Orchestra needs new scenario for summer

In the inky twilight of the English countryside, a young, well-dressed foursome strolled from the opera house to the edge of the lawn to gaze out on the bluish puffs of sheep dotting the horizon. Just having heard

Falstaff

, this quartet was clearly in a state of great contentment.

Was it the Verdi, or their earlier picnic of wine and summer pudding? As hundreds streamed out of Glyndebourne Opera, the chatter testified that some had come for the singers, others for the score or the conductor. But most, I'd bet, were lured to a great extent by the setting, and the vague sense that Glyndebourne represents a kind of endangered English ideal that doesn't exist much outside Merchant-Ivory films.

This is the point at which you're expecting me to say that nothing can beat Glyndebourne. But in fact, something does beat it, and it's here in Philadelphia's backyard.

It is, of course, Longwood Gardens, the 1,050-acre idyll of conservatories, lily ponds, meadows, and formal gardens 34 miles west of Center City. The orchestra dipped a toe into the venue last summer and found an eager (and affluent) listenership, raising the possibility that the orchestra and Longwood could establish a regular series and a new outdoor summer venue there.

It's no exaggeration to say that we have the seeds of something every bit as breathtaking as Aspen or Vail, Tanglewood or Santa Fe. Apart from the pleasure it would provide listeners in the region, Longwood could be a spectacularly smart solution to the problem of what to do with the orchestra in summer.

The matter is suddenly urgent. What used to seem like a birthright for Philadelphians is in play this season with the orchestra's chaotic behavior. Citing financial pressures, the orchestra first told the Mann Center it would not perform there at all this summer; then it announced a handful of concerts; finally, it and the Mann agreed to a number in the realm of normal, with nine concerts.

No Philadelphia Orchestra visit to Longwood is planned for this summer. The two groups could not find a mutually acceptable date, their spokeswomen said.

But Longwood has tapped into something significant. Pianist Di Wu recently drew 2,100 listeners. With room for only 350 in the ballroom, extra chairs were set up in conservatories for spillover; there, her music was piped through speakers.

Skipping an orchestra concert at Longwood this summer is a terrible waste of momentum. That, plus the fact that public announcements about a curtailed Mann season left many confused about the outcome, should be of deep concern to the orchestra board. Negotiations with the orchestra left the Mann getting out marketing materials later than usual. If attendance is disappointing for the six remaining concerts, which resume Tuesday, orchestra interim president Frank P. Slattery Jr. should not begin the blame game by citing a depressed economy or the decline of classical literacy, but by looking into the mirror.

In fact, during the last decade and a half, the orchestra could not have designed a more surefire method for confusing and dispersing its audience. While physical changes to the Mann Center have been planned and executed, the orchestra repeatedly has failed to engage ticket-buyers.

Like the Glyndebourne crowd, everyone comes to cultural events for a different reason. The orchestra has removed one reason after another, and various constituencies have quietly complied by staying away.

Over the last few years, the orchestra repeatedly has changed its much-used free-lawn-seating policy, leaving patrons wondering from year to year how to get tickets and when. It followed the departure of its personification, artistic director Charles Dutoit, by engaging a series of guests. When Dutoit stopped coming - and was replaced by no one, until, recently, Rossen Milanov - many listeners lost interest.

Milanov has a great smile, but has proven a superficial interpreter. And he is no big name. This year, the star quotient has fallen to an unprecedented level. At the orchestra's August summer home, the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, the blue-chip brands remain: pianists Yefim Bronfman, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, André Watts and Emanuel Ax, violinists Joshua Bell and Gil Shaham, cellist Yo-Yo Ma. At the start of the Mann this season, you could hear students from the Curtis Institute of Music.

For the next six Mann performances, soloists and conductors are respectable, but the roster is hardly stocked with great name recognition. A Herbie Hancock/Lang Lang double bill will probably bring out a big crowd, but that's one concert.

Please understand: This is not about the comparative quality of artists at the Mann and Saratoga. But in an age when audiences are moved by personality and name recognition, Saratoga is aiming for big audiences with big names, while the Mann is going the route of penny-wise and pound-foolish.

All these issues should be on the table when the orchestra and the Mann negotiate a new contract in the fall.

What's going on at the Mann is a perfect slice of what happens so often in Philadelphia. The equation of ambition to payoff is gauged, and, when a less-than-enthusiastic response is sensed, ambitions (expenses) are cranked down a few notches.

SEPTA could afford to run more trains and buses if it had more riders, and more riders would take public transportation more often if SEPTA ran more buses and trains. Bigger audiences would show up at the Mann if more money were spent on artists, repertoire, and marketing. But with audiences down, no one wants to make the investment in aiming high.

With the orchestra in crisis mode - struggling with finances and declining audiences - summers aren't a high priority. But all its problems are related.

Informal summer concerts are a chance to try out young or new conductors, a place where parents can feel more comfortable bringing children (i.e., the future) in a less formal setting, and a tremendous opportunity for orchestra board leaders to entertain potential donors.

Summer is also a time to dress down repertoire with certain works of Rimsky, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Bizet, and Borodin - popular composers who make substantive artistic statements.

Lighter programs are a critical part of a larger programming picture. The Tchaikovsky overture you hear in summer has a relationship with the symphony you can hear during the regular season. Every piece leads somewhere else in the repertoire. Properly presented and packaged, there's no reason why the orchestra can't use summers as a feeder for winters - a marketing strategy with artistic integrity.

The battle for audiences won't be won on just a single front. It will be won by giving the lost listener so many entry points that he or she has no good reason to not buy a ticket.

No motivator, by the way, is more important than any other. The starry cellist vies equally with starry skies for ticket-buyers. The main thing audiences want is the feeling at the end of the evening that their hunches for showing up have been justified, even if they can't say exactly why.