Orchestras are in financial peril. Here’s why a revolution would be disastrous

Ivan HewettMon, May 11, 2026 at 1:35 PM UTC

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Renowned conductor Sir Simon Rattle leading the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican - Mark Allan

“Things can’t just go back to normal!” That was the cry of many in the classical music world during the pandemic, when orchestral and venue managers, musicians and critics peered into their crystal balls to imagine what the post-pandemic classical scene might look like. It was the chance for radical reform, many of them said. Why must concerts last two hours and start at 7.30pm? Couldn’t we have short pop-up concerts in casual dress? Where were the exciting contemporary composers ready to drown out the endless concertos by Mozart and symphonies by Mahler? Couldn’t the new trend for filmed concerts on orchestral websites, which arose in response to the fact live audiences were banned from concert halls, continue into the future?

“Concerts won’t return to normal even when coronavirus fades,” Classical Music magazine declared confidently in 2020. Conductors Sir Simon Rattle and Sir Mark Elder, in a letter to The Guardian in June of the same year, wrote: “We understand that we cannot expect to revert to everything as it was before; we will be creative and tireless in making contingency plans and solving problems.”

Rattle conducts the LSO at the 2023 BMW Classics concert in London - Doug Peters/PA Wire

Of course, as soon as concert halls re-opened after lockdown, normality reasserted itself with amazing speed. The 7.30pm concert returned, the Mahler symphonies and Mozart concertos came surging back. Far from being exciting and radical, concert programmes – at first glance – now seem more conventional than ever. Look back at the season that’s just ending and you’ll see orchestral managers have shamelessly recycled Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique Symphony, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and other warhorses. They’re even bringing back the potboilers much loved by our grandparents’ generation, such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

Look a bit closer, however, and the picture isn’t as bleakly uncreative and staid as it might appear. For one thing, some of the innovations brought in by the pandemic have remained. Some venues and orchestras, such as Wigmore Hall and Bournemouth Symphony, continue to stream live concerts on their websites.

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As for diversity, there are more composers from diverse backgrounds (as well as more contemporary composers). This is where it gets interesting, because often those diverse composers appear in a programme format which is as old as the hills. I’m referring to the overture-concerto-symphony pattern, which has been a tried-and-tested formula for at least a century. I think it’s an excellent formula. The short overture gives players a chance to loosen their fingers and audiences a chance to settle before the main event. The concerto is a welcome opportunity to focus on the stirring virtuosity of a soloist, and the symphony comes as a climax of weight and seriousness. That said, the format was undoubtedly overused, and many concert-goers and programmers had come to see it as an embarrassing hangover from the past.

Polish composer and violinist Grażyna Bacewicz, whose 1943 Overture piece is popular with orchestras - Alamy Stock Photo

Now it’s returning, because it’s found a new, unpredicted use: helping the cause of diversity. The short “overture” slot is just right for a gentle, short introduction to unfamiliar composers, including diverse ones. So, for example, we often hear pieces such as the fiery six-minute Overture from 1943 by little-known Polish female composer Grażyna Bacewicz, which has become a new favourite with orchestras. The beautiful Lyric for Strings of 1946 by the black American composer George Walker, who later became a hardline modernist, is also fast becoming a fixture in the overture slot, and rightly so, as it’s a small gem.

There’s a lesson here. Fruitful change in classical concert-going isn’t going to happen via a revolution. Change can only happen in a piecemeal, gradual way, building on what already exists. So, rather than throwing out the overture-concerto-symphony as a tired old relic, why not repurpose it? That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear the big-boned symphonies by Grażyna Bacewicz and George Walker, and, in fact, they are now being performed. But it’s those short pieces that have lodged themselves in the minds and hearts of audiences.

Composer George Walker is fast becoming a fixture in the overture slot - Getty Images/Hiroyuki Ito

The ideologues in classical music who want more diversity now will grind their teeth and complain that change isn’t happening fast enough. But those ideologues have never faced the challenge of actually running an orchestra, which – as Richard Bratby, critic of The Spectator, who once worked in orchestral management, pointed out – is always around six weeks away from bankruptcy. On paper it may seem a good idea to organise pop-up concerts in shopping centres, offer one-hour “tasters” and entirely diverse programmes, but it’s hard to make them work financially. Innovation is vital, but you have to take the audience with you and, for that, softly, softly is still the best approach.

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