This is an older lady we are friends with. Far older than our own organisation, which is about 25 years old and also older than ourselves here in the hall. But it's an extremely vibrant organisation, which is why the purpose of the Friends' Association is to contribute to the orchestra's - and also the choirs' - future and businesses. Not remembering the past.
This is what has characterised our work in the past association year, although it has also been influenced by the fact that 2025 is the 100th anniversary of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, or the DR Symphony Orchestra as it is known today. More about that later, but first I'd like to give an overview of our activities as an association for both choirs and orchestras under the auspices of DR.
Today, we have 1124 members in the Association of Friends. If anyone can remember a somewhat higher figure, it's not quite right. Notoriously, we lost some members in connection with the corona, but in the past there has been a mess in the membership count where, for example, some people were counted twice, and expired members were still counted.
Fortunately, today we have an accurate membership figure and an accurate overview of the economy.
As far as our activities are concerned, we are in good shape. Our promotion of DR's offer to attend the rehearsals is producing roughly the same results as before - somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 chairs in six months. And that's despite the fact that the price has increased a few times along the way. In this context, I must once again remind you that we have no influence on pricing. DR and the ticket agency are the ones who dictate it.
The selection of concerts is also the responsibility of DR, although every season I negotiate with the people in charge to maximise the selection. And when I say that it's DR that decides here too, it's not entirely accurate, because in fact the conductors have the final say, and it's far from all of them who want an audience at rehearsals.
However, it has been around four concerts per half-year for a long time.
All in all, it works OK with the symphony orchestra, but not very well with the Big Band, which is characterised by the fact that the musicians do not have the same connection to DR as the other ensembles.
We haven't had the best of times with the Girls' Choir either. They have changed conductors and in the six months we are now in, they had an offer for us on the drawing board, but it fell through when they got a commitment from the Ministry of Culture. As if that was more important than us. ....
On the other hand, we have had the good experience that DR has occasionally offered us tickets to the concerts themselves at a greatly reduced price, and I can see that many people take advantage of this opportunity.
With the help of DR, we were able to offer you a bonus experience at a rehearsal in the spring, where DR's Head of Repertoire Tatjana Kandel gave us an entertaining and instructive talk about how a Thursday concert is created from the first idea to the performance in the hall. We have every reason to believe that we can occasionally make similar bonus offers to you.
Everything I've talked about so far is something where we are working to provide as many good offers as possible, but where decisions are beyond our capabilities. On the other hand, none of your membership fee money goes to those purposes.
We use the money from the membership fee to support individual musicians and singers or groups of them in various ways, but also for events where DR has to seek funding outside of the licence fee and entrance fees. I can give a concrete example. In the centenary year of the founding of the symphony orchestra, two anniversary concerts will be held with Mahler's Eighth - a huge work in which DR's choirs and orchestras need outside help to man the instruments and voices. We are supporting this with a considerable amount of money.
Later today you'll hear how we support individual musicians and singers, and I already know that they'll reciprocate with a small concert for us.
We are committed to supporting the future - so that our orchestras and choirs can continue to maintain the high artistic standards that characterise them today more than ever.
That support is very broad. For example, we have supported the Choir School, which nurtures future singers. We pay for some of the school's students whose parents are unable to pay for summer camp and tuition fees themselves.
In recent years, we have also supported the so-called stunt test, where future graduates from the Academy of Music are prepared to perform as well as possible when competing for a place in an orchestra. The tests are extensive and the hope is that this will enable the Symphony Orchestra to hire the best of the best musicians.
But during this period we have also paid an amount to the Danish Timpany Academi, where timpanists from near and far meet during their summer holidays to learn from each other.
We have also supported the creation of a World Peace Philharmonic Orchestra, modelled on Daniel Barenboim's peace orchestra, which will work to use music to build bridges between warring parties around the world. It must be recognised that this task has not borne much fruit in recent years.
We receive a lot of applications and help where we find the opportunity and relevance for it, but sometimes we have to say that an application falls outside our purpose.
We are constantly trying to do as much as possible in the organisation without compromising our purpose of supporting the ensembles and are also making improvements in that area. We have virtually no expenses other than a little for the administration of the organisation.
In recent years, we have learnt how important it is that our IT systems work so that we have control of communication with our members and so that our members can communicate with us and DRs Koncerthuset.
Our expert in the field, treasurer and much more Stig Hother Hansen will talk about this now as part of the board's report, and he's also the one you'll hear when you call the organisation's phone.
He works hard for the organisation and is - like the rest of the board - unpaid. We therefore urge you to only call him within the specified time period, so that he also has the opportunity to hear some music in between
Here you go Stig. The floor is yours.
As you all know, we have a brand new system and website.
Why would you do that! The old one worked fine.
Yes, but it had an expiry date.
Instead of updating to a new version, we opted to get a brand new system - cheap!
Transferring data to the new system was a bit of a task, but it went really well. We only experienced a few problems.
For many, the biggest problem was having to create a new password of 12 characters! - and remember the code again. The old password could not be retrieved.
A few couples had a problem with both having the same email. The system couldn't handle it.
Finally, we discovered a previously unknown bug in a payment module. This meant that some members were paying a little too much in membership fees!
All in all, it has gone almost beyond expectations. You have been really good and patient. I can only praise that - thank you!