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In contrast to how I wrote here for years, with themed series and a weekend series focused on chamber music, etc. etc., I’m doing something in many ways much simpler over on Substack but at the same time more exciting and rewarding.

TL;DR- I’m writing about music in the context of concert programs every two weeks on my Substack, featuring standards and crowd pleasers alongside obscure works to make for what should easily be programmable concerts.

My delusional aspirations on whatever impact I may leave on the classical music world is to hopefully draw some more attention to underperformed works or encourage music directors or someone to perform some of these works. I would love to have a hand in the Taiwan premieres of pieces that I love, etc.

So then as an exercise in programming and how some of these favorite works of mine could fit into concert programs that shouldn’t be too challenging, I decided I would shift to this format for my writing. Why?

Well, what are the criteria for a concert program?

• Format- All of these are somewhat intertwined and affect one another, but generally speaking, there are two halves of a program with an intermission in the middle. Those halves don’t have to be equal, and almost never are. If anything, I’d say the second half is often more substantial. I’ve seen it more and more lately that the concerto work (piece with a featured soloist) comes on the second half of the program, but in my experience, it’s more traditional to have the concerto before the intermission. The anchor piece on the program could be the big concerto on the first half, or perhaps it’s the symphony on the second half.
• Length- Given that the intermission is usually 20 minutes, and that a concert program shouldn’t really be any longer than a couple of hours, it puts some limits on what can be programmed. If we eliminate the intermission, total playtime for just the music should probably be under 90 minutes. Once you add the 20 minute intermission, and walk-on/off time before and after the concert and between pieces, curtain calls, etc., which could easily be another 15 minutes, you’re up to over 2 hours for the evening. Concerts here begin at 19:30, so you’re talking a 21:30 finish without even considering any encores (of which I am NOT a fan anyway), meaning that anything longer than that 90 minutes of playing time starts to make for quite a long evening. Format and length go hand in hand. If you have one long piece and a short piece on either side, you obviously can’t break the big piece into two halves, so it has to fall on either half of the program, meaning you’ll end up with a very long and a very short portion of the evening. For a huge piece like Mahler’s longer symphonies, it’ll be the only piece on the program OR have a very short piece that leads into the Mahler with no pause, or at least without an intermission. This is what happened recently when I saw Mahler’s third: a world premiere of an atmospheric, sound-effecty, textural piece by a local composer that lasted a couple minutes and was totally incongruous with the Mahler, but made it on the program before the enormity of his third. Big pieces can be unwieldy on a program if they’re not just on their own.
• Content- Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) had as their season opener a few years ago a concert of Mozart’s last three symphonies: 39 and 40 on the first half, and 41 on the second. These three pieces are arguably intended as a set anyway, so that works, as we’ll discuss below with logic and narrative, but from a more logistic standpoint, you generally wouldn’t do things like have two concertos for different soloists on the same program. You often wouldn’t call for a bunch of different forces, like different kinds of choruses or something for different pieces, because that’s logistically difficult and more complicated and can overwhelm the audience. Now more about that.
• Logic- Are there logical or historical connections between the pieces we’re programming? Why are these pieces being put together? What connection do they have? Is there at least one crowd-pleaser on the program? Seats do have to be filled but programming still needs to be inspired and inventive.
• Narrative- What’s the trajectory of the program? What balance is struck between something that is challenging and unfamiliar and something that is approachable and pleasing? Think of it like planning a meal or telling a story: what’s the cohesion overall? What does it say to pair Haydn either with Prokofiev or with Schoenberg, and what point does the contrast make, what light does each piece cast the other(s) in?

So yeah, in addition to like, why is Beethoven or Brahms on every program for three consecutive months or something, there’s a lot that goes into a good program, much of which is subjective, but you want creativity, diversity, some familiarity, all of that stuff.

But all of that is to say that I’m doing a new concert program every two weeks in which I try to feature something familiar and crowd pleasing alongside something that fits all the criteria above that is new or different or underperformed, etc.

It’s my example of It can be done rather than constantly programming nothing but Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn and Chopin over and over for entire seasons. I feel any of these sets could absolutely stand as a program that would please and/or inform and/or surprise crowds.

So yes, please do go check out my Substack. My concert programs are listed here and the list will be updated with each new installment. They include Spotify playlists and everything. I hope you will read and enjoy and perhaps even subscribe. Thank you.