What is a Masterpiece?

Yes, I agree with Mr. Berger. Most of Neeme Jarvi's programs are exemplary in the way they achieve a good balance between the masterworks and the less familiar works (or in some cases, "popular" works). Erich Leinsdorf was another conductor who, in his later guest conducting "career", designed very interesting and diversified programs that had great audience appeal. It was not unusual for him to end a subscription concert with a Strauss waltz, for example.

Once during his early years as music director of the Chicago Symphony, Daniel Barenboim invited the members of the orchestra to submit their favorite programming ideas. My immediate response to his invitation was to suggest a piece that had made an enormous impression on me from Barenboim's own recording on the Erato label with the Orchestre de Paris--the symphonic poem "Penthesilea" by Hugo Wolf. This CD was devoted entirely to Wolf's orchestral works, and included "Der Corregidor", the "Italian Serenade" and the "Scherzo and Finale", all of which were absolutely delightful listening.

So I was quite astonished when Barenboim told me that none of the Wolf works were up to the standards he had in mind for CSO programming.

I listened to that CD again today, and I am even more astonished at the general lack of appreciation for Hugo Wolf (except of course for his Lieder). He must have been an influential model for Richard Strauss, for the tympani solos in Wolf's "Scherzo and Finale" have an uncanny affinity to those in the Strauss "Burleske" for piano and orchestra.

The tendency to play nothing but the same old
established masterpieces is a thing of the past.
Those great works are still played,and they always will,but program-ming at concerts today
is more diversified and
interesting than ever
before.We are fortunate
to have many conductors
who are constantly reviving interesting
rarities from the past,such as Neeme Jarvi
and others.

There is one subliminal reason why, perhaps, and that has to do with time spent listening to music. If you're in a museum, and your eyes scan a painting that you don't really care for, you can just skip over it and go on to the Rembrandt next door. You've only spent a few seconds, if that, on the second-rate painting. But with music, and especially a concert work, if you want to give the composer of the work a shot, you have to hear out the whole work. If it's a concert overture, that's maybe 10 minutes. If it's a full-length symphony, that could be 45 minutes to an hour. If you thought that the work was second-rate, derivative or some other pejorative, you feel that you've wasted (fill in the duration of the piece here) minutes listening to that when you could have had Beethoven, Mozart, or Brahms.

Plus, there are also practical considerations. We are not, thankfully, at the point where we use computers to substitute for real people in a concert hall to bring a score to life. But to bring that score to life, with real people playing real instruments in real time, guess what: those people have to practice in advance, there has to be rehearsal time, everyone has to get paid, and then you have to attract an audience. It's a lot easier to do that with the tried and true (e.g. the "big 3" names mentioned prior) than with, say Kurt Weill's Die sieben Todsunden or Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 5, both of which I'd love to hear live, BTW.

There is some truth in these comments, but I have never felt the same strict standard applied even to the theater - where one can spend even more time at a play than a concert; people seem more willing to accept plays that are good, and entertaining, even if not "masterpieces." Even the operatic world seems more receptive to good works that are clearly on a secondary level (at best) than the orchestral world.

Henry Fogel

Bravo, Mr. Fogel! What an insightful and thought-provoking post. The pursuit of excellence in classical music does seem to have left in its wake a generally widespread disinterest in anything less than a "masterpiece". Meanwhile, we miss the delights of many fine works that are unnecessarily forced into the shadow of greatness.