NY Times article

[john burke <john.burke@mindspring.com>]

Hi all?

I think this is a very important article for those of us who have been
concerned about how to develop present and future audiences for concert
music. Your comments are invited.

May 25, 2000, Thursday
The Arts/Cultural Desk
    

MUSIC REVIEW; Beethoven's 16 Quartets, Free, for Whooping Guests

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

Advocates of classical music who argue that the high cost of concerts keeps
potential audiences away received a boost for their point of view during the
last two weeks at Alice Tully Hall. The Orion String Quartet, the
quartet-in-residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center,
presented six free concerts devoted to the complete 16 string quartets by
Beethoven. And before every concert, from the first on May 12 to the last on
Tuesday night, a line of people hoping to get in snaked around the block on
Broadway. They were of all ages, races and dress codes, exactly the target
audience classical music organizations everywhere are trying to attract.

Though free, these concerts were also charity events. To mark the year 2000,
the Society used each program to honor a New York City organization doing
work with children in the arts: the Songs of Love Foundation, the Jamaica
Center for Arts and Learning, the Harlem School of the Arts, the Brooklyn
Children's Museum, Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center and, for the final
event, Opus 118/We Want Music, which provides opportunities for children in
the early grades to study and perform music at school. The founder of Opus
118, Roberta Guaspari, was the subject of the 1999 film ''Music from the
Heart,'' staring Meryl Streep.

The honored organizations will get more than tributes, since the corporate
sponsors of this concert series, called Beethoven 2000, have provided $5,000
to each, and the money donated by individuals will also be distributed.

The Orion players (the violinist Daniel and Todd Phillips, the violist
Steven Tenenbom, and the cellist Timothy Eddy) have performed the Beethoven
quartets during the 13 years they have been together, but never in a
complete cycle. At the first and final concerts, which I attended, the
pressure of preparing all 16 works for performances over an 11-day period
was palpable. Although the playing was often strong, an unsettled quality
was never quite shaken off, and pitch problems, especially from the Phillips
brothers, who traded first and second violin parts throughout the cycle,
were sometimes distracting.

The series began auspiciously on the opening night with an engaging
performance of the Quartet in D major, Op. 18, No. 3, third in order but the
first Beethoven composed. The playing was lithe and buoyant and the
musicians were full of ideas. At the final concert, on Tuesday, another
early work, the Quartet in B flat, Op. 18, No. 6, received a lively reading.
In a way, the players saved the best for last. They ended the cycle, and the
series, with the astonishing late Quartet in C sharp minor, Op. 131. And
though the playing was sometimes rough, particularly in the frenetic Presto
movement, their sense of involvement with this amazing work, at once
strangely cosmic and rigorously intellectual, was hard to resist.

That's clearly the way this young audience felt. That many classical music
neophytes were there was obvious: people blithely brought snacks into the
hall and applauded after every movement of every work. A young man in the
row behind me asked an older gentleman sitting next to him to please explain
what a viola was. 

But when the music started, people listened with a rapt attention that
pervaded the hall. And when the performance of the final quartet ended, the
Orion players were greeted with a standing, whooping ovation. This was not
an occasion for a critic to quibble over intonation and phrasing. The
Chamber Music Society intended this series as a gift to New York, and it was
received as a generous and exciting one.