Choosing concert programmes revisited

Last year I wrote a blog post on the issues involved in choosing concert programmes for amateur orchestras. I'm now involved in advising and helping choose programmes for both the orchestras I'm a member of.

The process this summer of working out the programmes for the Amati Orchestra was interesting, and I think it is a good example of amateur orchestra programming done right. The programme went through a number of drafts and I think it is worthwhile to describe how we worked at it.

The players had been canvassed for their ideas and we used as many of them as were practicable. As it is still a fairly new orchestra, they have a policy for the time being to play only out-of-copyright music in order to economise on music hire fees. That's OK, there's lots of good, popular, playing music that is out of copyright, easily enough to fill three concerts!

I had had discussions over a drink after rehearsals with the conductor on my philosophy of choosing programmes, that there are a number of things a good concert programme for an amateur orchestra must contain.

• In order to bring in the audience, it must contain at least one disgustingly popular piece, or at least a piece by a disgustingly popular composer which the audience might mistake for the disgustingly popular piece they know.
• In order to maintain the interest of the players, most of the programme has to be enjoyable to rehearse.
• We can have an obscure or experimental piece in a programme, so long as the majority of the pieces are more mainstream.
• If there is going to be a concerto in the programme, there have to be some good tunes in the purely orchestral pieces.
• We need to avoid as far as possible a programme which requires extra players (e.g. additional wind, harps or percussion) for only one piece, especially one of the shorter pieces. So there is a need to check the instrumentation of the pieces to see that there aren't any serious mismatches.
• The programme needs to be hard enough to stretch the players but not so hard that they despair of getting the pieces to concert standard in time.

Our conductor had no problem in agreeing with all of this. His first draft for our 2013-14 programme was sent out by email to the committee and a few selected senior players, with an invitation for comments. The whole process was managed by email over a week or so.

This was the first draft.

Autumn
Strauss: Overture Die Fledermaus
Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite No. 2
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Elgar: Enigma Variations

Spring
Weber: Oberon Overture
Delius: In a Summer Garden
Smetana: Sarka from Ma Vlast
Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 1

Summer
Mussorgsky: Night on Bare Mountain
Dvorak: Cello Concerto
Berlioz: Sinfonie Fantastique

The conductor is keen to do some Rachmaninov this season, Rachmaninov comes out of copyright in Europe at the end of 2013. I think he would have preferred to put in the 2nd symphony (which is better known) rather than the 1st, but I had warned him that the 2nd symphony has the cellos divisi into four parts at one point, and we needed to ensure that we had a larger cello section before we could do it justice.

Overall I felt that this was a pretty good programme. We have a good soloist lined up to play the Dvorak Cello Concerto. My main concern (shared with others) was that Sinfonie Fantastique is a bit hard and requires too many extra instruments. It needs 4 bassoons(!). The clarinets both need to have a C clarinet and the 1st would also need an Eb clarinet - absolutely vital for the Witches' Sabbath, the solo simply can't be played transposed on a Bb clarinet. We would need 2 tubas, 2 harps, 2 sets of timpani and lots of other percussion with at least 4 percussionists. At one point in In The Countryside there are 4 timpani rolls going on at the same time. Hiring in the extra players and instruments might be a bit expensive.

The conductor regretfully decided that these concerns were valid, so there was some discussion as to what to put in its place. Pictures at an Exhibition was proposed but discarded as being too difficult for the time being. Then there was a suggestion that the summer concert should be a programme of summery music, particularly (though not necessarily exclusively) concerning an English summer. This idea was greeted with enthusiasm.

This led to the conductor's 2nd draft.

Autumn
Strauss: Overture Die Fledermaus
Smetana: Sarka from Ma Vlast
Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Dvorak: Symphony No. 9 “From the New World”

Spring
Weber: Oberon Overture
Dvorak: Cello Concerto
Rachmaninov: Symphony No. 1

Summer
Elgar: Cockaigne Overture
Delius: In a Summer Garden
Butterworth: Banks of Green Willow
Butterworth: Shropshire Lad
Debussy: Prelude a l’apres midi d’un faune
Elgar: Enigma Variations

That looked to be a great improvement. The autumn concert contains two big popular pieces. The spring concert has the Rachmaninov as something very enjoyable to rehearse alongside the concerto.

My only concern was with the summer concert. I've played  Cockaigne,  Prelude a l’apres midi d’un faune and Enigma before, and I know that all three pieces are pretty difficult. Although Enigma is programmed as a symphony, in fact it is a series of fairly short movements and so there is much less repetition and recapitulation than in most symphonies, so it will take up more rehearsal time in proportion to its length. Cockaigne is just plain hard, and the Debussy is rhythmically very complex and intricate. I felt that this was one difficult piece too many, and so I suggested dropping Cockaigne and inserting Nielsen's Overture Helios instead. The overture represents a Greek summer's day from sunrise to sunset. It's not as hard, but is rewarding to play, and is about the same length as Cockaigne. (It also happens to have a very striking horn quartet at the start, which is a factor which didn't influence me at all. Of course not! Who could possibly think such a thing?)

And that is what we finally agreed on. Every concert has at least one piece that audiences are likely to recognise and look forward to hearing. There are some great tunes there for everybody to play, and we have calibrated the overall difficulty so that we can do all the pieces justice.

I think that is an excellent outcome, and I'm looking forward to the new season. As it happens, I've played most of the pieces before, but I don't mind that. I've played so much of the repertoire that it's very rare for me to play a concert where I haven't played at least half the pieces before.