Got hold of a copy of the programme for the Singapore Symphony Orchestra's 2013/2014 Season today, and a very handsome volume indeed it is, running to no fewer than 80 glossy pages. Aesthetically highly pleasing and completely free. But hang on a minute. Isn't somebody, somewhere, somehow paying for all this? And is it really necessary to market the SSO in such a fulsome manner? Probably the answer to that last question is yes, and it's just that I don't understand the economics of all this - in the same way that I can't figure out why it somehow makes money to knock down perfectly reasonable buildings less than thirty years old and build new bigger, uglier ones. After all, it's well known that the planet has limitless resources.
The actual programme for the season looked very conservative to me at first glance, but then it occurred to me that if you've never heard the old war-horses live you'd probably be highly excited at the opportunity to do so, as I was, once upon a time. Anyway, given my extremely poor attendance of the concert hall in recent years it hardly behoves me to make moan, and I really must find a way to attend the Shostakovich 5 and Strauss's Four Last Songs. They're also doing the St John Passion next year, which I've never heard live, but I'm not sure I'm up to Bach played by a twenty-first century symphony orchestra having listened to the Passions almost exclusively on original instruments.
The problem is though that I waste too many opportunities to hear wonderful music performed wonderfully, so I really should take every chance I get.
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