ONE-SHOT WONDERS

posted by James Reel

    Riffing on Allan Kozinn’s New York Times article on orchestras’ inability to rush hot new music onto their schedules, Greg Sandow's August 16 post makes this important point:

[Forget] the outmoded notion that where new music is concerned, only premieres are important. Audiences and composers don't think that way. There is no real prestige in giving the premiere of a work that no one else plays, and there is no loss of prestige in giving the second, third or fourth performance of a worthy new score.

    I’m the vice president of the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music, which every season commissions substantial new works (not five-minute concert-opening trivia). After one of our premieres, I asked a member of the ensemble for which the work was written where else they’d be playing the piece in the coming months, now that they’d gone to the trouble to learn it. She paused, then said, “Oh. That would’ve been a good idea, wouldn’t it?”