Who Pays for “Messiah”? | Freakonomics Radio

In the 18th century, Handel relied on royal patronage. Today, it’s donors like Gary Parr who keep the music playing. In this bonus episode of our “Making 'Messiah'” series, Parr breaks down the economics of the New York Philharmonic. You can find the transcript and show notes for this episode on our website here: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/who-pays-for-messiah/ FOLLOW FREAKONOMICS RADIO: YouTube: https://freak.ws/3yIl6dl Apple Podcasts: https://freak.ws/3yAvQh0 Spotify: https://freak.ws/3TsdCmV ABOUT FREAKONOMICS RADIO: Discover the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the Freakonomics books. Each week, Dubner speaks with Nobel laureates and provocateurs, intellectuals and entrepreneurs, and various other underachievers to uncover things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to the future of education, from markets for marriage to the surprising utility of wolves. ABOUT THE FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK: Freakonomics began as a book, which led to a blog, a documentary film, more books, a pair of pants, and in 2010, a podcast called Freakonomics Radio. Hosted by Stephen J. Dubner, it’s one of the most popular podcasts in the world, with a reputation for storytelling that is both rigorous and entertaining. Its archive of more than 500 episodes is available, for free, on any podcast app, and the show airs weekly on NPR stations. Freakonomics Radio is now the flagship show of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which includes the podcasts No Stupid Questions, People I (Mostly) Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. FREAKONOMICS RADIO NETWORK PODCASTS: Freakonomics Radio: https://freakonomics.com/series/freakonomics-radio/ No Stupid Questions: https://freakonomics.com/series/nsq/ People I (Mostly) Admire: https://freakonomics.com/series/people-i-mostly-admire/ The Economics of Everyday Things: https://freakonomics.com/series/everyday-things/ Special series: https://freakonomics.com/topics/ CONNECT WITH US: [email protected] https://twitter.com/freakonomics https://www.instagram.com/freakonomics/ https://www.facebook.com/freakonomics/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freakonomicsradio https://www.linkedin.com/company/freakonomics-media Subscribe to our newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bKm0cf

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner. We are in the middle of publishing a three-part series on George Friedrich Handel's Messiah, and I'm slipping into the feed today with a Messiah bonus episode. Let me tell you how this one came about. Over the past several years, as I have become addicted to this piece of music, I attended several performances by the New York Philharmonic. The playbill for these performances reads "Handel's Messiah Presented by Gary W. Parr." I got to wondering what it means for a performance to be presented by a particular person, and I especially got to wondering, who is Gary W. Parr? So I tracked him down. It turns out that he used to be the chairman of the Philharmonic's Board of Directors, and he's still a member of the board, which officially makes him

• 0:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  a patron of the arts. Not quite the same kind of patron that King George II was to handle, but you get the idea. The conversation you're about to hear between Gary Parr and myself goes in some interesting directions.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  I'd asked our archivist, how many years have we performed the Messiah? It's decades upon decades. Just because we've done it and because it is a tradition is no reason to continue. You should only continue if it's a good idea.

• 1:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is it a good idea for the Philharmonic to keep performing Messiah? We'll find out, and we'll find out a lot more. Stay tuned for an interesting conversation with a really interesting human, and we will be back very soon with the finale to our Messiah series.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything with your host, Stephen Dubner.

• 1:58Stephen J. Dubner?

  First of all, just say your name and what you do, if you don't mind.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  I'm Gary Parr. I'm a Senior Managing Director and on the Management Committee at Apollo, and I'm also involved in a number of philanthropic activities.

• 2:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  The philanthropic activities mostly center around the arts or not necessarily?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Education and the arts.

• 2:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Apollo Global Management is one of the biggest alternative asset money managers in the world. Parr has been there for nearly a decade. Before that, he was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and Lazard. Before that, he got an MBA from Northwestern and an undergraduate business degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. These days, he is Chairman of the Parr Center for Ethics at UNC Chapel Hill. He's also a trustee of the Morgan Library.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Education has always been a priority area, including inside the arts. I think education about the arts just creates people that are more balanced, they have a more cultured view of the world, and I think a better understanding of other people. Once you learn more about different types of art, different types of music, different types of architecture, you begin to understand other cultures. I was in the public school systems of North Carolina growing up. It actually was during the period of desegregation and forced busing. I had an excellent teacher in 10th grade English that taught me Shakespeare, specifically Julius Caesar. I would not have understood Shakespeare. Shakespeare's hard unless you

• 3:29Speaker 01

  have a good teacher. And what I came away with, I can still look back on it, was some of the speeches in Julius Caesar. The ability to talk through and persuade someone and tell someone a story through words, change their point of view, affect their opinion, rally crowds, that was extraordinary. That stuck with me. I can remember also, it was about power and leadership. And there was something there that just got me motivated about leadership, and maybe I can learn this.

• 4:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  That's interesting. I too had a remarkable high school English teacher who taught me Shakespeare. I still think about that class now and again. I understand you're also sponsoring a new prize, the PAR Prize for Excellence in Teaching Shakespeare. What's that all about?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  In New York, all my years in New York, involved in cultural and educational activities, there really wasn't anything related to Shakespeare, per se, to be involved in. So I got involved in other areas, such as the Philharmonic Lincoln Center, the Morgan Library. And when I, in COVID, moved to Florida, I got to rethink, what do I want to do from here? I immediately thought, I want to do something related to Shakespeare and teaching of Shakespeare. So I actually pursued multiple paths with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the UK, the Globe in London, the Folger Museum in Washington. I was asking them, particularly here in the US, okay, I had a great teacher.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  How do you recognize great teachers? The Folger does some good programs for bringing teachers and helping them learn more and teach each other. And so that's all good. But I said, well, what about a prize? So I began talking to different parties about how could we create a prize for excellence in teaching Shakespeare? The objective is to make a statement that teaching Shakespeare matters and it takes great teachers to do it.

• 5:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell me about becoming interested in music and wanting to support music.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  I do have a clear earliest memory for classical music. Growing up in North Carolina, I don't think there was an orchestra. I never went to one, I know that. My dad would play LPs, so I could sort of hear some, but not much. I had an aunt and uncle that in the early days had a CD player with a really good sound system. And they said, hey, Gary, we want you to hear this. And at that time, I was at an age where I listened to rock and roll, and that's what I listened to. And they played Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  And I sat and I listened to it. It's whatever it is, like 12 minutes long or 18 minutes long, something like that. This is a Boom, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Yeah, exactly. And it gets to near the end and there are cannons. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba bum bum bum boom boom. And I could remember so vividly sitting and thinking, okay, that's really cool. You could have music with cannons.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  And it's safe to say I was hooked. I then took a music class in college and I can still remember the pieces of music. It was Bach's Passacaglia in Fugue in C minor, which is fantastic. A Haydn Symphony, number 88. I mean, the pieces of music stuck with me, but I was 24, 25. The first time I ever saw an orchestra. And what do you know about orchestras now that you didn't know then? Orchestras are really expensive bands.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  You have 100 musicians, you have all their instruments, you have a staff to support them. It's expensive. And so every orchestra in America struggles to break even and raise enough money. And there's virtually no government support. So it is entirely dependent on philanthropy of primarily individuals. There's some corporate giving, but that's small. It's really individuals and a lot of people that aren't around the business don't remember, but it was less than 15 years ago, the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is one of the great orchestras in America, went bankrupt. They actually had to file bankruptcy and restructure their compensation. But they kept playing and they raised enough money and, you know, it's always been a great orchestra.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  But the financial side could be harder. Operas are worse. Operas are worse, aren't they? Operas are even more expensive. It's a great art form, but it is a charitable proposition. A lot of people think ticket prices are too high and I'm sympathetic. I wish we had more ways to subsidize more tickets. So what share of the budget do ticket prices account for? I'm not sure this is public. It's just you and me here, Gary. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but it's like 30%. Wow. Of the total, yeah, it's somewhere between 30 and 35 of the total cost of running the orchestra. So when you say that that's it for ticket sales, changing ticket prices even by 10% or 20% doesn't make a big difference.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  It's got to come to charitable contributions.

• 8:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  How do you think about the notion of patronage generally for the arts, especially as, you know, you're a guy from the world of finance? I could imagine people listening to this and saying, well, if classical music and opera and even literature and the other arts are so valuable, why isn't there enough demand that they can be supported without these patrons? How would you answer that question?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Well, take an orchestra as an example. If one said, okay, there is demand. On the one hand, there are people that want to attend the concerts. But I suppose instead of a ticket to the New York Philharmonic costing, if you bought it in a subscription, let's say it costs $120 per concert, and that's a lot of money. But instead of 120, we need to be more like Broadway plays. And this most recent Othello that Denzel Washington was in, the ticket price was $900. Now, a lot of Broadway plays, those that make money or break even, they're charged $400 or $500 a ticket. So if the New York Philharmonic said, okay, there's demand, we want to operate more like

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Broadway shows do, we'd like to break even on our ticket sales, yeah, you'd end up with $400 or $500 a ticket. And I don't know if there's demand for that. I've got to believe the audience attendance would drop. So I think it's a practical issue that you have to have philanthropy to close the gap. Just to put facts on the table, Lincoln Center itself is an umbrella organization. It owns the real estate. There are actually the 12 constituent organizations. So Juilliard does its own thing, ABT does its own opera, and the New York Philharmonic. So we each have our own model.

• 10:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  This is very frustrating, by the way, to ticket buyers who would love to be able to pick a portfolio across all the properties, but we learned that that's not possible.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Duly noted. Yeah, there are 12 organizations and each have their own model. They each have their own donor base. They each have their own governance.

• 10:33Stephen J. Dubner?

  When you were chairing the New York Philharmonic Board, was there a lot of interaction with the other constituencies? A lot of coordination?

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It varied. We had a lot of reason to coordinate with Julie Art because they have music students and we'd have them in as substitutes. We had reason to coordinate dates as to what was going on at the opera, just because there's a fair amount of overlap of audience. And then there's connectivity. The central point is Lincoln Center. So there were meetings of the organizations, but the vast majority of time, each is operating independently under the umbrella.

• 11:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm curious to know how Handel's Messiah lies in the Philharmonic's annual schedule as an attraction and as a financial proposition. I would think it's a huge moneymaker for the Philharmonic. I don't know. So I'm willing for you to tell me anything and everything about your presenter status, what that means, why it's necessary, et cetera.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  When I joined the board and was becoming the chairman of the board, there was a capital campaign already underway. And that capital campaign, like any capital campaign of any arts organization, there are all these naming opportunities. If you put this much money to endow this, that, or the other thing, here's the naming opportunity. I did look at the list and endowing the Messiah was on the list. Of course, it immediately spoke to me. I love this piece of music and look at that. It's there. So I didn't create that. This was even before I was on the board, but it was there and nobody else had stepped up to do it yet. So that's what it was a very practical thing. There were discussions

• 12:12Speaker 01

  concurrently about during the holiday season, there are a lot of tourists. What is the best thing for us to perform during that time? Would it be better to do the soundtrack of movies, which actually are very good revenue generators, ET, Jaws?

• 12:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  So show the film on a big screen and have the orchestra perform the soundtrack?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yes, we do that almost every year. Those do very well commercially. People like to come and watch a movie and hear a live orchestra play the soundtrack. So there was a discussion about that as to, well, a lot of tourists would like to come to that. And of course, the countervailing discussion is, well, a lot of tourists also like to come to the Messiah. And it does sell well. So in the end, it's sort of the things aligned where I said, "Well, I'll endow it." And we keep doing it. I'd ask our archivist, "How many years have we performed The Messiah?" It's a lot. It's decades upon decades. Just because we've done it and because it is a tradition is no reason to continue. You should only continue

• 13:17Speaker 01

  if it's a good idea. It is a good idea. Tickets do sell well. It is a good revenue generator. These are not public numbers, but we can see it as a board. I certainly saw it as chairman. The Messiah does just fine.

• 13:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  So we shouldn't expect it to go away anytime soon?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  I don't think so. It could, by the way, if the Philharmonic decided to shift and do something. They can. They're not legally bound to do it, but I have no reason to think it's going anywhere.

• 13:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up after the break, how does an orchestra sell more tickets?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  You can create scarcity and therefore more demand.

• 13:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

• 14:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm speaking today with Gary Parr, an investment banker and philanthropist, who's a former chair of the New York Philharmonic and still sits on its board. A few years ago, the Philharmonic renovated its old facility at a cost of nearly half a billion dollars. It was renamed David Geffen Hall, after the entertainment mogul who put up $100 million of the cost. I asked Gary Parr where his own philanthropic instincts come from.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  As a general matter, it goes back to my parents and upbringing, and that is, I and they have been blessed with some capabilities, some talent, and that's really important to help others. If you have money, then you get to apply that as well. But it can just simply be your time and your talent.

• 14:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's go back in time for a bit to 15th century Florence. The Medici's in their patronage argued that funding the arts and architecture and other what we Might call public goods was important, not just for beauty and aesthetics and for the soul and all that, but they argued that it would make a place, a city, a province, et cetera, more attractive for business, safer for business, more structurally sound. What are your thoughts on that generally?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  I've actually studied the Medici family, both from a business point of view, as they had a great business, trading, merchant, banking empire, from which there are a lot of lessons to be learned for investing and investment banking. And on the arts, I completely agree, but I break it into components, not having the firepower of the Medici's, I have to figure out where is a narrower component where I can make a difference. I tend to focus on the teaching of things. It goes back to even Aristotle and Plato and such, and look at what the Greeks did. It was a similar period of time where philosophical thought, the arts and architecture, they all were a part of a civilized society.

• 16:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  In ancient Greece, I know that there was a wealth tax that all wealthy families paid, and it was considered the way to fund these things. Can you talk for just a minute about the role that private philanthropy should or can play, let's say in the modern era now, because the idea that so many philanthropists from your realm, from finance, but from other realms, tech especially, have become massive philanthropists in the areas of the environment, in basic scientific research, in the arts, et cetera, et cetera. Do you consider that the sign of a healthy society in that it's generating so much wealth that there are individuals who can support things that would otherwise be undersupervised?

• 16:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Or do you consider that some kind of failure of the state to be supporting what are some pretty basic programs that philanthropists end up funding?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting. I just wish there were more, whether it be government or private. There are two models that one can compare, and that is Europe and the US. The US, for all kinds of reasons, is much more about individuals donating to charitable causes. Europe, individuals have grown accustomed over time to the fact that government does it. They therefore do not. I was chairman of an organization called Venetian Heritage. We would raise money to restore the art and architecture of the Venetian Empire. So Venice, the Veneto, Croatia. And we had a whole European board, we had a whole Italian board.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  But in the end, where did the money come from? The vast majority was American. Many of the Europeans, they would say, and they may be right. They would say, well, you in America get a tax deduction. And so you have a tax incentive to give. To which I could only say, that's partly right, but that does not explain it all.

• 18:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's stick with this particular difference, which I find particularly interesting. How much do you think is due to the fact that Europeans are simply accustomed to their king or queen or other merchant ruler funding things like this? And that the onus was never on the individual?

• 18:23Speaker 01

  I don't know. It's so deeply ingrained is what I've seen, that it's just a part of the culture. I think you've just articulated some very good reasons as to why it might be the case. But I'm not sure. Because actually, tax rates are not that much higher in Germany or, and yep. The New York Philharmonic has, and any American orchestra, has virtually no government support. It's very small. It's always less than 5%. And in most instances, it's less than 1% of the budget. In Europe, the Berlin Philharmonic, which is a great orchestra, I can remember sitting with a government official head of culture.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  And the budget for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, over 90% came from the government. It's just a whole different construct, dramatically different.

• 19:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, this is maybe a bit of a reach of a question, but do you see any connection between this American embrace, let's say, of philanthropy, including for the arts? And the singular dynamism of the American economy? I guess a philosophical parallel or explanation might be, you know, in Europe, there have been fortunes made, but it's different than here. And the economy typically throughout Europe is not as dynamic. And one explanation may be that just as a median European may be used to government funding things like the arts, the median European is also used to the government taking

• 20:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  care of a lot of other things, many of which are wonderful, you know, social security blanket and so on, and that the slightly more ruthless high-wire act of the American economy, which may require a lot more private donation for things like the arts, also serves as an incentive for creative, dynamic invention and innovation that actually generates a lot of private wealth. Do you see a connection there?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Maybe. Hey, what you've described is absolutely factually accurate. GDP growth in America has been higher than Europe for decades. Charitable giving is higher than Europe. All those are factually accurate. But you go back to many of the founding principles of America and how a democracy works, it just creates a wonderful dynamic.

• 20:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  How would you describe the state of the Philharmonic itself overall creatively and financially for someone especially who doesn't know much about it, maybe doesn't live in New York?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  I would say the Philharmonic is in better shape than it's been in many years. The current leadership is fantastic. The exciting things that now are in place is, one, there's a new hall that people really do like. The audience, the critics, the musicians actually really like the hall. So that's a winner. Second is Gustavo Dudamel is coming. And he is full of energy, ideas. He is a draw, no question about it. His artistic vision is exceptional. So that's a big plus. It's doing much better than in the last 30 years. I can say that definitively.

• 21:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me ask you a small, technical-ish question. The renovation of Geffen Hall, to my untutored ears, has been a massive upgrade. Do you hear Messiah differently now, since the renovation? Or does it sound relatively similar to you?

• 21:59Speaker 01

  I think the experience is different, and it's on multiple levels. The hall is smaller now, and it is surrounded. So every member of the audience, on average, is closer. And that just adds to the experience. When I was becoming chairman of the orchestra, I wanted to learn everything I could. I sought out Pierre Boulez, who had been the music director in the 70s. Of course, I asked him the question, you know, everybody tells me, at that time it's called Avery Fisher Hall, everyone tells me the acoustics are terrible, and we need to do something about it. What do you think? And he referenced Stravinsky and said, he agreed with Stravinsky, and that is 50% of

• 22:44Speaker 01

  what someone hears is actually what they see and feel. So he said, it's not as bad as people say it is, but it's a big, rather bland hall.

• 22:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  The lighting was a little harsh.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  The rake was not good, meaning how vertical does the incline? All you could see was the front musicians. You couldn't see the trombones, you couldn't see any of the woodwinds. So he'd say, yeah, it's just not a nice hall as an experience. And that affects people's feeling about acoustics. I took that away and said, okay, we do need to be better. It was really not my opinion. I was just listening to someone really smart, Pierre Boulez.

• 23:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  You must have been very involved with the renovation since you were chair then, correct?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  I was in one phase. This was a process that went on for a very long time. We ended up having to do, after I was chair, actually had to do a decent revamp because the costs were getting out of hand. So, yes, I was involved in a lot of process, but a lot of it also happened after I was chair.

• 23:47Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'd love to hear you talk for just a few minutes about the work you have done and others have done with the Philharmonic to develop international outposts.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  I talked to a number of industry people that had run orchestras, and one thing someone said to me that was very interesting is, The New York Philharmonic plays too often in New York. And that you sort of have to almost stand on your head to how you don't understand that one. But the comment was, you know, you can create scarcity and therefore more demand. The flip side was, at that time, Cleveland Orchestra had created a partnership in Miami. I thought, that's an interesting idea, a second home. You get a place to go perform, you're not moving around. Touring is incredibly expensive. A hundred musicians and their instruments and figuring out how you get from point A to B,

• 24:40Speaker 01

  hotels and what is really expensive. So touring is not a good economic proposition. It may be brand building, it may be some other things. But the second home, you go one place, you are stationary for a while, that's good. You can have a whole nother audience and the fact that you're going to come back, you create a loyalty and therefore you can create a donor base. So I thought about that whole combination and said, I think that's a really good idea. I thought, where in the world should we have a second home? And the idea occurred to me, where are there great musicians and not great orchestras? Vienna, Austria doesn't need us to be there as a second home. Neither does Berlin, neither does London, but China.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  So I went to China. I knew someone that was co-chair of the Beijing Music Festival with Madame Deng, who is the daughter of Deng Xiaoping. And I had a meeting with her about, I have a great orchestra. You have great musicians. We could do something together. And she said, go to Shanghai. Why Shanghai, not Beijing? Exactly. I was in Beijing. This meeting was in Beijing. I thought for sure it'd be Beijing. And she just said Shanghai will be more connectivity to New York and is more commercial. So the fundraising would be more... And she was right, of course. So I went to Shanghai and we ended up with this partnership. So the partnership was the orchestra would go to China.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  To Shanghai, be there for eight or nine days, perform five or six times, and we would start to develop donors in Shanghai, an audience in Shanghai. Shanghai had plenty of halls. It's interesting. They went through a wave of building a number of great halls. As they said, we have the hardware, we don't have the software. And so, there we go, New York Philharmonic arriving.

• 26:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  What does that mean, though, exactly? If they have the musicians and they have the halls, what exactly are they missing?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Orchestras. There was a conductor, Yu Long. Yu Long would tell me, "We're getting better orchestras, but China is particularly good at turning out individual artists." I kept scratching my head and saying, "I don't understand. This doesn't make sense to me." They said, "Look at the Olympics. Where does China excel? Individual sports, ping pong, gymnastics. But look at the team sports, soccer, basketball. China's nowhere." And I'd say, "But you're a communist country. Shouldn't it be the other way around?" And they'd say, "No, all the parents raise their kids to be the best at what they do

• 27:21Speaker 01

  because they can break out. That's the way they could actually make some money for the family." It applies to orchestras, apparently. There's Lang Lang, there's Xiu Zhong, some of the great soloists on piano are Chinese. And that's because that's how they focus and they play, and they're talented.

• 27:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is Shanghai an official or even unofficial second home then for the New York Philharmonic?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's called a residence. It's now in our 14th or 15th year. Covid, of course, put a stop before a period. We were doing it annually at the outset. Then we thought maybe every other year was a better way to do it. Then it's been tweaked a little bit where the orchestra last time not only did Shanghai, but went over to Nanjing. But the same core partnership is in place. The Shanghai government, companies, individuals, plus we started a Lunar New Year celebration. That has brought in a Major component in New York that's brought in a meaningful percentage of new customers, audience that are Asian.

• 28:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  What about donors as well?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Bingo. If you look at the board now of the New York Philharmonic, you would see that there are a number of Chinese board members. The co-chair, Oscar Tang, he was born in Shanghai. He joined the board after we had put in place this whole Chinese residency, and so I think that probably played a part in him joining.

• 28:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  And what about the pipeline of musicians from China to the New York Philharmonic? Is that a real thing?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  I'm a few years out of date, meaning I knew better when I was chairman, but auditions are the following. There's a seat available for a violin in the New York Philharmonic that's published worldwide. It used to be, and I think it's still the case, over 400 qualified applicants would send a recording, who their teacher was and where they're currently playing. Out of those 400, 75 to 100 would be invited to the hall. They would have 30 excerpts from different orchestras and concertos that they might have to play. They have to be prepared to play. They don't know which one they're going to be asked to play, so they have to be ready. There's a screen. Each musician is told before they're going out, here are the two pieces we want you to

• 29:40Speaker 01

  play, here's the music. So they have to be previously prepared for 30, and they're going to get two. They go out behind the screen in sneakers, so the judges can't tell male or female, and they get about three minutes for each one, so it adds up to five or six minutes. Then this, "thank you very much," and they move on. Imagine you've spent your entire life practicing the violin. I mean, it is what you have to have done to make it to this stage, and you get six minutes. Six minutes. I mean, the pressure, I used to say this, I was an investment banker and I'm a Wall Street, and I'd say, you know, we on Wall Street think we operate under pressure. I was involved in the rescue of Lehman Brothers and the rescue of Bear

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Sterns and Fannie Mae. That was a lot of pressure. But these musicians, it comes down to six minutes in their life. Anyway, it's all blind. What is the result? In the strings, violins, violas in particular, it was like 70% of the, at that time, that won a seat, were Chinese or South Korean female. And that's way disproportionate. Even if it was 50%, which I think is closer to now, still female from two countries.

• 30:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  You know, I feel like you're a humble guy and you're not giving yourself the credit that is probably due, but it sounds as though this Chinese connection overall for the New York Philharmonic, which has manifested itself on a variety of dimensions, that was you, yes?

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I started it, yes. And then a lot of people worked hard on it, but I did have an idea.

• 31:15Stephen J. Dubner?

  After the break, one more idea to discuss with Gary Parr, whether to sit or stand during the Hallelujah chorus in Messiah.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  I'm the presenter of the piece. And they get to this part, and I think, well, I don't stand up. People are going to go, what kind of jerk is that?

• 31:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  I'm Stephen Dubner. This is a bonus episode of Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back.

• 31:46Stephen J. Dubner?

  Give me your earliest memory of seeing live or hearing a recording of Handel's Messiah.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  I was probably 30 and in New York.

• 31:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  It was the New York Philharmonic Messiah?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, it was. It's a very...

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Moving piece of music for me. It is beautiful. It's got great, just some great movements in it. One reason I like orchestral music so much more than opera is I like the instrumental sound and I don't hear words. Everybody's brains work differently, but here's a characteristic of my brain. I now know, I look back, when I was listening to rock and roll, I never heard the words. I didn't know the words to a single song. I can tell you the songs. I can tell you the beat and the harmony and the melody and I can tell you the notes of the voice, but I have no idea what the words were.

• 32:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Wow, that's so interesting, especially because you're a Shakespeare guy.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Exactly. I love words, but you put music around it and the words, they become notes.

• 32:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  So with Messiah, say more about the experience of what you're experiencing, what you're feeling.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Interestingly, when I take guests every year as I present the Messiah, I will always say to them, this is one concert where you want to have the program and you want to read the words while they're singing because you won't understand them all. They do repeat them a lot.

• 33:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  "And he shall purify" over and over and over.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. Over and over and over. But you need to read it once so you know what they're saying. I have no idea how many times I've heard the Messiah, but I still have to read it. I still read it so that I really know every word that they are singing because they do have meaning. As you know, all the words were directly, this fellow named Jennings, pulled them all from the King James Version of the Bible. And so it's direct scripture. Most of it is actually Hebrew scripture, meaning it's the Old Testament. A little over 60% of it is actually Hebrew scripture, the Old Testament.

• 33:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  I want you to talk to me a little bit about the religiosity of the piece and your feelings toward it. So there's this... Bridge or overlap between Judaism and Christianity. And it's a work that to me theoretically could resonate for just about anyone, religious, not religious, from any tradition and so on. And so I'm just curious to know what it feels like as a piece of religious music that is also just a piece of aesthetically beautiful music for you and how it makes you feel and maybe what you take away from it.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  I have several ways to approach this. I talk about the beauty of the music and it is just a wonderful piece for the season. When you think about what it means for humanity and joy for the great things to come, some audience, they say, I don't go to church and if I wanted to get religion, I'd go to church. So you say, fine, this is just fantastic music and here's what's to listen for. It stands on its own as a great piece of music. Having said that, I do invite a lot of people and I usually do say to them, let me tell you about what's going on in the lyrics because many people do not know that it's directly out of the Bible and many, many people do not know that most of it is Hebrew scripture.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I talk about that and just to say it is a bridge. It is that bridge to our commonality. What do we have in common as opposed to what do we have that's different? For me personally, which I don't really talk about often, for me personally, yes, I was raised Methodist, very active in the church and going to church. My parents and all my Sunday school and other things, I read a lot of the Bible. So I actually know the Bible stories and I've read a lot of the Bible. So it does have a meaning to me, but I don't need to have other people feel that. In fact, I'm very careful not to, I don't want to in any way have somebody even feel like I'm trying to impose that because I am not. It is great music.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  If someone is religious, then it's a wonderful experience on that level as well, but they need not be.

• 36:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  You bring up what is essentially the universality of the piece. And many people have written about this over the centuries, of course, and what constitutes that universality, there's a sense of hope, there's a sense of redemption. And then there are lines that if you didn't know, they were from thousands of years ago about a set of civilizations very different from ours, you might be surprised. I'm thinking the line, "Why do the nations so furiously rage together? And why do the people imagine a vain thing?" Can you talk about the ways in which Messiah has contemporary universality because of those kind of ideas and sentiments beyond the religious?

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I think of it in themes, this idea of there's something greater than us and greater than us as individuals or greater than nations. That actually, for me, is a big part of the theme of this piece of music.

• 36:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  What is your personal position on standing or not standing for the Hallelujah Chorus?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  I think anybody could do whatever they want to do.

• 37:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. Well, you say that as the former chairman and as the current patron of this piece, but you know that many people, when they come to a performance like this, they're very intimidated.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that's why I say you can do whatever you want. However, my second part to the answer is I feel a peer pressure. So I'm there, I'm the presenter of the piece, and they get to this part and, you know, I think, well, if I don't stand up, people are gonna go, what kind of jerk is that? So I stand up.

• 37:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tell me what you know about how the New York Philharmonic players feel about Messiah. It is something that is beloved, obviously, and popular, but, you know, they have to play it four times every year. They might be a little bit sick of it. I don't know. What do you know about that?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  I know what they say to me, but maybe they're just being nice. This I know. There are quite a number of the musicians that count it as one of the more special pieces of music they play, and therefore it is an emotional thing for them. They want to play it. They look forward to doing it. They give me great insights, though. This is some years ago, and it doesn't matter who the conductor was, but I went in intermission. One of the violas, I was saying, "How do you like this conductor? How do you like this style? How's it going?" And he said, "Gary, it's unfortunate. The conductor is, we knew he was old. I knew he was old." He said, he's old. He actually doesn't hear that well. And so he said, watch,

• 38:29Speaker 01

  you will see that he's actually just waving his arms. And he said, this is rare, but we're really playing without a conductor.

• 38:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  So there's a behind the scenes insight.

• 38:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you know much about Jane Glover, this year's conductor?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's been here before. I have seen her in performance. She's good because she's a specialist. And that doesn't necessarily mean good, but yeah, the orchestra like her. There's a reason she's back.

• 38:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  So I'm curious, you know, we've talked about a lot of really interesting differences and a few similarities between funding for the arts today versus, let's say, 16th, 17th, 18th century, 19th century, Italy, England, Germany, et cetera, et cetera. Do you feel like and identify with the patrons of old when you read about King George II, who supported Handel, for instance, in London, and the Medici's who supported so much in Italy, including Handel when he was living there? Do you feel like you're part of that tradition, essentially?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  I frankly would have to say I hadn't thought about it that way. Because my, if nothing else, humility would keep. No, I'm just a kid from North Carolina, who-

• 39:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  But it's pretty cool, Gary. I mean, come on.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Yes. On the other hand, I love that I can try to make some difference in my own modest way. I just think it's a part of a cultured society. There's commonality. Anybody can say, I like music. You might like one type of music. I like another, but we can talk about it.

• 40:02Stephen J. Dubner?

  That again was Gary Parr, presenter of the New York Philharmonic's Messiah. Thanks to Gary for the conversation and thanks to you, as always, for listening. We will be back very soon with the final episode in our series, Making Messiah. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else, too. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. You can find our entire archive on any podcast app. It's also at Freakonomics.com, where we publish transcripts and show notes. This episode was produced by Zach Lipinski and edited by Ellen Frankman. It was mixed by Eleanor Osborne with help from Jeremy Johnston. Thanks to my Shakespeare friend Jim Shapiro for making the connection to Gary Parr. And special thanks to London

• 40:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Symphony Orchestra Live for letting us use their wonderful 2006 recording of Messiah, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Alina Cullman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Abouaji, Elsa Hernandez, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippon, Alaria Montenacort, Jasmine Klinger, Morgan Levy, Sarah Lilly, and Teo Jacobs. Our theme song is "Mr. Fortune" by The Hitchhikers, and our composer is Luis Guerra.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  When I was at Lazard, we advised the Greek government on a restructuring. They had retirement plans that were generous. And broadcasters, radio or television broadcasters, were able to get full retirement, I won't get it right, but it was sort of like around age 53. Why so young? Because they were close to a microphone, and microphones have germs, and so they were exposed to illness more than other people. I'm not kidding.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Stitcher.