May 3–10, 2001

music

Access: Orchestra

Mad About Mahler

Philadelphia Orchestra Access Concert, guest conductor David Alan Miller, April 24, Academy of Music.

by Andrew Ervin

If the goal of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s series of Access Concerts is, as they say, to bridge the gap between the audience and the performers, the Mad About Mahler program Tuesday was an unqualified success. Guest conductor David Alan Miller, Music Director of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, charmed the crowd with a lecture on the great Bohemian composer while the Orchestra wowed them with musical samples of his work.

Miller engaged the audience from the onset, offering a little history of Mahler’s life and explaining how different motifs developed through the course of his Symphony No. 1. He even taught the crowd to sing along, in German no less.

The Access format speaks to a large problem, one that few orchestras or conductors have been able to satisfactorily address: How to get people into the concert hall in the first place. Some nights, you can’t give the tickets away in front of the Music Academy — believe me, I’ve tried.

There’s more competition for the entertainment dollar now than when the symphonic format had its heyday shortly before Mahler’s time. Fairly or not, the Philadelphia Orchestra faces the public perception that taking a family to the Academy isn’t going to be a whole lot cheaper than catching a game at the Vet, and the chances of catching a foul ball are dramatically slimmer.

Also, it’s worth noting that the attempt to understand Mahler’s majestic body of work on the basis of the first movement of his first symphony is akin to judging the entire Beatles catalogue on the chord changes of "Love Me Do." But any program that promotes the appreciation of the classical repertoire and informs as much as it entertains deserves a world of credit.

If you’ve been putting it off, just go hear the Philadelphia Orchestra for yourself. Wait for the next Access Concert in the fall if you must or stop in the Mann this summer, but go.