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Recent Press CHAMBER MUSIC CRESCENDO: February 19, 2004 By Mark Stryker The Chamber Music Society of Detroit turns 60 years old in 2004, but if you were to chart its growth on a graph, the upward spike in the last 10 years would resemble a go-go era of the stock market. The budget has more than doubled to $630,000, subscriptions have reached an all-time high of 630 and every ticket available at the 720-seat Seligman Performing Arts Center in Beverly Hills has been sold for all nine concerts this season. Next week, the society will announce an additional three-concert series for 2004-05, a 33-percent jump in programming. Stiff challenges remain, from an overwhelmingly gray-haired audience to a timid approach to contemporary music that relegates living composers to the margins. But at a time when many arts organizations are struggling, the chamber music society continues to ride a winning streak. "We have come a long way in a short time," says president Lois Beznos. This weekend's Detroit debut by superstar Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky symbolizes the kind of high-profile concerts that have added pizzazz and depth. And the debut of a second concert series next fall puts an exclamation point on the society's current growth spurt. The series also addresses the ironic downside to sold-out houses and a subscriber waiting list: How does the society attract new audiences, especially younger concertgoers, if it has to turn away newcomers at the door? The society has had a rich history, dating back to 1944, when pianist and radio personality Karl Haas, inspired by playing chamber music at home with members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, founded the organization. Until the early '60s, the society typically drew upon top Detroit musicians for concerts. When Zalman (Tiny) Konikow began his long tenure as president in 1969, the society morphed into a leading presenter of the international circuit's big names, such as the Guarneri String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio. By the early '90s, however, subscriptions had dropped to about 400 and attendance at Orchestra Hall hovered as low as 500. In 1978, the society was the first group to move back into Orchestra Hall during its restoration, but when the DSO reclaimed its historic home in 1989, the society lost all of its weekend dates; chamber music on Mondays and Tuesdays was a tough sell. But the issues ran deeper. The arts business had changed radically in the previous two decades in the face of rising costs, economic cycles and an increasingly competitive environment for culture, especially classical music. Small presenters were forced to professionalize their management, marketing, fund-raising and outreach efforts. Yet the Detroit society remained stuck in the past. Konikow, a volunteer president, children's dentist by trade and a man of great charm and charisma, ran the society practically out of his back pocket. If the budget came up short, he'd call on one or two angels, who would pony up an extra $10,000 or so. "Tiny left us a great legacy, but the times had changed from when you could just give a concert and everybody would come," says Beznos. "If we didn't begin to change, we would have died." In 1992 the society began a three-year transition, sharing executive leadership with Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, an ensemble featuring many of the finest Detroit musicians. Grants from local and national foundations allowed the society to re-organize its management, with Maury Okun of the chamber winds serving as executive director for both groups until 1996. Beznos, board chair since 1988, became president in 1995, and when the society and chamber winds went their separate ways a year later, she became the driving force behind the renaissance. She cultivated significant new corporate support, started an education program that sent visiting ensembles into city and suburban schools and spearheaded the society's first endowment drive, raising $200,000. Beznos also pioneered the creation of the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson International Trio Award to promote young piano trios. The biennial award, named for a veteran trio on the international scene, is supported in part by a consortium of 20 leading presenters, each of whom donated $30,000 to create an endowment that will subsidize concerts by the winning ensemble. So far, $850,000 of the $2.3 million goal has been raised. The first winner, the Claremont Trio, makes its society debut next season. "This was all Lois' idea," says pianist Joseph Kalichstein. "It caught on like wildfire. We're very happy to be able to be part of passing on the baton, especially while we're still running." Today, the society boasts three full-time employees, including a development director, who focuses on fund-raising, and two part-time staffers. A public relations firm handles marketing. A turning point came in late 1999, when the society relocated from Orchestra Hall to Seligman, a new auditorium at Detroit Country Day School. The acoustics are competent if uninspired, but the cozy wood-paneled environs are chamber-music friendly and the center put the society back in the business of Saturday night concerts. The Beverly Hills location also brought the concerts closer to the society's audience. "I think the growth has been remarkable," says Ara Zerounian, a retired music teacher who's been attending society concerts since the '50s. "It's been a wonderful progression. The level of presentations is outstanding and the camaraderie of the audience is wonderful. It's like a big family." In recent seasons, star-studded recitals by soprano Jessye Norman and pianists Daniel Barenboim and Krystian Zimerman have added glitter to programming. And the society has gotten its toes back in the water of new music, co-commissioning Charles Wuorinen's String Quartet No. 4 and premiering Gunther Schuller's String Quartet No. 4. Still, the society often remains caught in a time capsule, disconnected from larger ideas or contemporary directions. Only one piece this season has been written since 1976; the last four seasons have included six works by living composers. Compare that with the first nine years in the society's history, when, according to a 1953 account by Free Press music critic J. Dorsey Callaghan, nearly 25 percent of the pieces played were new, including those by Poulenc, Bartok, Martinu, Prokofiev, Villa-Lobos, Bloch, Barber and Milhaud. "If you don't perform the new music of today, you won't have any future music," says composer Gunther Schuller, whose Fourth Quartet was performed the Juilliard String Quartet at Seligman in 2002. "The music of the past at one time was brand new music. Sometimes it wasn't received favorably, but more often than not, such works became the staples of our repertory. A group that does not see the importance of the development of music in the long-term is shortchanging its audiences because then those audiences can never come to grips with new developments." Typically, touring ensembles give presenters a choice of programs. A contemporary piece is almost always included as an option, though the Detroit society's programming committee usually chooses conservative fare. Beznos says that the society's success in rebuilding its audience justifies its programming decisions. She says that core subscribers have said in surveys that they like the current programming mix. "A lot of our success comes from listening to our audiences, and if they leave, we're not securing our future," she says. That brings up another vexing issue -- aging audiences, a problem throughout classical music. A cursory head-count at a typical concert shows a preponderance of patrons in their 50s, 60s and 70s. It's true that chamber music audiences have always skewed older, even more so than symphony audiences. But what happens in 20 years when older generations will have grown up in an era when classical music was neither present in the schools nor part of everyday cultural literacy? Margaret Lioi, CEO of Chamber Music America in New York, recommends several strategies: concerts in non-traditional venues like offices and coffee shops; presenting younger ensembles and marketing them to audiences in their 20s and 30s; and exploring accessible cutting-edge music, including styles linking classical with jazz and world music. The subscription-season model, which arts groups favor because it promotes predictable cash flow, remains a tension point. Young audiences don't commit to season-long subscriptions like their parents; even aging baby boomers increasingly favor single tickets. In the early '90s, the Detroit society did present a couple groups like the Kronos Quartet, a vanguard ensemble with a boomer following. "We got more young people to come, but they didn't subscribe," says Beznos. Given the huge strides the society has made on so many fronts in the last decade, it's certainly too much to expect an answer to the audience riddle immediately. But as so many experts have point out, even the most successful classical music groups can't afford to rest on their laurels because the future is just around the corner. |
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