{"id":3957,"date":"2026-05-04T23:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T03:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3957"},"modified":"2026-05-04T23:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T03:14:08","slug":"the-boston-symphonys-castigated-blueprint-makes-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2026\/05\/the-boston-symphonys-castigated-blueprint-makes-sense.html","title":{"rendered":"The Boston Symphony’s Castigated Blueprint Makes Sense"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Andris Nelsons conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Today\u2019s online \u201cArts Fuse\u201d carries a piece of mine commenting yet again on the Boston Symphony firestorm, which pits enraged musicians against the management and board \u2013 and turns Andris Nelsons, the outgoing music director, in a martyr. Excerpts follow. The read the whole thing, click here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 14-page \u201cState of the Boston Symphony Orchestra\u201d manifesto, dated April 17, 2026 (but first circulated earlier), sketches a new strategic plan. . . .  This document has now been widely shared and castigated. It claims a financial emergency that may or may not endure scrutiny. Lost in the shuffle is the credibility of the programmatic prescriptions at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It equally bears mentioning that the orchestra \u2013 at least during the Carnegie Hall visits I have attended \u2013 sounds impaired. I was startled to read a glowing account<\/a><\/strong> of the recent Carnegie performance of Dvorak\u2019s New World<\/em> Symphony led by Nelsons. It was written by Nathan Cole, the orchestra\u2019s concertmaster. What had he gleaned from his seat at the front? To my ears, the orchestra did not play that well. I could share many examples. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The board documents a series of challenges that in fact afflict the symphonic field generally in the United States. . . . The proposed template lists \u201csymphonic cycles,\u201d \u201cfestivals,\u201d and \u201cprogrammatic themes that build connections across several weeks of BSO concerts.\u201d Such programing is \u201ceasier to market to targeted audiences.\u201d  BSO concerts \u201cwill be accompanied by more humanities-based collateral presentations, including lectures, panel discussions, demonstrations workshops.\u201d \u201cThere will be some affinity programming, intended to appeal to segments of our communities who have not traditionally felt welcomed.\u201d These changes, the document adds, \u201care neither radical nor even especially novel.\u201d . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having myself been engaged in a comparable initiative, with a variety of orchestras, for more than three decades, I would like to contribute to the debate my impression that these strategies, as stated, sound plausible and timely. And if they prove \u201cespecially novel,\u201d so much the better. I also feel competent to furnish some advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left my job as a New York Times<\/em> music critic in 1980 partly because I discovered classical music in crisis. Its institutions seemed moribund to me, with worse to come. I next discovered myself working for New York\u2019s 92nd<\/sup> Street Y. When the Y undertook a multi-year Schubert festival in collaboration with the baritone Hermann Prey, I volunteered to create an annual, all-day \u201csymposium\u201d tackling such themes as \u201cSchubert the Man,\u201d \u201cPerspectives on Erlkonig<\/em>,\u201d and Schubert and the Piano.\u201d Prominent scholars took part alongside prominent performers. An avid audience instantly materialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not long after, I wound up running an orchestra: the Brooklyn Philharmonic at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Harvey Lichtenstein, an impresario of genius (the last of his kind), had created a state-of-the-art performance venue by presenting what could not be seen or heard at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center. He had also entrusted his resident orchestra to Dennis Russell Davies and implemented a draconian shift in repertoire. As a result, the BPO was deserted by more than two-thirds of its subscribers over two agonizing seasons. It was playing to audiences of 350 in a 2,000-seat hall. I had written a notorious book, Understanding Toscanini<\/strong>:<\/a> How He Became an American Culture-God and Helped Create a New Audience for Old Music<\/em>, in which I situated BAM as an antidote to Lincoln Center. Harvey invited me to lunch. I proposed that the BPO be re-modelled with the Schubert symposiums in mind. Harvey was a gambler and had nothing left to lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so BPO seasons were structured as a series of thematic festivals, many with multiple events. . . . During my tenure, attendance increased four-fold and grant income exploded \u2013 Mellon, Knight, Hearst, Rockefeller all stepped up. We also became the first orchestra to land NEH support (heading a national consortium). We sustained an educational partnership with Brooklyn\u2019s Pratt Institute, which was looking to supplement its humanities offerings. Our \u201ceducational\u201d concerts, in middle and high schools, were also thematic, linked to our 1994 celebration of the centenary of Dvorak\u2019s New World<\/em> Symphony . . . Nothing ever invalidated this experiment. It ended when an audit disclosed BAM deeply in debt. Harvey fired his CFO and terminated the symbiotic relationship linking BAM with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. From that moment, the orchestra died a lingering death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I initiated a second incarnation of \u201cfestival programing\u201d shortly after, when Larry Tamburri \u2013 an exceptional CEO \u2013 invited me to curate an annual three-week \u201cwinter festival\u201d for the New Jersey Symphony. Larry had trouble selling tickets during the month of January. The winter festivals cured that. . . . They generated ongoing partnerships with the Newark Museum, Montclair State University, the History department of a superb suburban high school, and the Music department of an embattled Newark high school . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I [subsequently] renewed the NEH consortium I had created at BAM. I called it \u201cMusic Unwound.\u201d Funded four times, it endured from 2010 until last April, when it was terminated \u2013 along with 1,476 other NEH initiatives — by a couple of knucklehead<\/a>s<\/strong> working for Elon Musk\u2019s DOGE task force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Music Unwound<\/a><\/strong> implemented more than three dozen humanities-infused, cross-disciplinary festivals via orchestras, universities, and conservatories in all parts of the United States. . . . In El Paso, Texas, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, especially, Music Unwound demonstrated the full promise of festival programing — for audience development; for focusing and expanding institutional mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In El Paso, the crucial ingredient was Frank Candelaria, then an Associate Provost at the University of Texas\/El Paso and also a proactive board member of the El Paso Symphony. (Frank now teaches at Vanderbilt University.) Hundreds of UTEP students, and their families, experienced symphonic music for the first time. They learned about Dvorak\u2019s historic advocacy of \u201cNegro melodies,\u201d and about their own cultural inheritance: the Mexican Revolution of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Silvestre Revueltas. But the sleeper was the Kurt Weill story \u2013 about an exemplary immigrant who insisted on only speaking English from the moment he arrived, a refugee from Hitler\u2019s Germany, in 1935. One morning I found myself addressing hundreds of high school students in a semi-rural \u201ccolonia.\u201d When the assembly ended, the stage was occupied by the school chorus. They were eager to sing for me. They chose\u201d The Star-Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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