Saving classical music

Although expectations were high for the RTO’s New York debut, nothing could have prepared the orchestra for the warmth and ebullience of the reception from a packed Town Hall on April 1. After more standing ovations than accorded Gordon Brown by Congress last month, the musicians were quite overcome and it took all their resolve not to play an encore (that and the fact that their repertoire had been completely exhausted).
A music critic wrote recently that the distinction between art’s essential autonomy and the power of communal solidarity melts away in some orchestras. He was referring to the Simon Bolivar youth orchestra under Gustavo Dudamel, but he could just as easily have been talking about the RTO under Sir Richard.
Was not the core of the experience last Wednesday night, as in the Greece of Aeschylus’s time, the sense of communion it engendered rather than the artwork itself? Was not the distinction between high and low art, popular and classical, middle or working class completely irrelevant?
Perhaps these are questions best pondered in a forum far removed from the RTO website!
For now the Scottish-based musicians are justifiably basking in their phenomenal achievement and pausing to reflect on their next move, which for most will be back home to Edinburgh.
When they touch down they can look forward to a rapturous welcome from a nation grateful for the impact they have made on music and for their quiet cultural diplomacy with the United States, laying the foundations for the presidential trip to Britain.
Of course the non-appearance of either of the Obamas or Hillary Clinton at the Town Hall (all three had travelled to London that week as part of a Homecoming tour which unfortunately did not include Scotland) was a disappointment.
As was the RTO’s failure to make it into this year’s Top Ten Orchestras Which Have Changed the World.
It has been said that all bands are made up of three types of players: the ones who ‘do it’, the passengers, and the wreckers. Well, we all know which type fills the ranks of the RTO! But on April 1 no one who was there can deny that they all ‘did it’.
The idea that the RTO could save classical music is not now so implausible. ‘They raise it up, by reminding us of the old Enlightenment dream – that underneath all our quarrels and differences, we are essentially one human kind, which a single music can speak to. At the same time, they bring it firmly down to earth.’
That was actually written about the Simon Boliver orchestra, not the RTO – hard to believe because somehow it fits so perfectly.
To paraphrase Alexander McCall Smith, the RTO makes everything possible – if musicians of this ability can be successful, just imagine: painters will no longer require a facility with paint and bankers will not be expected to add up.
Bravo RTO!