Another US orchestra faces extinction
NewsThe Hudson Valley is one of the more prosperous and picturesque regions of New York state, but its Philharmonic Orchestra has hit the rocks.
Founded in 1932, the orchestra was bankrupted by a fraudster in the 1990s and lost its long-serving music director Randall Craig Fleischer in August 2020.
Now the board says the band is ‘no longer sustainable’.
“a regular five-concert season”
I live in the Hudson Valley. The issue is that one can take a car or public transport to NYC in 60-90 minutes. And then you can see world-class performances of the best artists on the global stage. The Hudson Valley Phil, good intentions aside, doesn’t come close.
Pays to support your local band as well – use them or lose them.
As someone who lived in NYC for over a decade, take it from me that the classical music scene is ungodly expensive and maybe a *tad overrated anyway. Sometimes I would long to hear from a dedicated local orchestra rather than some of the many phoned-in, indifferent performances of the NY Phil.
Does that mean only the world-class musicians deserve to have jobs?
I also live in the Hudson Valley. If you knew this orchestra, you would know that some of its members are regular subs with orchestras such as NY Phil, MET, ABT, they play Broadway shows, festivals all over the world, and the list goes on. Not everyone in the Hudson Valley wants or is able to travel to NYC every time they want hear a great concert. That is not the issue. It is that the management of the orchestra does not want to devote energy or proper funding to develop the orchestra.
I played in the Hudson Valley Philharmonic under Claud Monteaux. Back of the second violin section.
Claude Monteux, the flutist and son of Pierre, ran this orchestra for a number of years. I recall some very nice concerts he led with it at Bard College in the early 1970’s. Too bad.
This country ‘s soul is turning to stone.
Norman, the proper term is “orchestra”, not band.
We are British, and often coloquial for orchestra if you are involved. We always called Scottish Opera Orchestra when I was there, ‘the band!’ It’s not Norman.
“Band” is the word with which musos say when talking about their orchestra.
Very sorry to read about this. However, it is also quite unusual for an orchestra to be financially/legally part of an arts center. The article refers to the Bardavon as the “owner” of the Philharmonic. A very strange choice of words.
This is very sad news. We attended a number of the HVP’s concerts in the late 90s and always enjoyed them. We were subscribers at the time of the crisis caused by the fraudster.
Where we lived, it was a 1 hour drive to hear them in Poughkeepsie vs 2-3 hours (each way) to go to Manhattan – plus NYC traffic and parking prices. And in those days we had a baby sitter to consider, too, who might not appreciate us getting back at 1 or 2 a.m. Randy Fleischer gave some thrilling performances and we never felt we were hearing less than a committed and skilled group of artists.
The picture shown is of the Mohonk House resort in New Palz , New York, which for many years had its own chamber music series.
One performance I attended was led by the principal horn of the New York Philharmonic, and included a Lennox Berkeley trio that had been written for Colin Horsley and Dennis Brain.
Parallel to the decay of US culture