Clearly, this connects with some of the ideas on the 'finding audiences' thread, but am I alone in finding that the baby here is going down the plughole rather quickly with the bathwater? As is so often the case, the individuals being interviewed - and indeed the whole tone of the article - are alarmist and exaggerating. Sure, there may be a "problem" with audience size and economics, and some (if not all) of the ideas cited are good and interesting, but to imply that no-one in the 21st century "gets" Tosca any more is quite frankly nonsense (however different some of the audience perceptions might be, the emotional content of the work hits just as hard a century on). Actually, that's what I find most difficult to accept about this and other similar articles - the implication that not just the symphony orchestra as an entity but the music itself somehow fails to connect with contemporary audiences. If one is full of social guilt it might be difficult to accept that one loves the music one loves (that isn't a typo by the way) but please don't impose your guilt on everyone else! As for welcoming audience participation during performances - sorry, but that would keep me at home with my background noise-free CDs.

That article reads to me as a typical example (which you can read in any so-called intelligent paper on this side of the Atlantic too) of practically nothing whisked up into a froth of pseudo-sensational copy.

"Listen closely to the average symphony orchestra, and you can almost hear it lumbering into extinction." Can you now? What is it that's so different about the way orchestras play now as opposed to say fifty years ago which would give this impression? The first two words state the problem, though not in the way that the writer intends: "listen closely". If you listen closely you don't give a moment's thought to all the "lifestyle" aspects of orchestral concerts mentioned later on. The issue is to encourage people to "listen closely", and all that programming-as-cosmetic-surgery proposed in the article is, I would think, more likely to have the opposite effect.

It may well be that, the way society is and is likely to go on being for the foreseeable future, there's no room for things like symphony orchestras and operas and, rather than papering over the cracks in this inherited culture with what one hopes is a convincing smile on one's face, it might be better to face up to that now and try to address the issues at a far more fundamental level. I find it very hard to believe that "shouting and jumping around" is much of an answer!

He's been to the Last Night of the Proms, then? 

I actually get annoyed at rock concerts when people jump up and down. I'm rather short and unless I'm in the front row I can't see. And as for audience singing... horrible, it ruins bootlegs 



I do think this "post classical" experimentation the article talks about sounds interesting. I'm all for doing things in different ways. (I mean, I've actually see an orchestra on stage with a rock band...  ). Some of the ideas might be fun, some might not... no harm in trying them.

But that doesn't equate to, or even relate to, the death of the orchestra. Why can't you have your post-classical experimentation and your traditional concerts? The answer is (obviously), you can! Again, relating it to my own experience, when a rock band first played with an orchestra it didn't mean the death of rock music. It wasn't better than rock music. It wasn't worse than rock music. It was just... different... and a new genre that could quite happily live beside traditional rock music.

Thirty years ago pundits were saying that progressive rock music was going to disappear, killed off by the new and more "accessible" (low-brow) punk movement. And guess what? Thirty years later we are still flocking to progressive rock concerts in our thousands. Bands, new and old, are still playing the core repertoire from 1973. And some of them are even (gasp) still playing with symphony orchestras 

Although I find it difficult to agree with everything in the article I find it encouraging that people are trying new (to me at least) approaches to programming classical music and I see absolutely no reason why the conventional concert should be the only way that I can hear the works I love.  Das Lied with the juxtaposition described sounds fascinating and would perhaps attract a wider audience to the piece.
As to singing along during the performance, the article's author has apparently never attended an operatic performance in provincial Italy.  Last time I saw Traviata was in Assisi and it was like the humming chorus every time the melodies came round in the prelude.  Many in the audience sang along (reasonably sotto voce) during the arias, at one point there was a particularly fine obbligato from the party of elderly ladies sitting behind me interspersed with ringing mobile phones and occasional discussions about how alike my my friend and I looked.  Glyndebourne it wasn't, but strangely I found none of this behaviour at all irritating and we had a great time.  The audience wasn't all elderly either.  Sometimes I think we are a little too buttoned up in the UK.