The World Is Ready to Listen: Symphony Orchestras and the Global Performance of America

Abstract

Tough times are facing symphony orchestras these days. In a world of stagnating stocks, dwindling governmental budgets, and reluctant sponsors, trustees and managers struggle to maintain the musical caliber of their communities. Internationally renowned ensembles fight for dear survival. Curiously, at the same time, worldwide the political leverage of symphonies has risen continually during the past decade. Since 1999, Daniel Barenboim has been trying to soothe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the East West Divan Orchestra. In 2003, the Iraqi National Orchestra performed in Washington, DC, hoping to win the hearts of American audiences. In 2007, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez sent the Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra on tour across Europe to spruce up the international image of his country. These are huge political responsibilities on the shoulders of people who have dedicated their lives not to peace and conflict resolution but, say, to a perfect rendition of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. Nor has the strategy of winning hearts and minds with trumpets and percussion been an untainted pedigree of success. In early 2010, the Iranian government dispatched the Teheran Symphony Orchestra to Europe to solicit goodwill with Majid Entezami's Peace and Friendship Symphony. Did this win Teheran the hearts and minds of men? From Strasbourg to Rome, turnout remained conspicuously low. In Geneva, the Iranian consulate distributed free tickets while some three hundred people scattered in grand Victoria Hall, designed for more than a thousand. “At the end,” observed a reporter “protesters took to the stage, announcing (in Persian) that the bouquets of flowers they carried and then gravely laid on the conductor's podium were to honor the recently executed dissidents in Iran.”1