I’ve been given access to the record collection of The Most Interesting Man in the World. He allowed me to sample this one (see photos, click for larger views) and it was amazing. Wonder why we never hear this repertoire in concert.
There’s a lot more where this came from.
classical life 
A few of these french pieces would be a perfect addition to a Pops concert. Except that a Pops concert these days means movie music.
Except for its widely lauded New Music, the LA Philharmonic is surprisingly unadventurous. If it’s not Mahler, the audiences may not come. Then again, is there no conductor like Ansermet today who wants to conduct this off-beat repertoire? Management does a disservice to their patrons by giving its audience the same stuff year after year.
Thank goodness the LA Phil play as much current music as they do. I, for one, could always use less Strauss and Brahms and am thrilled they are playing more Stravinsky and Ravel again. There are probably many who would disagree with me.
As much as many patrons don’t need or want to hear warhorses (even to the point of avoiding them), it certainly is a necessary thing to sell seats over the course of a season, especially with guest conductors.
As for works that were once more popular than they currently are . . . Everyone has their favorites. There are only so many weeks in a season, and if one were to fit this in, you’d have to cut warhorses, new works, or the less-often-heard works the LA Phil actually scheduled.
If you took the LA Phil’s season(s) and replaced the new music w/ relatively obscure older music, it’d look a lot like the Chicago Symphony’s seasons under Muti: lots of off the wall stuff that is 100-ish years old that no one else plays, and almost no new music. I wouldn’t prefer that myself, but if I had do deal with it, I’d hope for more Honegger and less Franck (sorry, Tim).
The phrase that starts with “Except for its widely lauded New Music…” in this comment above is just about as meaningful as saying “Except for its highly praised victories, the team hasn’t won any of their other matches”. Unadventurous compared to what? Surprising in relation to what expectations?
I think what ‘music lover’ means, or at least the way I take it, is that there is a vast amount of good music from the past that just isn’t performed. And that ignored good music from the past is ‘new music’ to the vast majority of listeners, and a new music that they can understand and enjoy right off, since it it couched in the language of the standard repertoire. It’s a shame we don’t hear it.
Having been at this business now for a while, it seems to me that most orchestral seasons are simply the same things over again, just mixed and warmed up one more time. It may not be so bad with the LA Phil (I believe Salonen conducted one of the Faures on the record pictured here as part of the Tristan Project), but it is pretty bad once you get away from the major orchestras.
What I think is an overemphasis on the standard repertoire (Tchaikovsky, Brahms, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto) has the odd effect of emphasizing the performer over the piece. We go to hear Dudamel’s Brahms, or violin X’s Mendelssohn. We no longer listen to the music itself as the foreground event. And this in a day when a good many performers don’t have anything interesting to say about the standard works. It seems to me that it’s an egotistical stance on the part of many performers that they think we want to hear them perform a Brahms symphony, (or, insert your own work here).
Orchestral seasons also give the impression — year after year — of having been programmed for the casual listener, neophyte or beginner. It’s Music 101 a good deal of the time. (Again, maybe not so much with LA Phil…) I’d like to see a season programmed for the connoisseur. It would probably look a lot like Muti’s Chicago program that he performed here. Hey, and the audience liked it!
Gee, thanks Tim. I wish I’d said that. Oh wait. I did. Kind of. But not so good.
My prefatory comment was an attempt to give a compliment before taking on the mantel of a scold. But who likes a scold?
Though it’s merely anecdotal, Salonen conducted the Serenade of Stenhammar a couple years ago and the audience loved it. Me too. An example of that 100 year old off- the- wall stuff that nobody plays. Except in Europe. More Franck and Honegger, please. The audiences have no idea what they’re missing.
Now we can agree on at least one point – Tim said it much better and, in my opinion, much more accurately.