The difference between an independent orchestra like the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra or a broadcasting orchestra is quite clear within the profession, and I'm glad to have this opportunity to underline it, because for the layperson or for people involved in the broadcasting industry, it's often very unclear indeed.
An independent orchestra like the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra operates on a subscription season basis whereby people invest in the subscription of their choice for a particular series or type of music during the course of the year. Our budgets are mapped out two years in advance and they're according to guest artists who come into the city.
We have Richard Kurth here from UBC. What actually happens is that when his students leave UBC.... Before Ben Heppner, for example, arrived on stage with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra or arrived on stage with the Metropolitan Opera, he had to undergo a period of development. He was singing in local choirs here in Vancouver that were actually broadcast on CBC Radio. Young composers who have emerged from UBC and who have emerged from some of our other campuses across the country had their teeth cut, as it were, at the CBC composers competition, played by the CBC Radio Orchestra.
Incidentally, I conducted this orchestra only once, but it was as part of this particular project, and one of the works went on to win a prize at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Paris that same year.
A radio orchestra operates a mandate that's really producer-based. So the radio producers would help to drive the repertoire choices, the promotion of Canadian talent, and the promotion of Canadian content.
Measha Brueggergosman, for example, who now is a world-famous artist with a Deutsche Grammophon recording contract, made her first recording with CBC Records. Our own recording of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra that was made with CBC Records, as you've already heard, has won a Grammy. But the CBC Radio Orchestra has made, I would guess—although I don't know actually, but I would imagine—more records for CBC Records than anybody else, of Canadian content. The entire heritage aspect of Canadian music has been performed and played by the CBC Radio Orchestra in its traditional role and function as a tool of the CBC.
A CBC radio orchestra does not have to worry about box office restrictions, but then, of course, that opens the question, if that's the case, why do we need one? Why not have the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra that is open to box office restrictions? But the functions are very different. The development of composers and the development of young artists within a studio context is something that all major concert-music-producing broadcasting organizations—for want of a better collective noun—have done. So a radio orchestra's function is something specific I think to Canadian music and young Canadian artists.
The VSO is very much an international profile organization; we're doing a tour of China and Korea this year. But the CBC function is something for the airwaves and has that particular curatorial thought.
If I could just liken it, for example, to the National Gallery of Canada, which contains sections of national and international masterpieces, but also contains, of course, rare copies of Group of Seven art and Canadian art, the function of the National Gallery in that respect is something that one wouldn't expect perhaps from something that was more commercially based around the country.
The CBC Radio Orchestra looks after our Canadian heritage specifically.