Does the pursuit of comfort explain, in part, why concert music has such a small audience?
We do have an image problem, at the very least. People do not like unfamiliar things in general. I went to a Dawn Upshaw concert in Jordan Hall and she came out for her encore and said, “Now I would like to sing a song by Schoenberg,” and the audience gasped. It was almost as if she said, “Now I’m going to electrocute your seats” or “Now I’m going to release poisonous gas into the auditorium.” What is that conditioning? It’s very deep. No one ever died from hearing an atonal piece, or even had a heart attack from it, as far as I know. The importance of hearing this music is that ears need to be broad and need to have broad experience. So the public really needs to embrace these opportunities of challenging music . . . deal with it and love it for what it is. What is your opinion of the status of concert music today? You know, our profession doesn’t fit the People magazine idea of a sensible career. One of the people who interviewed me about Gatsby said, “Aren’t you really surprised tha
