Programming: It’s all about ME!!!

One question I always seem to get when I’m out guest conducting is “Who put the program together?” To be honest, by the time I get to a concert I rarely remember how the program was assembled. If we’re doing one of my party charts then I probably suggested it. If I see something I haven’t done before odds are I asked the question “what holes do you need filled in your season?” But what to do when you are confronted by the following?


This week I’ve pulled out the great K. 503 concerto of Mozart as I will be playing it in January. The “Big C” as it’s sometimes called by us pianists is a wonderful piece, and it’s the first Mozart I ever played. I’ve done it a couple times since but it’s been a while. So I thought maybe I should look at it. This reminded me of a situation I found myself in recently.

An orchestra (which shall remain nameless) asked me to guest conduct, and to my joy they wanted me to do a play/conduct. To conduct from the keyboard is a wonderful experience, and I have Daniel Barenboim to thank for introducing me to the idea of doing this routine. (I shall reserve my rant about conductors who don’t play their instruments anymore for a later date.) So I sent to said orchestra a few suggestions, mainly Mozart or Beethoven, which I thought would fit into the rest of the program and would also be convenient for me to work up for these concerts. For a whole host of reasons I suggested that the two Gershwins – Rhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F – wouldn’t work. The response was – “Maestro *#&$^%* has reserved the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky for himself.”

As I slowly collected my jaw off the floor I was reminded of that great scene between Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in the classic short “Ali Baba Bunny” (it’s the one with HASSAN CHOP!) where Daffy sees all the treasure and shouts “MINE! MINE! MINE!” First of all, that’s a lot of rep to take off the table. Second of all, how boring must this be for an orchestra, let alone the audience, to have their Music Director be the only one to, say, do Beethoven? Third of all, isn’t that rather arrogant? Don’t you think that someone else might have an interesting approach to any of those aforementioned composers?

This goes to the heart of how orchestras program. In Edmonton we have in place a Programming Committee. This is made up of the Music Director (myself), the Artistic Administrator (the genius Rob McAlear), five members of the orchestra, and the Managing Director. We meet quite regularly when I’m in town and there are always emails flying back and forth between the members of the committee suggesting rep, soloists, dates, etc. What I love about this arrangement is that all these folks have ideas which I would never have thought of. Once we go through the process of hashing things out I believe we put together seasons which are a lot more interesting than if I just decided what we should do. After all, I have my own tendencies towards what I would like to perform, but those tendencies are not the entire rep. I don’t conduct Mahler, I don’t do Bruckner, etc. There is another aspect to this – there is some rep that I would love to conduct in Edmonton but sometimes it doesn’t fit into my conducting schedule with the orchestra. Why not let someone else do some of it? In my very first season of programming up there one of our guest conductors suggested Brahms 3, one of my favorite pieces. Although I’d love to conduct it with my orchestra I was happy to have him do it. Frankly, I found no reason to be greedy.

So, what happened with this orchestra that was so firmly under the programming thumb of this Music Director? I politely told them that if they wanted me to come in and do what they wanted me to do, then they needed to be flexible with programming. I was perfectly willing to consider a dozen different pieces, but the whole play/conduct routine is a tricky deal. Not only do I find myself doing double duty but the orchestra must be comfortable with the idea. Doing pieces like Concerto in F with it’s tempo changes and large orchestration require a lot of rehearsal time as well as a certain comfort level between soloist/conductor and the orchestra. That only happens with time.

I’m happy to report that the orchestra came back and said “Let’s do some Mozart.” I was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, next time I’m up in Edmonton I’m sure we shall have another Programming Committee meeting, and I’m equally sure someone will come up with a brilliant idea I would have never considered.

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