Murray Bramwell talks with Chief Conductor Nicholas Braithwaite and General Manager Michael Elwood about the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, its past, present and, most importantly, its future.

It is the second night of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s Masters Series for May. Austrian pianist Walter Klien is playing a solo section from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat major with fluid elegance while Concertmaster Ladislaw Jasek and his associate Alan Smith beam with comradely encouragement. It is one moment of many in the evening’s programme (works by Australian composer Brian Howard, Mozart and Tchaikovsky) that indicates that the Adelaide Symphony is not only playing its socks off these days, it is also greatly enjoying doing it.

There is much to be pleased about, of course. The appointment of Nicholas Braithwaite-as Chief Conductor has proven to be the best idea anyone has had in years and the orchestra itself has distinguished· itself on every outing all year. It scrubbed up well during the Festival, playing four separate concerts under guest Australians Barry Tuckwell, Brenton Langbein and Mark Elder, as well as Richard Bonynge· for Dame Joan’s mad scenes. Then there were four performances under Stuart Challender of The Fiery Angel with the State Opera.

In each case whatever else was being said about the night’s music the orchestra received warm notices. This year’s season began strongly in April with guest soloist Mark Peskanov playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and the orchestra distinguishing· itself with a much-praised performance of Shostakovich’s 8^th Symphony – and as we go to print the innovation of a concert version of Act I of Wagner’s Die Walkure is imminent. Not bad at a time when former aviator, and now Minister for the Air Waves, Senator Evans has been more than muttering about devolving the State Orchestras to help pay the ABC’s phone bill. But that particular war is not yet over. At a time yet unspecified three years hence the General Managers of the state orchestras will be meeting again to discuss by whom and how the considerable expenses of running the six Australian orchestras will be met.

The ASO’s General Manager, Michael Elwood, would be the first to say that while the orchestra is on a roll at the moment there are many questions about funding, programme, subscription sales and venues to be discreetly chewing the nails about. The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra began back in 1936 with seventeen musicians. It was formed to do live radio work for the ABC – everything from signature tunes to light entertainment programmes. But the orchestra was officially established in its concert-giving role in 1949. That began a remarkable period during which Australian audiences were treated to the best of the world’s musicians. Performers sailed to Australia and performed extensively throughout the country. Many Australians will not have forgotten concerts from Klemperer, Sir Malcolm Sargeant, even Stravinsky, and many others. It was in this time that the unshakeable loyalty of the subscribers began.

But as Nicholas Braithwaite observes, all that was changed utterly by the LP record and relatively inexpensive jet travel. Both upped the ante and made the music of Europe arid North America, paradoxically, easier to reach but harder to import. The issues that now face the orchestra have been developing over the past ten years – since the salad days for the orchestra under Elyakum Shapira ended. When the Festival Centre opened in 1973 the subscriber list increased by a thousand as the format changed from the traditional three concerts in the Town Hall to two in the Festival Theatre.

After Shapira left in 1979 the orchestra worked with a series of guest conductors but no-one was really minding the store and Central Casting in Sydney was making all the decisions irrespective of their suitability to Adelaide and its audience. People got bored with the programme and as the orchestra lost morale, it lost some of its lustre as well. So when General Managers were appointed for the six state orchestras it was not before time. Braithwaite sees this as a crucial change:

“Before that, management was in direct line toand from Sydney and had no autonomy at all.The changes have created a different philosophy and we’re going to see more and more change. Orchestras are going to have a much more indepedent voice about how things are done in their town.”

The renewal of Braithwaite’s two year term will also make for better dealings with the orchestra. Now that he and his family have settled in Melbourne – he has taken the position of Dean of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts – his three months of work can be judiciously distributed. “When conductors come in for the minimum time it means that the conductor and the orchestra are nose to nose for three months. That’s too much continuous confrontation for the health of the relationship. It needs to grow all the time and over-exposure harms that. Spreading the three months throughout the year will be better for the audience, the orchestra and me.”

With the establishment of a good working relationship between the affable, energetic Braithwaite and the quietly astute Elwood two other important new appointments have been Kerry Comerford as Marketing Manager and Rosemary Boyle as Promotions Officer. The question of programming and subscription sales is their most important imperative.

Elwood comments:

“We have tried to make the Masters Series more popular and I have tried to redress imbalances in repertoire. There were years when there were no Brahms symphonies, no Haydn and Mozart and people wanted to hear them.”

At the same time Braithwaite has a commitment to broaden the repertoire –

“People like what they know which poses a problem for us because we get in an ever-decreasing circle. It’s a hard balancing act to give people what they know and what they like and at the same time trying to broaden the outlook as well. At the moment we feel we have to establish the confidence of the audience first. But I feel totally committed to the idea of performing modern music, otherwise music will become a museum and will die out like the dinosaurs. It is a question of finding the right forum to display modern music – not just Australian but from elsewhere. Modern work tends to be a ghetto anyway; we don’t want an Australian ghetto as well! One of the audiences is the 1812 ·Overture audience but I don’t think we are playing enough for the squeaky gate audience and they may not be the same. It may not be a good idea to force the 1812 audience to listen to the squeaky gate music and vice versa. We have to identify areas and venues and decide where in the series works can go.”

That is not easy, especially with limited resources for promotion compared to the teams of Education officers operating in the eastern states. Elwood ponders the outreach Meet the Music programme on Wednesday nights at the Town Hall:

“It was designed on a formula – a 20^th century concerto, an Australian work and a mainstream popular symphony. It’s been put to me that it is neither one thing or the other – but I’ in not sure whether that is relevant or not. The problem is not that the music is unlistenable – works like Szymanowski’s Sinfonia concertante and Lutoslawski’s Cello concerto are marvellous – it is just that they are unknown.”

With the terrifying statistic that 80% of their subscribers are over the age of sixty Michael Elwood is looking squarely at the business of finding a younger audience for his orchestra.

“The biggest problem we face is to find the audience that sold out the Kronos Quartet performances in the Festival-and the audience which turned out, for whatever reason, snob appeal or whatever, for the Chicago Symphony. Where are they for the ASO? So does Adelaide not value its orchestra and regard it as strictly second eleven?

Nicholas Braithwaite is quick to reply:

“Absolutely, yes. And they’re wrong. People always think the local team is not as good as the one from somewhere else. The other thing is that people listen to their CD’s and then come along to our concerts. Their CD’s are the Chicago Symphony, Berlin or whatever, done over three weeks in a studio with every slight imperfection taken out – and people regard that as the definition of the standard. The Chicago Symphony wouldn’t maintain that that is the standard they play to! Schwarzkopf put it very well when she said I’m not afraid of my competitors, but I can’t compete with my own recordings.”

Nicholas Braithwaite has appeared with orchestras in Europe, Scandinavia and Canada, as well as Australia and New Zealand. He toured as Associate to Solti with the London Philharmonic, is still Principal Conductor with the Manchester Camerata and has a distinguished association with the English National Opera. He is also very forthright in his regard for the ASO and other Australian orchestras:

“It was interesting with Chicago. I heard them in Melbourne this year. They are a first class orchestra but not very much better than what you hear in Australia and infinitely more numerous which tends to make an orchestra sound better: There were a huge number of strings which we don’t have the money to do. If we could put the number of players on the stage that Chicago had this orchestra would sound just as good. I think that there’s an ensemble of international standard here in Adelaide – something to be extremely proud of.”

One impediment to the ASO gaining wider acceptance that Braithwaite and Elwood have both identified is music criticism in Adelaide. They feel strongly that the orchestra deserves a better press.and that local reviewers are more preoccupied with maintaining their authority than reporting the event with any accuracy.

Says Braithwaite –

“For local critics to establish themselves they seem to have to knock people down in the process.·Reviewers are crucial to establishing audience confidence. They have the power to prevent that happening, although they would be appalled to think that was possible – there is no basic evil intention, just a lack of understanding of the effect that they have. I don’t deny the critics their role but when you know you’ve achieved something first class and it is unfavourably reviewed then it is demoralising because for those in the 20 to 45 age range it only confirms that they should stay away.”

It is clear, both watching the ASO in performance and talking to Nicholas Braithwaite, that he and the orchestra have taken a shine to each other. The enthusiasm he has for his task is infectious and he means it to be:

“There’s a real wave in the orchestra at the moment and it is very important to us that it gets across because if people come to really believe in this orchestra there will be an atmosphere where we can’t go to Government and say we need sixteen extra chairs on the stage to- bring us up to basic size and it will increase the standard and standing of the orchestra. And if it is perceived as doing a terrific job it will be listened to. I feel strongly about this and I can say it because I am a newcomer. I find this a really happy orchestra, who get stuck into the work – and work much harder than most I’m associated with. And they are playing to a really terrific standard. That’s something we’ve got to make people understand.”

“Orchestral Manoeuvres” The Adelaide Review, June 1988, pp.10-11.