Florida Orchestra: Shaking up the season's rosters
Amid schedule changes and rough finances, the Florida Orchestra's musical lineup banks on tried and true winners.
By JOHN FLEMING
Published February 22, 2004
Pianist Kirill Gerstein will be featured in Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3, Jan. 22-24.
The Florida Orchestra had a close eye on the bottom line when putting together its 2004-05 masterworks season, says music director Stefan Sanderling.
"We have to balance the artistic side of it and the financial aspect of it," Sanderling said. "We have to make sure that every single program is a financial success. Our situation is very dangerous at the moment."
One people pleaser: A Rachmaninoff minifestival, with three programs featuring three Russian pianists in the composer's four piano concertos plus his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a lineup that includes some of the most oft-played works in the orchestral repertoire.
"I have to say that I love Rachmaninoff's music a lot," Sanderling said. "I try to put aside that it's very popular, but what is wrong with popular music if it's good music?"
The Rachmaninoff programs, complemented by works of Ravel, exemplify the orchestra's need to cultivate the box office at a time when it is struggling to survive. This season, musicians had to endure a 16 percent pay cut to keep the music playing.
So favorites such as the Grieg Piano Concerto (with Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen), plenty of Mozart and a suite from Swan Lake dominate the programming.
But the fare is not all warhorses. Sanderling, in his second season as music director, will conduct 10 of the 14 programs, which include such provocative works as Shostakovich's Eighth Symphony, Bruckner's Seventh Symphony and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast. Former music director Jahja Ling will return for two programs, including Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony. Richard Zielinski will conduct the orchestra and Master Chorale in Bach's B-minor Mass.
Premier violinist Pinchas Zukerman will be featured in a special nonsubscription Beethoven program.
The newest work on the agenda is Shulamit Ran's Vessels of Courage and Hope, which Sanderling and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra debuted in 1998.
The cautious approach stems, in part, from a significant change coming in Tampa, where subscribers have dwindled with the orchestra's inability to secure consistent dates in Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center's Morsani Hall.
Friday nights at the orchestra in Tampa will end, as the masterworks series switches to Monday nights. The move guarantees the orchestra will play in Morsani, rather than in the smaller, acoustically inadequate Ferguson Hall.
"The acoustic differences between Ferguson and Morsani are quite enormous," Sanderling said last week. "And in Ferguson Hall we have only 900 seats, and we have more subscribers in Tampa than 900. So we had to make this decision and just hope that people follow us."
With big moneymakers like The Lion King and The Phantom of the Opera, the Broadway series has become the priority at Morsani, which seats 2,500.
Although Broadway tours don't perform on Mondays, there still are two Mondays in 2004-05 when the orchestra can't get into the bigger hall, so only 12 of the 14 masterworks programs will be played there. Rather than play in Ferguson, the other two programs will be offered to Tampa subscribers at either Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater or Mahaffey Theater in St. Petersburg.
The switch to Monday nights has risk. Although concerts will start at 7:30 p.m. to make it an earlier evening for working people, Mondays traditionally aren't a big night out for those facing a full work week ahead. Of the orchestra's three venues, TBPAC generally has the youngest subscriber base.
On the other hand, Mondays are less likely to pose conflicts for people with busy social schedules.
"I'm a little bit nervous about it," Sanderling said. "We might lose some people, but maybe we'll gain some people who would never go Friday. It's terra incognita for us. But we didn't have much choice. We have to try."
The effect of the switch will not be limited to Tampa concerts. Now the opening performance of the masterworks series each week will be Saturday night at St. Petersburg's Mahaffey Theater. The orchestra's weekly rehearsal schedule will change. Booking guest artists and conductors may be affected.
Monday night concerts have worked for some orchestras. The New York Philharmonic and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra have Monday night concerts from time to time. The Seattle Symphony Orchestra played on Monday and Tuesday nights for decades until it got its own concert hall a few years ago.
The 2004-05 lineup includes a pair of potentially bittersweet performances from soloists, both principals in the orchestra. Concertmaster Amy Schwartz Moretti is playing a Mozart concerto, and first flute Demarre McGill is the soloist in John Corigliano's Pied Piper Fantasy.
McGill won an audition for principal flute in the San Diego Symphony and apparently will accept the position in the orchestra where Ling begins as music director next season. Moretti is in the running for concertmaster of the Oregon Symphony.
Other guest artists include Sanderling's younger brother, Michael, a cellist, in what is inevitably billed as "a family affair" for the Shostakovich Second Cello Concerto. Violinist Robert McDuffie will play Bernstein's Serenade. Jon Kimura Parker will be the soloist in Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.
The Florida Orchestra 2004-2005 masterworks season
Oct. 2-4: R. Strauss: Don Juan; Mozart: Piano concerto TBA; R. Strauss: Burleske; Mozart: Symphony No. 41; Stefan Sanderling, conductor; William Wolfram, piano.
Nov. 6-8: Bach: Mass in B minor; Richard Zielinski, conductor; vocal soloists TBA; Master Chorale of Tampa Bay.
Nov. 19-22: Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1; other works TBA; Susan Haig, conductor; Jon Kimura-Parker, piano.
Jan. 22-24: Ravel: Pavane pour une Infante Defunte; Ravel: Daphnis et Chloe, Suite No. 2; Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto No. 3; Stefan Sanderling, conductor; Kirill Gerstein, piano.
