Zzzzzzz 2

The other day, Daniel Wolf at Renewable Music had a posting called Too Big to Fail. He starts off with the banks' role in the current economic crisis, and goes on to discuss the dominant role of a few sizable institutions - orchestras and opera companies, mostly - in our musical life. It's an excellent posting, and I hope you'll read the whole thing. But here's the nut graf for what I want to say:

The more egregious effect, however, is on the music itself. A commission for orchestra is rare and an orchestra is a large and expensive institution, and composed as it is of a mass of people with well-practiced working habits, even quite talented people, tends to learn new things slowly, so rehearsal time is precious. Consequently, presenters tend to play safe with the orchestra, the musical institution "too big to fail," and play it safe by choosing composers with track records for playing it safe and working successfully with other orchestras (remember second grade: "plays well with others"? diplomacy is ofen a real substitute for real musical interest). The chosen few composers, in turn, protect their track records by providing just enough novelty ear candy to maintain the aura of the new while fundamentally remaining in the safety zone in terms of both performance difficulty and audience receptivity.

Manyof you might remember the Mostly Mozart Festival of yore, under Gerard Schwarz: lots of Mozart, with ventures into Baroque and other Classical-era repertory. Then along came Louis Langree a few years ago, and suddenly you could find mini-festivals of Magnus Lindberg, daring stagings of rare operas, and so on, along with a revitalization of the orchestra and lots of new guests. Last year's MMF included the American premieres of works by Saariaho and Lindberg; in 2006, I heard the premiere of Lindberg's violin concerto and ninety minutes of his chamber music with ICE.

A few weeks ago I got the MMF's announcement for this year's festival, and I wanted to cry. They're having a back-to-the-roots year, and if I don't cry, I will simply fall asleep. They're focussing on Mozart, Haydn, and Mendelssoh, like everyone else this year. There's a fair amount of Brahms, too. OH GOD PLEASE SPARE US.

The most daring work on the schedule appears to be John Adams's A Flowering Tree. I have already stated rather loudly what I think of it, but consider Adams within the context Daniel Wolf outlines, and you'll see some reasons why I wish MMF had chosen some other recent work to feature. Adams is safe; he is well-known and widely commissioned; hardly anyone will be upset to have one of his big pieces on the schedule.

Is there other 20th or 21st century music to be heard? Well, I see Britten's Serenade for Horn, Tenor, and Strings and Ligeti's Chamber Concerto (on a program with Haydn and Mozart). ICE is doing an all-Adams program.

And that's it: the kind of scheduling that puts me to sleep and gives classical music its reputation for timidity and living in the past. You would have to pay me to attend.