San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

The Symphony has weathered worse than this




by Mike Greenberg

from the San Antonio Express News 1/18/98



The San Antonio Symphony's current fiscal travails do not, strictly speaking, constitute a crisis.

The symphony is not critically ill. It is chronically ill.

Never in my memory have the organization's smiles been genuine, its prospects bright, its ink reliably black. It has flirted with financial ruin, or limped along on short rations, almost continuously for 30 years or more.

Again and again in its past, the symphony has squandered its artistic reputation, alienated its audience, betrayed its donors and insulted its musicians.

By comparison with its own history, and with the truly cataclysmic circumstances that some big American orchestras find themselves in today, the symphony's present situation looks positively rosy.

The orchestra has weathered much rougher storms than a $1.5 million debt and a frantic scramble to meet payroll. It has endured even through periods of virtual civil war. Given the present goodwill among managment, musicians and the community at large, the money issue does not look insoluble.

The symphony has endured, too, through the calm patches, periods of relative fiscal stability and artistic drift, that were worse than the storms. It's one thing to fret about paying the orchestra; it's quite another to have an orchestra that's not worth fretting about.

Those periods have been few, however. The remarkable thing about the San Antonio Symphony's nearly 60-year history ishow consistently its artistic aspirations outran its financial base. This has nearly always been a more interesting and ambitious orchestra than its support warranted.

None of the symphony's music directors was content to mark time with conservative, middle-of-the-road programming. The orchestra didn't always play well, and throughout the 1980s it sounded pretty ragged, but its has nearly always stretched farther beyond the standard repertoire than most orchestras did.

In the present decade, under music director Christopher Wilkins, the orchestra has come into its own, artistically.

Thanks to a steady infusion of superbly trained and enthusiastic young musicians, the orchestra today is playing exceptionally well, even by big-orchestra standards. It has repeatedly won national notice for innovative programming. It is doing pioneering work to bridge the classical and regional folk traditions.

Wilkins himself, at age 40, stands at the threshold of a major career, as attested by recent well-received guest engagements with the orchestras of Chicago and Houston.

The trouble is, San Antonio seems to have no clue what it has in this orchestra. Empty seats remain shamefully abundant at most Thursday-night classical concerts. It's a championship team and the best show in town, usually, but tickets still go begging.

I believe the empty seats in the Majestic Theater are the root of the symphony's difficulties in attracting corporate support.

If the seats were consistently full, giving the symphony the aspect of a winner, businesses would be dumping truckloads of cash on the stage. And the symphony would hold a stronger hand for city support, as well.

I am not worried about the symphony's ability to get through the current season, or the next. I have little doubt that the proposed endowment drive will prove successful, or that annual fund giving will continue to rise.

But the commitment of donors cannot forever withstand the indifference of the audience that isn't there.

Ultimately, the money follows the people, whether they're walking in the door or out.



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