The Arts:The English Chamber Orchestra embraces commercial work without sacrificing its musical integrity, writes Arminta Wallace.
The English Chamber Orchestra (ECO) turns up in all sorts of unexpected places. If you're sitting in the cinema at the end of the sumptuous new film version of Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, blinking and sniffing and pretending to read the closing credits while you figure out how to get down the steps without giving the game away and blowing your nose, you may notice that the ECO is responsible for the music that swept you away during the weepiest bits. If you're a fan of Sarah Chang and you've always wanted to see her perform Vivaldi's Four Seasons- which she does at the National Concert Hall on October 25th - you may notice that the orchestra that will perform it with her is the ECO.
According to the ECO's administrative director, Pauline Gilbertson, however, these glamorous-looking assignments are all in a day's work for an ambitious chamber group. The ECO was invited to record the soundtrack for Pride and Prejudicetwo years ago by composer Dario Marinelli. They did a good job and got the Atonementgig. As for Sarah Chang, the orchestra is involved in a large-scale European autumn tour with the violin prodigy. The ECO is, in many ways, the model of a successful chamber orchestra.
But as Gilbertson explains, for a small independent group such as this, it's quite a challenge to survive, let alone prosper. "Running an orchestra is, in financial terms, similar to running any business in that you have to ensure that your outgoings don't exceed your income," she says. "We're a small company with fixed running costs - staff salaries, etc - which have to be covered, regardless of our income in any given period. Our annual turnover is just under a million pounds and in most years, we manage to make a small surplus. We have a tiny staff of five and we work hard to minimise our expenses." Having their own office building in west London is, she says, a big help because they don't have to fork out huge quantities of rent. The orchestra has also set up an associated not-for-profit company, The English Chamber Orchestra Music Society Limited, which raises money from trusts, corporate and private sponsors and organises fundraising concerts.
SO FAR, IT'Sa story that will have most orchestra managers nodding in agreement. But on the subject of keeping an orchestra afloat, the ECO has come up with one highly unusual solution: music cruises. Classical groups might be expected to shy away from such commercial ventures, fearing that they might sail into a very bland artistic place indeed. The ECO, though got in at the top end. "In the 1970s, we were invited by Paquet Lines, a French cruise line, to take part in their music cruises in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean," Gilbertson says. "I came across a brochure recently for a 1982 cruise for which we were joined by soloists including Daniel Barenboim, Yo-Yo Ma, Maurice André and James Galway. They had so many glittering soloists, but we didn't do them for the money. We did them because they were fun.
"When they stopped, due to the death of the artistic director, we were invited to become business partners in a follow-up venture with an American businessman, Leonard Haertter, on Windstar's beautiful small motor sailing ships."
Nine cruises later, the arrangement has changed from something the orchestra simply rows in with, having been invited, to an integral part of its business plan, and something it actively promotes.
"Ninety per cent of our passengers are repeat clients, which is very satisfying," says Gilbertson. "They clearly love what we're offering when they keep coming back, time and time again. Now that we've captured a niche market, it's really working well as a business enterprise - and, of course, it's still great fun." It's still top end, too. With soloists of the order of Mischa Maisky and Thomas Allen and such conductors as Maxim Vengerov and Vladimir Ashkenazy on board, blandness or lack of artistic integrity wouldn't appear to be a problem. Part of the secret of the ECO's success, however, appears to be its ability to produce the best possible music in a given context.
"We're unusual," says Gilbertson wryly, "in that we receive absolutely no public subsidy. No Arts Council grant, no state funding, nothing. We can run our company the way we choose to. We're not answerable to anybody other than ourselves. But the difference between an arts organisation and another kind of business is that a pioneering arts organisation will take on a certain number of loss-leading projects rather than play safe 100 per cent of the time.
"For this reason, we commission at least one new work every season. It can be a tremendous challenge trying to persuade audiences to come along and hear them - nevertheless, we feel a duty towards helping create and promote new music for the 21st century, just as we did back in the days when the orchestra was formed." In those days, they were Benjamin Britten's resident orchestra at the Aldeburgh festival, and gave the world premieres of many of his works, even before he became an acclaimed international figure. ECO commissions in recent years include a new piano concerto from John Taverner. This year, it has asked the Welsh composer Huw Watkins to write a piece for performance next year.
ISN'T IT USUALLYthe case that when budgets have to be balanced, new music is the first casualty? "Yes," says Gilbertson. "If times are hard. If an orchestra is trying to present a concert series and can't afford to make substantial losses, then obviously that orchestra will programme popular repertoire, ideally with a big-time soloist." This, as she readily agrees, might be an exact description of the Sarah Chang concert in Dublin.
"The majority of our engagements are straightforward classical concerts," she says. "This year we're doing about 60 in the UK and 30 abroad." They're involved in a Finnish music festival called Sibelius and Beyond, and have a number of film recordings in the pipeline, having done a number of Bond soundtracks. The ECO is also the resident orchestra at a country-house opera festival in Hampshire for the next three summers. They're also looking at ways to capitalise on their large catalogue of recordings, made in the halcyon days when record companies pumped huge sums into re-recording repertoire for the CD format.
"We recorded all the Mozart piano concertos with Daniel Barenboim and since then, we've re-recorded them all with Murray Perahia and Michiko Uchida," says Gilbertson. What can be done with them is the question. "We haven't yet really got as far into downloading and new technology as we would like. We're treading slightly cautiously, but yes, that's somewhere we will be heading in the not too distant future."
Does Gilbertson think orchestras will embrace new technologies such as palm pilots for audience members, offering extensive programme notes and visual "enhancements" of the music?
"Oh, it's so difficult to know the way forward," she exclaims. "If we try replacing the traditional white tie and tails dress code with the men in black open-neck shirts and black trousers, for instance , then all of our more traditional members of the audience will complain and say that they don't look smart enough. Whereas if we do stick to the white tie and tails, then we get a few people saying, 'well, this is terribly outdated'.
"Going down the line of casual dress and coloured lighting and other gimmicks isn't going to enhance the quality of the music or indeed the quality of the experience. I think there could be a market for concerts in different formats. The one-and-a-half to two-hour concert, with an interval in the middle, has been maintained for a couple of centuries. But on our music cruises, for instance, all our concerts are one hour long with no interval, and we find that works very well."
Getting the musical fundamentals right, according to Gilbertson, is more important, and makes sound business and artistic sense. "As a business, we're essentially buying the services of individual players and putting them together to form an entity and selling that orchestra as our product. If the key components aren't right, then the end result isn't going to be what we would want it to be, so it comes down to the fact that each of the musicians who plays for us has to be the right musician for that position. This is where our founder and and artistic director Quintin Ballardie is an absolute genius - at choosing musicians who are individually of a high standard and will work together well." This is why people want to hear the ECO making music.
• Sarah Chang plays Vivaldi's violin concertoThe Four Seasons with the English Chamber Orchestra, directed by Stephanie Gonley, at the NCH, Dublin on Oct 25.
