Two views of the YouTube Orchestra

Two views of the YouTube Orchestra

Posted on April 17th, 2009 by Christopher Guerin

Two reviews of the much-ballyhooed YouTube Orchestra performance at Carnegie Hall last week were an instructive contrast in how symphony orchestra concerts are viewed these days. Washington Post critic Anne Midgette saw the event as a misguided attempt to present classical music in a democratic fashion at the expense of artistic quality. The New York Times‘ Anthony Tommasini caught the real spirit of the event and understood it for what it was, an attempt to bring musicians from all over the world together to make music in the context of a larger community. (Quite rightly, he downplays the underlying public relations motivation of the sponsor.) For him, and for me, it was all about the event, and not about the perfection of performance.

I’ve witnessed this conflict — between “artistic quality at all cost” and “music as an expression of and experience of community” — in many ways over the years. It was exemplified in the faked performance of Itzhak Perlamn and Yo Yo Ma, who lip-synced a number during January’s Inaugural Celebration to ensure artistic perfection, when what was called for was a genuine expression of human feeling and connection, whatever small imperfections might arise because of the cold weather.

There are a lot of reasons why an orchestra in Fort Wayne or Savannah or Eugene won’t and cannot play as well as orchestras in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. The main reason is money, of course, something that musicians in particular find hard to come to terms with. But, I ask, who cares? I’ve heard performances by the Eugene, Fort Wayne, San Francisco, and Chicago orchestras that have all brought me to tears. It wasn’t because of perfection, but conviction. I was moved because I felt the players themselves being moved by the music and the collective effort to express it.

A symphony orchestra, ultimately, is not about art, it’s about community. The Savannah Symphony exists because its community wants it enough to pay for it — ticket sales certainly won’t. And when a Savannah audience hears it perform, they are as active participants as the performers themselves. The fact that the performance is live, real, human, and the best those particular musicians can do, is immeasurably more important than the relative nature of its artistic quality.

Anyone who was disappointed that the YouTube Orchestra — 96 musicians who’d never met each other before and had only two days to rehearse together — didn’t play to perfection just plain missed the meaning, the heart and soul of what went on in the room. I don’t know if it would have moved me to tears, but I’ll bet my spine would have tingled more than once. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.

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Christopher Guerin

Christopher Guerin is the author of two books each of poetry and short fiction, a novel, and more than a dozen children’s books. If he hadn’t spent 26 years as an arts administrator, including 20 years as President of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, perhaps he’d have worked a little harder getting them published. His consolation resides in his fiction and poems having been published in numerous small magazines, including Rosebud, AURA, Williams and Mary Review, Midwest Quarterly, Wittenberg Review, RE: Artes Liberales, DEROS, Wind, and Wind less Orchard. His blog, Zealotry of Guerin, features his fiction and poetry, including his sonnet sequence of poems after paintings, “Brushwork." He is the V.P. of Corporate Communications at Sweetwater Sound, Inc., the national music instrument retailer.