Wow, Zach! What a piece you have presented here, quite the existential tale.
I am old boomer folksinger/songwriter who managed to cut a couple of vinyl records of my own compositions back in the late 70's. But I spent my adult life selling ads, printing, then gravitating to carpentry and raising three kids with wife who pulled a heavy part of the load as an ICU nurse.
Anyway, I still love music. In recent years, I have spent hours and hours, days and days, listening to great orchestras, mostly in Europe, perform the greatest musical compositions of all time.
Most of this relevance issue relates directly to choosing pieces that modern audiences can relate to and appreciate.
In King of Soul, a novel I published a few years ago about what happened to America during the Vietnam war, I took a whole chapter describing, musically, a performance of Beethoven's 9th symphony.
Beethoven was the greatest of all time, still is!---a restless soul who mercurial mood anticipated our modern existential dilemma.
Before Ludwig, Antonio Vivaldi was the original Rock musician. If you don't believe me, listen to the summer movement of his "tempo impetuoso"!
Along those lines, and your "New World" association, Dvorak's New World is one of the best musical experiences possible. And let's not forget Tchaikovsky's 1812, Swan Lake, and of course the perrenial favorite Nutcracker.
Orchestras should just, generally, stay away from the stuff academic constructs and give the people passionate music that anticipates and actually excels the passion of contemporary pop and rock.
Haydn an Mozart are okay for going to sleep to.
Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue is a fun aside.
I had a very compelling clarinet experience in Muich, provided by the Bridge Ensemble, a highly-crafted klezmer group. I wrote about that experience in my first novel, Glass half-Full.
In my region, Charlotte Symphony does well, under the baton of Christopher Warren Greene, but then North Carolina is a conservative place.
When all else fails, turn to Beethoven's 5th instead of a fifth of something else.
Never give up, Zach, but you have to make your presentation to the world . . . your own opus, as Ludwig did.
Thanks for sharing on Medium.
