Is anyone writing decent symphonies today?
If they were, would the symphony program them?
Will anyone ever write a “symphony” again? The sort that orchestras around the country or the world perform with reverence and gusto? It’s unlikely.
The classical music system just doesn’t work that way anymore.
Our case study: Friday’s Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra concert. The program featured music by Liszt, a 19th century rock star pianist (he had groupies and everything) and a flimsy composer; Prokofiev, a genuine talent with an ear for creative melody and orchestration, and Nancy Galbraith, a modern composer working right here in the Steel City.
I find Liszt’s music flashy and lacking in substance, generally — though the pianist for his Concerto No. 2, the young French soloist Alexandre Kantorow, played with sophistication and fit his sound to the orchestra like a glove. There are better works more suited to his talent.
Credit where it’s due, however. At Friday’s concert, Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” was the clear highlight. The piece was originally a ballet, but it’s often performed in concert halls without dancers. In the classical world, terms like “masterpiece” are thrown around in marketing and conversation more often than dice at a craps table. What does “masterpiece” actually mean? The Prokofiev, which certainly qualifies, walks a knife’s edge between descriptive and abstract with utter precision. It’s a piece that captures some of the fierce highs and lows of Shakespeare’s most famous play while managing to add a sense of flair and style. In this work, the brass sneer and snarl with a special kind of charisma. It’s quitecompelling.
The orchestra, led by music director Manfred Honeck,was thrilling, animated, even vehement. (Plus, student actors from the Westinghouse Arts Academy read Shakespeare’s texts to orient listeners. Not a bad idea in concept, but I’d have preferred a level of acting more equal to the orchestra’splaying …)
Back to the question of modern symphonies: the evening opened with a piece called “Tormenta del Sur” (“Stormof the South”) by Ms. Galbraith. The piece set up a groovein low strings and low brass and built to a succession of dramatic climaxes in waves. There weren’t long melodies in the same way as in the Prokofiev, but more cellular motifs that passed from instrument to instrument. This was a lovely 10minutework.
There’s a pattern with pieces by living composers. Typically, when the symphony performs a new piece, it’s a short work or a 20ish minuteconcerto spotlighting aninstrument or two.
“People like familiarity,” Ms. Galbraith told me before the concert. “Maybe they’re afraid to take a chance on commissioning a longer piece.”
Her point is well taken. The symphony has its work cut out drawing audiences to even famous symphonies by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky; average attendance in the fall was less than half of house capacity. A brand new, untested, and more expansive work without composer recognition would be even more difficult.
Plus: “concert music,” “contemporary classical music,” or whatever term fits modern orchestral composition, is still searching for quality. Modern compositional style has largely abandoned historical melodic and formal stylings of classical music in the canon for decades, at times in pursuit of newness for its own sake. In general, no modern composers are writing symphonic music that holds together in the same way that the canonic greats like Prokofiev or Dvorak or Shostakovich did, even if orchestras were eager to program such longernew works. (They aren’t.)
I’ve noted a slow return to melody in new music concert halls around the country.
“You’re not crazy. I hear it too,” said Ms. Galbraith, who is also the head of the composition department at Carnegie Mellon University.
A return to some traditional formalism would also be welcome. It’s an ingredient that helps largescale works hold together and hold interest.
I enjoy Prokofiev’s “Romeo and Juliet” at least as much as I disdain Liszt’s 2nd concerto. But I look forward to discussing new large-scale symphonic worksas well again one day.