Houston Symphony's classical dilemma

By Eric Doctor     9/24/09 7:00pm

Up through seventh grade, when someone asked me what my favorite kind of music was, I would answer, simply, "classical." I don't think classical music was actually what I enjoyed listening to the most - I think I just had some desire to be different and appear more intellectual than my fellow pre-pubescents. Over the years, however, it has become apparent to me how absurd that answer truly was. "Classical" music, as it is referred to in today's vernacular, encompasses roughly half a millennium's worth of music.

Classical music scholars place pieces into more clearly defined periods within the several-hundred-year span of orchestral arrangement: Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic. Both Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 - which the Houston Symphony performed last Thursday at Passport to Houston's Rice Night - are classified as 19th-century Romantic works.

Even though these pieces are considered relative contemporaries, they were published 58 years apart. For imaginative purposes, it was like seeing Bing Crosby open for Taylor Swift. But could I tell? Not quite.

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I suppose I should say that if this event weren't free and weren't accompanied with free dessert and coffee, I probably wouldn't have gone. The face value of my ticket was $50 - hardly inside of a student's budget. $50 is seven trips to Cheap Date Night at the Angelika, or 52 cups of Ziegenbock at Valhalla. But people will gladly shell out $50 to see Coldplay at the Woodlands Pavilion, or four times that to go to Austin City Limits. Why shouldn't I pay that much to have fantastic seats at a symphony concert, aside from the lack of Chris Martin's cheekbones?

Well, because I would be paying to see a cover band, which is, at its bluntest, exactly what conductor Hans Graf and the Houston Symphony are. I suppose that's what classical music has in common with pop music of the last two decades: The performers aren't writing their own music. But the difference is that people paid to see the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears perform their music, not to see them perform music by Max Martin. When people go to Jones Hall, they're going to see the composers' music, as interpreted by the Houston Symphony.

And by all accounts - my own included - the Houston Symphony is a terrific cover band. Graf led his orchestra with a passion that let the music speak for itself, while still injecting a level of vivacity that connected with the audience. He also showed he can conduct an accompaniment: Pianist Ingrid Fliter's spectacular Chopin concerto was given remarkable room to breathe in front of a full symphony, filling the void with the tenacity Fliter is renowned for.

Throughout the evening, whenever I looked at the program I was constantly reminded of the music's authors. Which, unfortunately, is what prevents classical music from being as accessible as its modern counterpart. In order to fully appreciate classical performance, one needs to understand how it relates to prior interpretations of the piece and the historical context behind it. Not an easy task.

So how do we make classical music more appealing for a younger generation? Rice Night is a great start. By making an "event" out of performances that happen two or three times a week, the Symphony makes their tickets more attractive. If the Houston Symphony could learn from Rice Night and host cheap nights for college students a few times a year, complete with a reception and talk from the conductor and soloist, then maybe they can make subscribers out of some of us 10 years down the line.

Or, failing that, at least bring out the seventh-grade classical-music aficionado in all of us.

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