Lessons for Philadelphia from the Bard Music Festival

Thousands of visitors flock every August to the Hudson Valley in New York for the Bard Summer Music Festival and its concomitant multi-arts festival, Summerscape. While the peaceful river and the verdant hills offer a whiff of the contentment of rustic life, the real draw is the promise of intellectual discovery.

This summer's 22nd Bard Festival focused on the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Yet I noticed little correlation between Sibelius's melancholic moods and the high spirits of Bard's community of scholars, performers and audiences. Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time amidst the multiple mainstage concerts, cabarets, film screenings, opera, critical symposia and numerous ancillary events.

What are the reasons for Bard's extraordinary success? Are there any lessons here for other arts communities, particularly the financially struggling Philadelphia Orchestra? Here are ten applicable lessons from Bard that occur to me.

Lesson 1: Support your local orchestra.

Bardites generously support the Bard Festival, proving conclusively that classical music need not resort to a "Top 40" or Greatest Hits approach to programming. Its sold-out houses and standing ovations attest to the impressive support provided by the Bard community for its great cultural treasure. Can Philadelphians do less for their greatest cultural treasure?

Lesson 2: Make classical music engaging.

Traditional concert programming by most classical music groups places the burden for engagement entirely on the listener. Yet today's contemporary audiences are ever more poorly prepared to engage with the language of classical music and the culture from which it comes. Most students have only remote classroom encounters with classical music, if at all. Ill-prepared music teachers repeatedly fail to make studying classical music an interesting exchange of ideas.

If classical music is to have any chance of reaching youth, there must be a fun factor connected with its teaching. Yet in today's classrooms, choosing sublime music over snappy music is a sure prescription for insipidness.

All the major college music appreciation textbooks dutifully include Henry Purcell's Dido's Lament. Yet wouldn't England's greatest baroque composer be better served to attention-challenged youths by his lively trumpet tunes or bawdy catches? It would be a shame to grow up without the sublimity of the Brahms Fourth Symphony, but wouldn't novices be more likely to be engaged by Brahms's Hungarian Dances, which all of the standard college texts overlook?

Lesson 3: Supersize me!

As I mentioned above, Bard audiences enjoy much more than concerts. The festival atmosphere provides a generalized spirit of celebration. The recent Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts attracted young people to the Kimmel in greater numbers than at any time in memory. More schnitzel and cymbals with the Beethoven, please!

Lesson 4. "What" and "why" trump "who" and "how."

Many audience members at Bard valued innovative programming over interpretive excellence. For them, what was being performed, and why it was significant, was more important than who was performing and how they did it. Indeed, no one I spoke with singled out the soloists as the most compelling factor of their enjoyment, fine though they were. Most of the soloists were not household names (although some Bard regulars, such as Jeremy Denk and Anna Polonsky, are favorite guests on Philadelphia stages.)

It's not that Bard audiences don't appreciate quality performances. It's just that audiences appreciate most Bard's unique opportunities for making intellectual discoveries. Philadelphians' listening pleasure might be deepened by finding new ways to engage with the music itself, rather than hearing familiar pieces repeated one more time.

Lesson 5. Seek out the new and unfamiliar.

To experience the sublime, Edmund Burke observed in the 18th Century, we must suspend our fears of unfamiliar sensations. Today's audiences must attempt to hear beyond their current reference points. They must allow themselves to experience new and unfamiliar music with generous and open minds. A trusting sense of reciprocity between performers and audiences is required to enable us to expand our narrow windows of appreciation.

Lesson 6. The maestro needs to be a great teacher and, uh, there.

Today's maestro must be more than an interpreter. He/she must also be an arts advocate and a community builder. Brilliant scholars and musicians play major roles in every aspect of Bard Festival planning and administration, but the festival is clearly Maestro Leon Botstein's brainchild.

Aside from his long history conducting the American and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestras, Botstein is the former editor of the scholarly journal Musical Quarterly and the author of several books, one of which (Jefferson's Children) engagingly explicates the merits of a liberal arts education. But Botstein excels most scholars as a speaker, displaying a dashing confidence and wit that's reminiscent of the charismatic Leonard Bernstein.

Oh, did I mention that he has been president of two colleges—Franconia, then Bard— continuously since 1970, when he was 23? Needless to add, Botstein's footprint is everywhere at the Bard Festival.

The latest news on the home front is that Maestro Yannick Nézet-Séguin will donate a weekend of concerts to the Philadelphia Orchestra in November. A fine start, especially inasmuch as Yannick has high musical standards and major audience appeal. But this Canadian maestro needs much more contact to become identified with the Philadelphia Orchestra and its community. As a child needs a committed parent, so an orchestra needs ample time with a committed maestro.

Lesson 7. Connect with current issues; demonstrate the pastness of the present.

Botstein often stresses the importance of establishing a sense of context that connects composers with the social, political, aesthetic and religious issues of their times. His commitment to educating audiences was driven home compellingly at every point of the recent festival.

At the leadoff concert, Botstein prefaced his performance of Sibelius's Finlandia with an audience sing-along of the original nationalistic text. Instantly, that hackneyed orchestral showpiece was transformed into an inspiriting cri de coeur. Instantly we all became participants in epic history. We heard the piece with new ears and became freshly engaged in the music's re-recreation.

Every concert has a political agenda, whether the agenda is declared or undeclared. The old fashioned notion of "art for art's sake" is dangerously elitist; what's more, it misreads the animating impulses of most composers. We should expect more communicative thrust than reheated overture-concerto-symphony concert formats provide. It's time to support carefully curated concerts that reach beyond the notes.

Lesson 8. Spread the word.

Bardites talk a lot about Bard. They love the festival, and they bring their friends. From the moment one festival ends, many Bardites eagerly await the next. Philadelphians should all be activists that way. Many classical music devotees are either apathetic or just plain lazy when it comes to sharing their joy of classical music.

A few generations ago, women's committees for the Philadelphia Orchestra provided hugely valuable social networking for the Orchestra. Social mores have changed since women joined the work force in droves. But all the advertising dollars in the world won't replace tell-a-friend activism.

Lesson 9. Brighten up the listening space

The Fisher Performing Arts Center on Bard's upstate New York campus, designed by the inimitable Frank Gehry, is a visual knockout. The silver roof glistens, curvy and vivacious, and adds a contemporary flavor to its pastoral surroundings. The Center's outer façade reflects the adventurism within its walls.

Even with its imperfect acoustics, the Sosnoff Theater at Bard delivers much more sizzle than the sound at Philadelphia's Verizon Hall. Like the Sosnoff, the Kimmel Center is a visual stunner, but its acoustics are much more disappointing. It's time for an overhaul.

Lesson 10. Acknowledge the moral benefits of Classical music; then preach them.

Like many great composers, Sibelius was a troubled soul. Bard's festivals have stressed this point over the years. No matter whether the featured Bard composer was melancholic (Elgar or Sibelius), grandiose and temperamental (Beethoven), tyrannical (Mahler) or racist (Wagner), the Bard spotlight has revealed composers who suffered deeply.

Maybe that's all part of being a great artist. Yet as recently as 40 years ago we were taught that great composers were flawless— or, if they had defects, the flaws went unmentioned. Today, thanks in part to Bard and the scholarship it helps to promote, it's possible to study the composers through unblinkered eyes. And the result: The great composers emerge even more impressive for having worked through their problems and getting on with life.

What better time than the present to open our eyes and ears to learn from the creative masters who surmounted their fears and flaws in music? What better place and vehicle than Philadelphia and its Orchestra?