Thinning Ranks

I almost titled this Thinning the Herd, but that has a few too many connotations of a deliberate cull.  I've been to two recent TSO concerts where the music was quite good but the audience was incredibly thin - probably not even 40% full.  I didn't think the music was all that challenging - Berg's Suite from Lulu and Shostakovich's Cello Concerto 2!  But the powers that be are definitely picking up on this and programming less and less challenging music going forward.  I am incredibly disappointed in the TSO's 2019/2020 season.  They do have Barbara Hannigan coming back through, but only a single date for the one Shostakovich symphony (whereas in previous years this would have been programmed over two nights).  Otherwise it is pretty much all safe chestnuts or pops concerts...   It's not a shock to me that the only Prokofiev symphony is put on by a visiting orchestra. To some extent, you can only work with the audience you have (and quite frankly the lousy weather is probably keeping the increasing elderly audience from coming downtown).  It's not a secret that New York, Chicago and Montreal have a more adventurous audience.  It's not that Toronto audiences don't support the New Music Festivals and the like, though these do largely seem to be attended by music school types (who don't come out nearly as often to the TSO), but that's a relatively focused event, whereas for day-in, day-out attendance, the TSO can apparently only count on Beethoven and Handel's Messiah to bring the crowds in.*

It's a bit more surprising that Soulpepper's upcoming season plays it so incredibly safe.  Streetcar Named Desire?  Really?  And Reza's Art?  I'd say Shepard's Fool for Love is pretty much middle of the road, but it doesn't really matter, as I don't care enough for Sam Shepard to come out.  Pinter's Betrayal is the most interesting of the bunch, but I'll be seeing that at Red Sandcastle in a couple of weeks.  So I will not be dropping by Soulpepper at all in the summer and early fall.  Too bad.  I don't really know if they are playing it so safe because of their aging audience or the new AD is still finding her feet.  While Toronto's cultural scene is much improved since the mid 90s, it still doesn't quite have the gravitational pull of New York or Chicago where there is so much going on that it doesn't really matter if a couple of companies play it safe.  Here it has a much bigger impact.

* I suppose it is at least worth acknowledging that the outgoing musical director, Peter Oundjian, said that it was somewhat intentional to clear the decks for the next musical director and not continue his new music festival or Decades Project (which were more challenging), though even there if you read between the lines, not that many people turned up...