Surveying the Orchestra

From the inquisitive “Is Timid Programming Classical Music’s Biggest Threat?” in WQXR to the damning “America’s Orchestras are in Crisis” in New Republic, discussions of programming repeat an alarming diagnosis: performing groups choose repertoire from a rapidly shrinking list. The Republic’s Philip Kennicott thinks that managements cater to a caricature of an elderly audience who only wants to hear Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. “Many in the managerial class… care deeply about the rich, variegated, and complex history of classical music, but can find no practical way to offer that history to like-minded patrons,” he writes. “There are fewer and fewer safe pieces,” Opera America’s president Marc Scorca said.