I've been increasingly impressed by the number of young people who show up for regular season programs by the Seattle Symphony. Most frequently, by "young people," I mean high school and college ages. But last night, I was impressed by the number of pre-teens, on best behavior, accompanying their parents.
The young boy -- maybe ten or eleven -- sitting directly in front of me was dressed in a dark suit and tie. With white sneakers, but even so he was dressed better than I was, or, for that matter, than 90 percent of the male audience. He listened raptly to the concert, occasionally whispering a comment to his mother.
If the program had included numbers like Peter and the Wolf, the Nutcracker Suite, or the William Tell Overture, I might have understood the appeal. But, with the exception of the ten-minute Finlandia by Sibelius, the program consisted of pieces unfamiliar to many in the audience (including me), their music often atonal and with no obvious sense (again, to me) of melody and harmony.1
But the music was stirring and often dramatic -- and maybe something that youngsters, with no preconceptions about "classical" music, might respond to more readily than would we stodgy old codgers.
The next performance on my season's ticket comes in just two weeks, and features Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and a tone poem by Richard Strauss. A couple of classical "hits" for us traditionalists. It will be interesting to consider how the demographics of the audience for that performance differs, if at all, from last night's.
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