Will this attract young audiences? - discuss



This promotional video was created for the Philharmonie Luxembourg and Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg by Duchy based creative shop Radar. I am well outside the target group so will be careful about passing judgement. But it does seem a pity that the creatives ignored, or perhaps had never come across, Benjamin Britten's wise words that "This magic comes only with the sounding of the music".

Also on Facebook and Twitter. With thanks to reader Ralf Michaels for the heads up. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Anonymous said…
Worst thing I've ever seen.
7:35 pm
Pliable said…
Scott, yes - my response was less than ecstatic. But, as I say above, we are not the target market. Would be interesting to hear from young readers. But do I have any young readers? If not do I need a video like this one?
8:16 pm
Susan Scheid said…
Dreadful. Even too dreadful to be thought of as a parody. I'm not in the demographic, so I guess my vote doesn't count either, but I know some pretty sharp young people, and I'd lay odds they'd view this as false, patronizing tripe. IMHO.
10:49 pm
Gavin Plumley said…
It says more about an internal crisis at the Philharmonie than it does about the demographic it seeks to cajole. And it's so bloody long!
9:20 am
Pliable said…
Gavin, I think your use of the word "crisis" is perceptive. This video does suggest that classical music is having some kind of mid-life identity crisis which involves trying to re-invent itself as something totally different, and also incidentally totally irrelevant. The problem is that consultants and other middle-feeders thrive in such a crisis.

I wonder how many free concerts for young people featuring repertoire that shows how "this magic comes only with the sounding of the music" could have been given for the cost of that video?
10:58 am
ghooper said…
If you persevere (and who's going to?) you discover that they're trying to promote a series of interesting and quite imaginatively programmed events. What a shame if it has the effect of putting the intended audience off.
11:10 am
Pliable said…
GH, thanks for the comment above which does start to explain things. Browsing around the Philharmonie Luxembourg does uncover some interesting projects, but you hit the nail on the head with the word "persevere" - the whole proposition for young people doesn't seem to be joined up.

http://www.philharmonie.lu/en/home/home.php
11:26 am
Pliable said…
Ralf Michaels tells me the link to this video came from the Facbook page for "classical music humour", which probably explains a lot.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Classical-Music-Humor/207019572653107
11:35 am
Janoskam said…
Where's a crisis? Just have a look on what they do for their audiences on their series page http://www.philharmonie.lu/en/programm/events.php?seite=reihen

Starting with an impressive offer of diverse music styles, countinuing with series for babies, the combination of music & yoga, concerts for the "unpriviledged" with their foundation, end-of-season techno and hiphop-sessions... For me, it seems more to be a quite charming attempt to reach more people simply with something you wouldn't expect. And in fact, the subscription cycle "Aventure+" they promote is quite uncommon.

When I lived in Germany, I hated the strict and completely humorless intelluctual separation of E-Music (for the "connoisseurs") and U-Music (for the "illiterates").

Why should it be forbidden to have fun?
1:40 pm
Pliable said…
Janoskam's contribution above is useful. But it does rather ignore the concerns about the difficulty of navigating from the Ninja video to the information he cites.

Also I have to point out that the one positive comment so far comes from an anonymous created to comment profile that my server logs indicate probably originated in Luxembourg. And the comment arrived a couple of hours after I emailed the Philharmonie Luxembourg pointing out my post!

But Janoskam is right to remind us of the danger of being overly critical. There seem to be good ideas here that need a little bit more joining up.
1:51 pm
Philip Amos said…
If I were compiling an illustrated dictionary, I'd put this beside 'misguided'. I thought it was a spoof at first, and then at the end, when the ninjas appeared, I didn't have the foggiest idea what it was. If the Philharmonie does have good programmes to entice the young, there's no indication of them in the video. And it's beyond me how "hip-hop sessions" are going to put young people in seats for a concert of Beethoven and Bartok or what have you. My conclusion, perhaps a point missed, is that this is a promotion for the Philharmonie, not the Philharmonique.
2:14 pm
Janoskam said…
On one hand, the last tweo posts are right. If they wanted to promote the Philharmonique or the aventure+ subscription, the ninja-video should only be seen on youtube in relation with a crosslink to the site aventureplus.lu. Otherwise one thinks it's for the Philharmonie, rather than for the Philharmonique. Funny enough to see on aventureplus.lu that there seems to be more to see in the pipeline. But for some reason, the remaining stuff is not online yet.

And on the other hand, this kind of misguidance is for me also a form of perspective change towards a subject. Anyway, by adding a dash of humor, I'd always feel more appealed to open myself for a subject than without.

A good example for charming misguidance is the concert milk in Dortmund konzertmilch.de
4:39 pm
Philharmonie Luxembourg said…
Thank you for all your comments, questions and remarks - they are most useful and we are absolutely happy that not everyone just says "great!"

The "Ninja" video is only the very first one of a series of four videos, the three remaining being indeed completely different to the first one. The general aim of these 4 videos, which you will find on the website www.aventureplus.lu , is to promote a new subscription called Aventure+, which has a quite unique concept. 4 evenings of musical discoveries. Joanna MacGregor is, for this first edition, the artistic advisor of this new cycle of concerts.

Of course, you may ask yourself, whether Ninjas will sell tickets and bring younger audiences to listen Beethoven, Mahler or Szymanowski. The answer to this question remains open. But we believe, that at least, this video can help younger audiences discover the Philharmonie and the variety of its programme, just by teasing their curiosity. There are loads of preconceptions on classical music running amongst the people, not only the young audience. And these preconceptions are admittedly quite sticky. Before bringing a young audience (people in their twenties, thirties) into a Brahms concert, you first need to bring them to cross the front door, to like the place. This whole campaign is one single step into this direction.

Oh and by the way, the anonymous comment was not by the Philharmonie ;-)
5:01 pm
Unknown said…
I am glad about the programming. What puzzled me about the video: it obviously tries to play on the cheap ways with which products are sold to young people - and then fails, strangely, to steer clear of what it makes fun of. Watching, I indeed expected a counter-message like the one Bob suggests: ultimately, concert halls are about music, and music is what will draw people to go. And of course does, sometimes.
7:13 pm
Pliable said…
Following the comment above by the Philharmonie Luxembourg I have changed my opinion about the video and have posted a follow-up -

http://www.overgrownpath.com/2012/04/loads-of-preconceptions-about-classical.html
9:04 pm
Charles Céleste Hutchins said…
I kind of thought the part with the ninja was funny, but it seems like they stuck two adverts together that didn't really go with each other. Also, the used pop musical cues which suggests that they don't actually trust their music to stand on it's own and thus undermine their message.
2:43 am
Pliable said…
This tweet makes a good point: "Most important of all, there is LIFE here" - https://twitter.com/#!/coolmcjazz/status/192677629944545280
5:02 pm
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