That might help audiences of today feel more relaxed about orchestral
music the way that audiences of 200 years ago felt. Not a stodgy
presentation to be listened to in rapt silence, but rather an event to
attend for the audience to enjoy themselves and relax.
Either David's choice of the word "relax" is unfortunate, or else we're badly off the track here. Relaxation is exactly the opposite of what I teach listeners to do: it leads to the expectation that musical experience be a comfy chair, which is what almost all the contributors to this thread are complaining about.
In order to stretch beyond the already-familiar, audiences need to do some work, which starts with arts education in the schools, public funding, and all the rest of it. And it's the job of music educators to motivate people to exercise their brains a little, and accept that that's part of the process of experiencing art. This is not the same thing as saying that all "difficult" art is worth the effort. But some of it is, and in any case, "relaxation" is not the goal.
--David A. Lawrence
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