The flamenco evening was wildly successful. There was, to begin with, the raw electric pleasure of flamenco, sung and danced live by two distinguished veterans, Carmen Linares and Pilar Rioja, and preserved on films shot 30 years ago in Spanish cafes. This is ethnic art with an edge, and if three of the Spanish composers the orchestra presented -- Joaquín Turina, Carlos Surinach and Roberto Gerhard -- were dim by comparison, still it was fun to hear (in Surinach's and Gerhard's case) sophisticated minds taking inspiration from their culture's roots.
But then came Manuel de Falla's "El amor brujo," and the theory came alive. De Falla, whose intensity can match flamenco, wrote this theatrical work for a flamenco singer, not the mezzo-sopranos who normally sing it now. At first Ms. Linares was unsettling, a tiny voice contending with the orchestra (she should have been more strongly miked) and sounding rougher, too, like desert sand against the velvet of the strings and winds. This tension, though, is in part what the music is about, and tore a veil of distance from de Falla's homage to flamenco, bringing alive the point the Brooklyn Philharmonic wanted to make: Classical music can be closer to popular art than most people think.
This was the Philharmonic at its best. The Marianne Faithfull event was its nadir, dragged down, first of all, by "Parable of Death," a blank work by the orchestra's conductor laureate, Lukas Foss. Nor was Ms. Faithfull terribly impressive. She has the proper knocked-around persona for Weill's most famous songs but didn't offer much beyond that. Which left Robert Spano, the Philharmonic's music director, as the evening's star. The pieces that he led -- Sibelius's "The Swan of Tuonela" and Tchaikovsky's "Francesca da Rimini" -- had no audible connection with the rest of the program (they're based on stories involving death; that was supposed to be the link). But Mr. Spano himself is a real find, an unforced and powerful conductor who lets music unfold naturally, a man who makes you think the works are speaking for themselves, even though he's in command of every detail.

Mr. Spano was strong, too, conducting contemporary works in the "A to Z" evening, though the concept had problems of its own. They started with the notion of presenting Zappa as if he were a major pop-music figure, even though (in spite of all his genius) he really was a fringe curmudgeon, with a cult following hardly typical of mainstream pop. The error was compounded during a preconcert discussion, when Joseph Horowitz -- the Brooklyn Philharmonic's executive producer, and the man behind the programming -- introduced Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, whose acerbic romp "De Stijl" was about to have its New York premiere.
Mr. Andriessen, it seems, likes Motown, and Mr. Horowitz told us so in terms that implied this was remarkable -- as if a taste for Motown hadn't become a generation-defining cliché. Here (and also in the absence from the program of a whole range of younger classical composers, who have pop and rock imprinted on their chromosomes), the Brooklyn Philharmonic showed a conceptual weakness, a notable blind spot for contemporary life.
Because of this blind spot, Mr. Horowitz may overstate the impact of folk-to-classical programs like "Flamenco." They draw crowds, they delight classical music connoisseurs, and they have been adopted by other orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony. But though they demonstrate connections between classical music and popular styles, do they go a step further, as Mr. Horowitz hopes, and really break down the walls that separate classical music from everyday life?

I wonder. To people who don't care about flamenco already, won't its influence on de Falla seem no less academic than Haydn's influence on Beethoven? And what about the people who do come, who pack the house for Marianne Faithfull? Do they learn to care about the Brooklyn Philharmonic? I doubt it. At the last subscription weekend -- a purely classical event, featuring Mr. Spano's vivid and sensuous performance of Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe" ballet -- the hall appeared to be half-empty.
And why should that be surprising? If you look beyond the programs (and the casual dress of those who do attend), what you see is a conventional orchestra in penguin suits. Elsewhere in the symphonic world there's talk, sometimes more than talk, of doing things differently -- adopting pop-style lighting, say, or having the musicians speak to the audience. Mr. Horowitz -- a classical music scholar who sincerely wants the field to change -- decries these notions as "cosmetic."
But if we believe even for an instant that the medium is the message, then the Philharmonic is sending mixed signals. Its programs shout "we're new and different"; its appearance mutters "same old story." What a missed opportunity! Here we have an orchestra that has done what the classical music business dreams of -- it has found new listeners. But it hasn't learned how to keep them.

[The Brooklyn Philharmonic is aware of the problems I discussed, and knows very well that it needs more subscribers. Joseph Horowitz hopes to draw new people by selling Robert Spano. but that, I fear, would sidestep the biggest difficulty. It's not that Spano doesn't deserve a larger audience; of course he does. But there's nothing flashy about him, nothing saleable -- except to an audience of classical music connoisseurs, and wasn't the original idea to break the boundaries of classical music?

Horowitz thinks I didn't say enough about the enthusiastic crowds at some of the concerts, and he's got a point. The Brooklyn Philharmonic can draw an extraordinary audience, probably unique in the symphonic world. It's casually dressed, and intensely committed. Horowitz must have been stimulated by this review, though. He invited me to be the keynote speaker at the Brooklyn Philharmonic's annual retreat -- and encouraged me to bring my criticisms directly to the orchestra's board of directors and its staff.]

Wall Street Journal, May 23, 1997