Just a hopefully quick comment here as the blog comes to an end. So many have spoken both here and at the Forum concerning the "stuffiness" of the concert experience and how orchestras are/need to be changing that. Indeed, as Martin, Tom, Greg and Gloria and others point out, the orch is evolving into more than a concert-giving entity anyway, and cheers for that! - and no one could be more convinced than I that musicians and conductor need to be more visibly, intensely involved with both the music and the audience - but taking off from (and clarifying for me) Ed Bilous' caveat at the very end of the forum containing the memorable phrase ". .Hawaiian shirts. ." and how a concert can't expect to imitate a Rock concert experience, I'm thinking just what a symphonic concert IS. . .
And I keep coming up with the word: Magic. (Sorry if that word has odd connotations.) What I mean by it is at the core of what the Symphonic concert has always given me. That particular kind of magic one experiences when opening the pages of a great novel or poetry, what happens when one loses track of time at an art gallery, opera or dance performance, or when climbing a mountain or listening to the sound of a bird - you get what I mean. The Magic can be serious, tragic, kinetic, participatory and/or outrageously funny. (I think our problem with the word "entertainment" is somewhere in its perceived superficiality.) Forget semantics. As long as we keep sight of the power of our art, I don't think we'll go far astray. It also goes as an article of faith with me that we believe in our art enough to keep open to new ideas, new forms, new repertoire. "If we believe it, so will the audience," I always tell my performers.
Of the 14,000-odd concerts that the NYPhilharmonic has given since 1842, I have played one-third of them. I have never lost the feeling that, as the lights go down, something truly Magic is about to happen. And it usually does. I hope to spread just a bit of that feeling before I hang up my bass bow and my pencil.