The Standing Room draws attention to an amusing passage in Vivien Schweitzer's Playbill story about the troubled New Hampshire Symphony: "Symphony officials had reportedly hoped to attract a large crowd for the season opener, billed as the New England premiere of Billy Joel's concerto, Symphonic Fantasies for Piano and Orchestra. 'That should have brought out tremendous crowds. A packed house,' trustee Lois Fonda told the Union Leader, but it didn't. 'It's just beyond me why there aren't enough people in New Hampshire who are appreciative of classical music. It's tragic. It really is,' Fonda added." Hmm. Perhaps the problem is that there aren't enough people in New Hampshire who are appreciative of Billy Joel's classical compositions, and, you know, that doesn't reflect poorly on New Hampshire. Another problem might be that New Hampshire has a lot of orchestras for a small state. Namely, the New Hampshire Symphony, the New Hampshire Philharmonic, the Greater Manchester Youth Symphony, the Nashua Symphony, the Granite State Symphony, the Lakes Region Symphony, the UNH Symphony, the Dartmouth Symphony, the Monadnock Festival Orchestra, the Nashua Chamber Orchestra, and the New Hampshire Music Festival Orchestra. Certainly it's asking a lot for Manchester, a city of 100,000, to sustain two orchestras. Putting on a proper performance of the Mahler Eighth would require one percent of the population to play or sing.
