From the Press:

1 March 2000

DAILY NEWS

Re-assess the audience, says Minsky

One of the many casualties of the National Symphony Orchestra's demise last month was the Israeli conductor Meir Minsky, whose projected six-week visit to this country was curtailed 24-hours before his departure from Europe for Johannesburg.

Based in Brussels, Minsky is in Durban on what would have been the second leg of his South African tour for three concerts with the KZN Philharmonic.

He has a number of pertinent observations regarding the climate for the survival of orchestras and the role communities around the world might play in safeguarding this survival - and that of classical musicians in general.

Minsky regards State funding for orchestras as a proverbially precarious concept.

Politicians have their eyes on what they perceive to be their constituents' needs and on how to keep their votes. There is always a degree of altruism in the scenario.

In the daily struggle for survival, Minsky sees contemporary society here, as in Eastern Europe, as undervaluing its art to the degree that it is losing touch with it, and allowing it to become dispensable.

"The result is, we sit back and watch an orchestra dissolve. The damage goes far beyond facing the possible difficulty of retrieving players later who have disbanded. The whole is more than the sum of the parts," he says.

"An orchestra builds up its own characteristic sound over many years of playing together. Reassembling players means you start from scratch."

Minsky suggests the solution lies in audiences re-assessing themselves.

"Great music is not a luxury It is an essential element in our lives. Live music-making is a unique happening, which binds the performer and the listener in a state of unity. The one depends on the other for the event to become whole. Together we share an experience, which can never be repeated.

"Mozart, Brahms, Penderecski - each creates his own vision of the universe. Each offers a distilled, wholly individual state of expression. Concert-goers should engage actively in this experience, by trying to feel the music as fully as possible. The rewards will never stop growing."

Does he see the current "cross-over" trend with popular music as a solution to winning new audiences for the classical genre? "Yes and no. Classical music is not a quick fix. It is about communicating with each other on a far more subtle level. The goals may not be as immediate, as palpable, as scoring in football, but they are just as real."

The man speaks from experience.

He has more than 450 major works in his repertoire and has maintained guest relationships with close-on 100 orchestras over the past two decades.

As an observer at a concert given by the KZN Philharmonic at Menzi High School in Umlazi last week, Minsky openly admits he was moved to tears by the intense excitement, curiosity and participation shown by the pupils, as much as by the seriousness with which the orchestra approached the job.

Light on the horizon, if ever there was.

The last of Minsky's three Durban concerts is at The Playhouse Opera tomorrow at 730pm. Entitled Scaling the Heights, this World Symphony Series 2000 event features Mussorgsky's Night on a Bare Mountain, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No .1 (with Russian virtuoso margarita Shevchenko as soloist) and the Symphony No 5 by Shostakovich.

William Charlton-Perkins