Is the Philadelphia Orchestra looking for love in all the wrong places?
You couldn't escape the feeling of unrequited courtship Thursday night in the Piazza at Schmidts, where the orchestra was simulcasting the sights and sounds of its opening-night Verizon Hall gala onto a big, pixelated screen in this cool, windswept plaza.
At its most populated, a section set up with 51 folding chairs hosted eight listeners (two of whom were an orchestra administrator and his wife), and during the course of the evening no more than 30 Northern Liberties habitues could be seen actively engaging a virtual Charles Dutoit leading the ensemble in Berlioz, Lalo, and Respighi.
But let no one take away the wrong lesson from the orchestra's rare foray into simulcasting to a remote, public locale: This was an enormous success, and, for all the lack of public embrace, the event begs to be repeated.
Next time, the orchestra and the Piazza might let the public in on what was treated this time with curious secrecy. The free simulcast received minimal advance publicity, and a mention on the Piazza's website got the time of the concert wrong and listed it in conjunction with a Philadelphia Orchestra Young Friends event that had, in fact, been canceled for lack of interest.
You also had to wonder whether opening night, with its speeches from grandees and air of black-tie formality, was really the image the orchestra wanted to transmit to the Piazza, the epicenter of a certain stripe of hip urban revitalization.
Why not simulcast, rather, the orchestra's terrific Saturday-morning family concerts - here, or in the all-weather Grand Court at Macy's - and its enticing Beyond the Score series?
More experimentation seems inevitable. This season, SpectiCast, which produced the Piazza feed, will package and market nine of the orchestra's concerts to movie houses across North America. There's nothing inherently misguided in the orchestra's mixing with the masses in larger public spaces. In fact, quite memorably, about 700 transfixed listeners experienced the "Orquesta de Filadelfia" in 1998 on the plaza of Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes when 24 speakers wrapped them in lushness and a pantalla gigante carried the visuals.
Thursday night in the Piazza, one speaker did a sturdy though by no means nuanced job of conveying the ensemble, giving presence to Ricardo Morales' extreme hush for those lovely clarinet solos in The Pines of Rome, but robbing us of real bird sounds emanating from a percussion-section CD player.
The overall sound experience, a notch or two below what you find in a typical car radio, was well worth the price of a little socialization. Joshua Bell's throaty tone in Symphonie espagnole traveled well, and the acoustic of the plaza, boxed in by multistory facades, was better balanced than you might expect.
Opening night 2010-11, a fund-raiser for the orchestra, was a celebration of all things Dutoit. Board chairman Richard B. Worley read a city proclamation on behalf of Mayor Nutter. Pennsylvania first lady Marjorie O. Rendell shared the news that Dutoit will receive a Governor's Award for the Arts on Nov. 30, along with others.
And actor Alec Baldwin, presenting his pal Dutoit with a magnum of wine, suggested that the two hit it off when Baldwin, after meeting conductor after conductor who had never heard of him, was introduced to Dutoit, who had. Dutoit invited him to narrate Peter and the Wolf in Saratoga Springs. "So now I'm on the payroll here in Philadelphia, for crying out loud," Baldwin said.
"You're very lucky to have him here in Philadelphia - very lucky to have Charles Dutoit."
Baldwin's right, of course. In the lobby of the Kimmel Center, where postconcert diners shelled out up to $15,000 for a table of 10, that meant raising a glass of champagne in his honor.
Here at the Piazza, the more apt response was to commune with his Berlioz �lan in Le Corsaire Overture while knocking back a Ballast Point Yellowtail Pale Ale. No black tie required.
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Contact music critic Peter Dobrin at pdobrin@phillynews.com 215-854-5611. Read his blog at www.philly.com/philly/blogs/ artswatch/.
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