Classical music appeal more than in China than India

The New York Philharmonic, home to legends like Gustav Mahler and Leonard Bernstein, will see a major change this year as its president and executive directorZarin Mehta ends his tenure. Mumbai-born Zarin, 73, the son of Mehli Mehta, who founded the Bombay Symphony Orchestra in 1935, and brother of music conductor Zubin Mehta, is credited with broadening the Philharmonic experience by cultural initiatives like its 2008 concert tour of North Korea.He talks to Vrushali Haldipur about the challenges of fund-raising and engaging audiences in a digital era
Cultural organisations are largely dependent on donations and endowments. It was reported that endowments for the NYP dropped from $212 million to $170 million in the past decade. What are the other challenges that you faced during the economic downturn?
When you have a mature organisation like the NYP, it comes with its own set of challenges. There’s always the question of where does the revenue come from -- the ticket sales, the fees and the fund-raising . During the recession, our endowment went down enormously, by about 30%. It only started to come back about a year ago. Our concerts are sold out so it’s obvious that there is an active public interest; we just have to find means of capitalising on it.
With file sharing and YouTube, the expectation is that music should be available for free. How does an orchestra deal with this audience expectation?
With the internet, I think the medium has served only to grow the audiences who want to go to live concerts. We were the first orchestra to offer downloadable concerts, and to make the library of music accessible to all. After all, there’s only that much you can get out of that little piece of wire sticking in your ear. You will have that inherent need to go and watch and hear something live. Every time there’s a technological advance , people say no one will go to concerts or movies anymore. But that’s not what happens finally. In the commercial music industry, people stopped going to record stores to buy music, but that was never a major issue for an orchestra. So it didn’t affect our finances drastically.
The NYP’s 2008 visit to North Korea was a unique news-making initiative. However , such initiatives are also viewed as ‘musical diplomacy’ , and sometimes criticised for this reason. Does politics get in the way of music?
North Korea was an unusual occurrence. For some reason they reached out to us. We got the permission of the US State Department to pursue it— a diplomatic encouragement , not financial. They had no concert halls; we had to go and design a concert shell for the orchestra . We got an enormous amount of help from patrons and the North Koreans could not be more hospitable. However, the American right wing press castigated us, saying we were ‘serenading a tyrant.’ But we were not letting down anyone by going to North Korea ; we played the American national anthem and we flew the American flag; we played what we wanted and we were warmly applauded by all. Did we make a change or any difference? No, but I think we were able to show that group of people that the Americans who they’ve hated for the last several years were not all that bad.
In recent years, Asia has seen a rising interest in western classical music. Do you hope to see India also on the tour map?
The NYP tours Asia on a regular basis-—Japan , Korea, Hong Kong — there is a great demand and infrastructure there for classical music and orchestras. Asia has been the hub for classical music for the last 10 years; we’ve been to China twice, and Taiwan is another place we perform regularly. Hong Kong is building a huge complex of theatres, opera houses and concert halls. In China, many cities have two or three concert halls and they invite major artistes from all over the world to come over and perform . This does not happen in India. One always compares India and China , but as far as western classical music goes, China is ahead of India in terms of involvement. In India, I don’t think there is that indigenous push for people to want to get involved in western classical music. Zubin , of course, brought the Florence, the Munich and Israel Philharmonic orchestras to India on his initiative.