Greg Stepanich

Oral program notes call on other another art

As I noted in passing the other day, it's rare to attend a classical music concert these days without hearing an oral program note. I pretty much expect the performers to come out on stage, get the welcoming applause, and then wait as one of them steps out to say a few words to the audience.

I think this is basically a good thing, in that it does give you some more insight into the pieces you're going to hear, and with the generally recognized decline in music education in the public schools, it's more important than it used to be. Time was, it seems, that the audience would come to the concert with a body of historical and concert knowledge it had gained on its own, and the performers were offering another interpretation.

These days, though, almost everything is a new work for some portion of the audience, and concert presenters have recognized this.

But there is a small difficulty. The art of presenting the spoken word is different than that of music, and someone who can beautifully sail through the intricacies of a forest of 32nd notes might find himself or herself tongue-tied by a couple of simple sentences. On the other hand, some people have a natural rapport with audiences, an ability that makes people on both sides of the stage feel comfortable.

We're probably at the point at which concert organizers and presenters have to think carefully about who is going to do the talking when it comes time to address the audience. And that's a matter of theater more than it is of music.

The most successful concerts will be done by those who can combine the two in a seamless presentation.

A performance of say, the Piano Concerto No. 17 of Mozart by a brilliant young pianist who brings revelation to those venerable notes would of course be worth applauding. But what if the oral presenters on that same program mumbled and fidgeted? What if they told a long, boring story about how the piece came to be written that no one found interesting except themselves?

Would the concert be a success? The Mozart, yes, but the whole concert? I doubt any critic or audience member would fail to mention the blemish on the concert caused by the inept spoken presentation, regardless of how little of the actual concert was occupied by the chatter.

We lost something when we lost the generally educated audience of a generation or so ago, and the new reality is that classical music presenters are going to be spending more time on extramusical considerations in order to get audiences into their shows.

Again, the victorious concert organizers of the future will be those who understand how to use all the arts to bring the focus in on just one. Those concerts will be somewhat different than the ones we're used to, but I don't doubt that the music at the best of them will live in the same lofty regions they currently do.