Almost all professional orchestras have their own Web sites, where you can study schedules, listen to MP3s, admire pictures of the executive director with donors, and read cute bios of the players.
Mr. Chan says that almost any orchestra or group of musicians will include a significant minority who are involved in tasting groups or who gather regularly to have dinner and share wines.
The works being performed almost all call for an orchestra of some sort, and he estimated the total cost, at union rates, to be $450,000 to $500,000.
More than 1,000 people, almost all of them white, watched an orchestra, itself almost entirely white, in a country whose black majority was effectively excluded from such cultural indulgences until a decade ago and whose own artistic avocations were until even more recently largely ignored.
Chiou is proud of the fact that unlike other top Asian orchestras, the players are almost all home-grown.
Today the roles have almost reversed: orchestras and opera companies put most of their energy into conserving the repertory of the past, while conservatories, leaping into the void, routinely put on whole festivals of contemporary music.
And if so, does the work lose something at a time when a much higher technical level of performance prevails, making it sound almost easy for orchestras today?
By now, almost every orchestra member is his hire.
Cut down to almost chamber orchestra size for the Mahler, the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa played exquisitely behind Mr. Hampson and blared with great clarity in the symphony.
They seem to have strongly wanted Mr. Maazel despite the fact that before November, he had not conducted the orchestra for nearly 23 years, and despite his record of eventually alienating almost every orchestra he has worked with.
