As you regular readers already know, my “Peter versus the Wolf” is being done in Nuremberg this Sunday. How exciting. As best I can tell, it is pretty much sold out! only odds and ends seats left. I love it.
Anyway, having shepherded this piece through its many hundreds of performances around the world over the past 25 (gasp) years, there is one aspect of it that has always vexed me somewhat.
There are several orchestras that, once they discover my work, they do it over and over again. These are, of course, my favorite clients. But then . .. there are many other orchestras that have only done it once. In the latter case, it’s not because they didn’t have a good experience with the show. Quite the contrary. But some presenters have a “Dixie cup” approach to family concert programs. They do it once and never do it again.
This issue came to a head for me last month when the folks down in Punta Gorda, Florida were doing it. Their conductor, Francis Wada, is one of my best customers and has been doing the show all over the place for years. But as they were selling tickets to the weekend “family matinée” (they also do it annually for every fourth-grader in the city), someone said, “well, I saw the show last year, so why should I come back and see it again this year?”
Okay, granted, this is a perfectly rational and logical question. But then one should ask, why do people go to see the Nutcracker ballet every year? Why do I go to see the Coliseum every time I go to Rome? This question was answered for me by a dance friend. There is an annual dance event that is a weekend of mostly classroom lecture by a guy named Mario Robau. This friend of mine was going back for something like the fifth time for the exact same program. When I asked him why he kept going back again and again, he replied, “because I get something new out of it every time.”
And that really is at the heart of all this discussion here. Major symphony orchestras play symphonies by Brahms and Beethoven over and over again, and people are perfectly fine sitting through them a second time, or even an 80th time. But at the same time, our culture is awash in shallow one-trick, one-idea, sitcom-esque media of books, TV shows, songs, and movies that are designed to be seen once and never watched again. And I worry that we are conditioning a great many people to think that everything can be completely comprehended and understood with one viewing.
I am not trying to put “Peter versus the Wolf” in the same category as a Brahms Symphony. However, there are many subtle little layers to it, and the only way to really “appreciate” (that is to say, consume) all that the piece has to offer requires more than one pass.
And even if one were to classify it as a superficial bit of low comedy, the typical target age range, of 9, 10, and 11, has a complete and total flush-out/turn over every three years. So why some symphonic programmers choose to always do “the latest thing” as opposed to repeating something that works . . . well, to each their own.
© Justin Locke
