It’s easy to pooh-pooh conservative summer orchestra concerts. But “what is it about these neighborhood concerts that makes them work so well? They come at a time when even the orchestra management is saying that supply outstrips demand for subscription concerts – you know, the ones whose ticket prices have escalated at three times the rate of inflation. Maybe the fact that the neighborhood concerts are free has something to do with it. But for these audiences, the act of the orchestra coming to them gratis eases more than just logistical and financial hurdles. The trek becomes a social gesture in which an important civic institution takes a little of its glamour and prestige to declare that a section of the city or suburbs matters.”