# John Williams conducting the Cleveland Orchestra



## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

Film music legend John Williams leads Cleveland Orchestra in an enchanting evening of classics at Severance Music Center

Wish I could have attended! Review indicates a great show, wonderful performance. I'll be on the lookout for a video of this concert.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Times they are a-changin! Something like this would NEVER have happened in the days of Szell, and not so likely during the Maazel or Dohnanyi regimes, either. But I say Bravo Cleveland! The next step is to play Star Wats in a regular classical concert alongside Beethoven and Brahms. Classical fans have got to be open-minded an honest: the orchestral music young people grew up with came from the movies; they are far, far more likely to know the music from ET or Star Wars or Jaws than the symphonies of Beethoven, Schumann and Tchaikovsky.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

People who grew up with Jaws, and Star Wars are 60 years old now. If they've had the opportunity to go hear a major orchestra I would hope the experience wasn't wasted listening to Star Wars music. Maybe the orchestra could squeeze in some music from a significant 20th century composer between the Brahms and Beethoven war horses? Nothing against John Williams but I wouldn't pay to see the Cleveland Orchestra perform 70s movie music.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Why not? Isn't a suite from Star Wars every bit as musical, entertaining and worthy as a suite from Peer Gynt? I grew up with Star Wars but it's a multi-generational thing; every one seems to know the original movies and the newer additions. We have to stop thinking of it as only movie music. Good music is good music and frankly the best music written in the past 50 or more years has been for the cinema, not the concert hall. John Mauceri's recent book makes a really good case for adding film music to the repertoire and I'm all for it! Several decades ago the Phoenix Symphony had a young conductor, James Sedares, who was quite prescient in this regard and we got to hear Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein, Franz Waxman, Erich Korngold and other classic film composers right alongside Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. It was a good time to go to concerts!


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

It's just my personal taste and opinion but I think the great orchestras should present the music of the great composers. Instead of programming film music that millions have already heard they could feature works by dozens of the world's great modern composers whose music is mostly restricted to recordings. 

I live in a small city but the orchestra here programs and plays the real thing. Recently they've performed Mahler, Vaughan Williams, Barber, Holst, Stravinsky, etc. Same for our chamber music society. They've brought many of the world's great quartets and other ensembles here to play music of the great composers from Haydn to Carter. I suppose if something was performed from the golden age of Hollywood by Hermann or Korngold it would be okay. But Jurassic Park? I don't want to hear it.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

Sorry, but if I want to hear some movie music, I'll rent or stream the movie. That's preferable to paying much more to listen to the music only as stand-alone material.


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## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

I would love to have attended but the price of tickets on the secondary market was starting at over one thousand dollars when I checked a month or so back.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

starthrower said:


> they could feature works by dozens of the world's great modern composers whose music is mostly restricted to recordings.


And there's the problem. Audiences by and large do not want to hear modern composers and don't think of any of them as great...except John Williams. Audiences in most cities are not willing to try something different. They know what they like and they like what they know. So if you could lure them in with something familiar from the movies, why not? Movies are a 20th c invention and playing music from them is no different than playing incidental music or opera selections from 19th c art forms. We can bicker all day about the quality of some film music (I wouldn't want to hear Jurassic Park either), but if Zubin Mehta's suite from Close Encounters was good enough to record with the LA Philharmonic then let's go for it. Franz Waxman's suite from Prince Valiant is a thrilling tone poem that is every bit as worthy as some of the works of Liszt, Strauss, Dvorak and others.


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

starthrower said:


> It's just my personal taste and opinion but I think the great orchestras should present the music of the great composers


And who defines what "great composers" means? I'd put John Williams in that category.

The gatekeeping in classical music will be the death of it.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Gate keeping? I'm arguing for orchestras to expand the repertoire by featuring more composers. Not pushing them aside in favor of popular film music. The huge volume of 20th century music that rarely gets played live.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

prlj said:


> And who defines what "great composers" means? I'd put John Williams in that category.
> 
> The gatekeeping in classical music will be the death of it.


I feel that the mixing of classical with other genres will kill it indefinitely.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I don't buy the argument that audiences reject all modern composers and don't want to hear the music. Why would record companies record and release all of this music if nobody wanted to listen to it? And I'm speaking of composers from the past 100 years. I do believe audiences want to go hear more than Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn. It just takes a bit of creative programming to please everyone.


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

starthrower said:


> The huge volume of 20th century music that rarely gets played live.


Most of it is quite terrible, if we're going to be honest. 

And why not both? Why must it be one or the other? A typical concert has 70-85 minutes of music. That's plenty of room to mix old and new. That's how we're doing our programming, and our audiences are embracing it.


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

Bulldog said:


> I feel that the mixing of classical with other genres will kill it indefinitely.


Music has mixed with other genres, including folk and popular music, for centuries. It hasn't killed it yet.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Sorry but that is complete bunk. Are you telling me Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Nielsen, Honegger, Ives, Barber, Ligeti, Dutilleux, Berg, and so many others wrote terrible music? You can't be serious.


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

starthrower said:


> Sorry but that is complete bunk. Are you telling me Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich, Nielsen, Honegger, Ives, Barber, Ligeti, Dutilleux, Berg, and so many others wrote terrible music? You can't be serious.


Those guys get played all the time...if that's what you mean by playing 20th century music, then you really don't have an argument. Ligeti and Dutilleux might be lesser known, but all those other dead white men get played VERY frequently. 

But, yeah, there's a LOT of bad 20th century music...you want Stockhausen on a program, or Williams? I'll take the latter every time.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I believe great institutions like the Cleveland orchestra shouldn't have to compete with pops orchestras. And to equate Stockhausen or any other modern composer with "bad" music in general is pretty lazy. Most composers write a lot of music and each piece needs to be considered on its own terms. As far as the better known composers being played all the time I don't think that's accurate. mbhaub mentioned in another thread that hardly any American orchestras paid tribute to even a conservative composer like Vaughan Williams on the occasion of his 150th birthday this year.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

prlj said:


> Those guys get played all the time...if that's what you mean by playing 20th century music, then you really don't have an argument. Ligeti and Dutilleux might be lesser known, but all those other dead white men get played VERY frequently.
> 
> But, yeah, there's a LOT of bad 20th century music...you want Stockhausen on a program, or Williams? I'll take the latter every time.


And I'll take the former. Williams gets no playing time in my home unless I'm watching a movie with music composed by him.


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## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

Interesting enough: you can still buy tickets to go see John Adams conduct the Cleveland Orchestra tomorrow and Saturday night.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

starthrower said:


> I don't buy the argument that audiences reject all modern composers and don't want to hear the music. Why would record companies record and release all of this music if nobody wanted to listen to it? And I'm speaking of composers from the past 100 years. I do believe audiences want to go hear more than Mozart, Beethoven, and Haydn. It just takes a bit of creative programming to please everyone.


It depends to a large extent where you live. There are some places where audiences are more erudite and open-minded. Like Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, Boston and such. And it takes a music director with an iron will to be willing to do something different. But by and large audiences like their Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn. Haydn? I don't know about that. Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff for sure. Anyway...from experience all over the country audiences in general do not like the unfamiliar. One of the saddest experiences I had was years ago in San Francisco - a supposedly enlightened, educated group you'd think. The SFO with Fabio Luisi. First half the Schumann piano concerto. Packed house. After intermission came the glorious and beautiful fourth symphony of Franz Schmidt. Easily a third of the audience left. They had never heard of Schmidt so it was obviously no good and besides, it was modern and they wouldn't waste time on it. Very unfortunate.

I used to play with a remarkable group in Arizona, Musica Nova, which initially had as its mission to play obscure repertoire. We played symphonies by Atterberg, Arnell, Gal, Raff, Parry, Stanford...really cool stuff. Sadly, the audience was often smaller than the orchestra. An orchestra cannot survive without ticket sales. Despite the interesting music, and the quality of the orchestra was very good, by and large people do not want to hear unfamiliar music. It's the same story all over the place.

People on this site are NOT your typical classical audience. We know the repertoire and are interested in music way outside the mainstream. If every classical listener was like us then yes, orchestras could program unusual repertoire. But if you want to sell tickets, forget it.


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