Plenty of new music is premiered, but after the first performance many pieces are never heard again. Shamistha de Soysa talks with composers, programmers and commissioners about how to expand the life of new work, with co-commissions, tours, recordings and digital performances all part of the equation.
A world premiere! The words excite curiosity and the sense of being a part of history; of perhaps being at the dawn of a masterpiece. A premiere also comes with a millstone of expectation – that performers will embrace it, that audiences will be amazed, and that the work will be critically...
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A good discussion of an important issue.
I have wondered if working to encourage “second outings” might be the best thing to do.
Being realistic, most new works won’t enter the standard repertoire and that’s always been so. The current canon or standard repertoire is the result of filtering over many years. “Survivor bias” influences our tastes.
But to give new works a chance to survive, a second performance, not too much after the first would be good. I’d even dreamed of a series just comprising second outings.
Another thought is to get access to ABC’s archive (I hope it still survives) of recordings of these works made for broadcast and at least make them available, in a separate section, for streaming. There are probably rights to be negotiated for that.
I’d be fascinated to spend a day mining those archives.
Another variation of ken’s idea that is not unknown in musical history is to design concerts in which a new work is presented twice in the same program.