Endangered orchestras

With down-sized orchestras here, locked-out orchestras there, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under threat from  the day after Scotland votes yes, Norman Lebrecht’s Slipped Disc blog   has plenty to moan about at the moment.

But the BBC SSO has been in serious danger before - and survived.  Will it survive again?   The last time it happened, however, it was not the outstanding orchestra it now is. Its achievements were far, far less than those it now customarily supplies  under Donald Runnicles and Ilan Volkov, who are as desirable a pair of maestros as any orchestra has the luck to work with.  With a semi-staging of Berg’s Wozzeck, conducted by Runnicles, as a highlight of the forthcoming season, there is much to look forward to.

Apart from the danger to the orchestra itself, the fate of the Glasgow City Halls, the BBC SSO’s superb Scottish home, may also hang  in the balance. So yes, if there is trouble in the air - either from the referendum vote or from the BBC itself - we should maybe  listen to what Lebrecht and others are saying. He is not always wrong. And a point to keep in mind is this:   if the yes vote happens to lose the referendum, will the BBC SSO still be in danger? Unlikely perhaps, but not impossible.
15 September 2014