling brilliance for people of all ages and walks of life.
The orchestra itself has changed with a substantial influx of top-notch, younger players alongside seasoned pros. Under Music Director David Robertson (one of the best stick-wavers in the business today) the orchestra plays with arresting vibrancy and astonishing flexibility. Out of 95 current orchestra members, roughly 42 played the last European tour in 1998; the remaining 53 are making their first trip overseas with the symphony.
This trip won’t be a half-baked, or ill-financed indulgence. The prerequisite was it had to be fully financed, with no impact on normal operational expenses. That has happened, thanks to an initiative spearheaded by former symphony board chairperson Dr.Virginia Weldon. She not only engineered a partnership with the Monsanto Corporation, but landed donations from generous individual benefactors.
Going back to Europe is one more indicator that the Saint Louis Symphony is coming back in general, and they’ve never been better in so many ways. It’s big news and worth celebrating. Somebody ought to do a send-off rally when they leave…
Tom Sudholt was one of the voices of CLASSIC99/KFUO-FM for 24 years, becoming renowned for his expertise in classical music and opera. He is the latest regular contributor to Look/Listen.
