The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra that takes the stage this week bears only superficial resemblance to the one that glumly gathered two years ago.
That September, multimillion-dollar deficits, looming contract negotiations and the musicians' lingering ill will over management's selection of a new conductor seemed heavy enough to sink the venerable Baltimore institution. But today's BSO is revitalized and refocused, eager for the launch of a new season that will be closely watched by the national TV and print media.
Two words explain this extraordinary turnaround: Marin Alsop.
Others have played a part in the orchestra's reversal, but the dynamic, wry, 50-year-old Alsop has proven to be a remarkable catalyst for what is called, around the BSO, "the beginning of a renaissance."
She appears to have overcome the public outcry from orchestra members, triggered by the July 2005 announcement that Alsop would succeed distinguished Russian conductor Yuri Temirkanov as music director two years later.
Meanwhile, BSO finances have improved markedly. An accumulated deficit of more than $17 million was retired using endowment funds, and last season's budget was balanced. Fund-raising and subscription sales have seen double-digit increases. And average attendance in Baltimore, which had fallen to just over 60 percent, is projected to exceed 75 percent this season - thanks in part to a grant that underwrote an unprecendented $25-a-seat subscription deal for this season.
On the artistic side, the orchestra's first commercial recording since the late 1990s, John Corigliano's Red Violin Concerto, with Joshua Bell as soloist, reached No. 1 on the Billboard classical chart this month. A series of BSO performances on XM Satellite Radio will be launched with the live broadcast of Thursday's season-opener.
"There seems to be a lot of positive momentum in Baltimore," says Henry Fogel, president and CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League, a music industry organization in New York. "All of this energy is certainly being noticed in the orchestra field."
"Marin is the central impetus for all the things that have helped to make the turnaround possible," says BSO President and CEO Paul Meecham, who joined the organization a year ago, shortly after Michael Bronfein was elected board chairman. Both arrivals greatly improved morale.
