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Who is it that's using this music? Is it enough to present great music, whether live or recorded, regardless of how many turn up for the event or listen on radio or iPlayer? Not many are turning up for our eminently accessible Bohemian Rhapsody series (maybe my face on the publicity is turning them away). The traditional 'warhorses' no longer seem to draw people in. Can orchestras, whether the SSO or the Berlin Phil, assume they're going to go on forever if they can't engage with more music lovers? There are some big questions here, and I'm not offering answers. The questions overlap and interconnect. Read for an overview of the questions - remembering that there is no ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in America, also that orchestras and classical music stations are funded by advertising and private donation. Or , which links to a wealth of articles - particularly the first link to a brilliant column by Stephen Johnson (....are live concerts dying?) There's a month's worth of reading there, but dip into it - we need feedback.

Who are we for? Who is paying for what, and are they getting what they want?
Two ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ war cries: "Audiences are at the heart of everything we do" and, Our Vision is "To be the most creative organisation in the world". And here's one of my war cries: "Atonal music has been around for a hundred years now, and it still scares audiences away from concerts". Bear in mind that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's and the Arts Council's task is to promote composition, not to dictate what should be written. Richard Rodney Bennett, being interviewed by Tom Service on Music Matters, said how he wants to write music that communicates - admitting that he started his compositional career at the cutting edge of the avant garde. Penderecki and Nicholas Maw said the same thing on another recent Music Matters. Peter Maxwell Davies, in a video interview on our website for our 29th October concert, flagged up the problem that not enough composers have engaged with the majority, non specialist audience, adding the caveat that composers must nevertheless stay true to themselves. He emphasized the latter point during his pre-concert interview. Absolutely. So, now we've identified a problem, and we're all going to have a grumble.....so the first thing to do is to find someone to blame.

I blame managements. Well, of course I do - I'm a Union member. Us comrades on the shop floor never get to choose anything that we play, so it can't be our fault. (I'll come back to that - it's unlike me not to be able to find something to blame myself for.) Can we blame the composers? Well, all of them have to kowtow to managers if they want their stuff done. So, who do the managers kowtow to? Critics? Aha! Are we shifting the blame? There's nothing more important for a manager than good press reviews. But, what if some new piece is played, and the players think it's rubbish, the audience (the few that turned up) are visibly irritated, and then the critic goes on to tell the world how wonderful the whole thing was? Worse, most critics talk in a highfalutin music-speak that is way out of touch with the majority, non specialist audience - a bit like those oenologists rabbitting on about wine when all you want is a half decent swally. Sometimes the audience obviously has a wonderful time, and the critic tells the world it was rubbish - or is the audience being told that they are ignorant proles if they enjoyed it? Who's right? I have experienced this hundreds of times in my forty years. Multiply that by all the orchestras who do modern music. What's the knock on effect? The majority non specialist audience loses faith in the whole thing - and resolutely stays away from such events? The players dismiss the critic as a clot?.....at their peril, because critics wield power over the fortunes of our orchestras. Who's right? Blame who you like - deride what I say - but let's agree that there is a problem. In Music Matters, Leonidas Kavakos praised the Berg violin concerto as a great work - a complete musical experience. I agree. But the Berg certainly won't attract an audience. What's the answer? How are we (which includes the critics) who think this music is so good and get such thrills from it, going to persuade more people to engage with it and discover its riches? Ultimately, can atonal music ever deliver what Bach or Brahms deliver? Endlessly shouting that something is important is a waste of breath. If you or I feel that something is important, then that excitement needs to show itself - it needs to spark across the gap. People want a Really Exciting Experience, not verbiage. Great classical artists like Nigel Kennedy, John Williams or Yo Yo Ma have 'crossed over' and exponentially increased their relevance = brought classical music into the frame for hundreds of thousands. The roots of music go deep into communal experience - can that experience be abstracted from the community that engenders it? Has the universal availability of absolutely everything led to a culture where little value is put on anything? How important is the 'actual event'. Can you have tinned peas without people getting their hands dirty growing the peas? Does anyone still remember what peas taste like, freshly picked from the garden?

These questions attract unwelcome relatives to the door. The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ is more than ever under pressure to justify its subscription and public service remit. Ideas are being bandied around, like: Use ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ license money to help Channel 4, use it to help regional commercial stations etc. Would the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ be able to do its thing properly if slices are taken out of it? At the least, this pressure has forced the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to tidy up its act - expenses, executive salaries etc. Further down the food chain whole departments, maybe orchestras, will come under threat. If an orchestra is hovering inside a fog of irrelevance, who will notice if it disappears? I don't want to sound too negative - the orchestras are more valued and supported than they have ever been during my time - but none of us can predict what fiscal storms might blow. I don't even think that fiscal storms are what we should be worrying about - for me, The Big Question is about the day to day relevance of our work. Has live music become merely posh wall paper for a society that prides itself on being cultured? For you who pay for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ, what priorities do you want for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ? Is it enough for the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ to provide wall to wall entertainment? Would you prefer to buy furniture from an organisation that gives you, the end user, the best price, or would you pay a little more to an organisation that is nurturing the very forests that give us the wood in the first place? (Let's not even discuss whether that nurturing is incidentally saving the soul of the community.) If live classical music is going to survive, it will need to be a really exciting experience - for player and listener, in the concert hall or at home. Last Thursday, Piers Lane played the whacky and jazzy 1st Martinu piano concerto, and followed it with an outrageously funny encore - Dudley Moore's Variations à la Beethoven on Colonel Bogey. Very Good Fun. Catch it on iPlayer before Thursday. Some conductors and soloists are experimenting by sharing concerts with non classical acts. There are groups playing Beethoven in their sets in pub gigs - note what Beethoven said, "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy, it is the wine of a new procreation, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit". He said something similar many times, but not usually with such effulgence. Saying that about his own music would be megalomaniac nonsense if it wasn't for the fact that his music really can lift a destitute uneducated street kid in Caracas up into a better world. If it's good for street kids, it's good for all of us. Whatever. I suppose that I'm reaching for the idea that understanding the importance of music is as important as understanding the source of our food ......food's absolute dependence on bees in order to grow.......bees' dependence on the right flowers and biodiversity....... We have to see the whole picture - we have to see far beyond the end product.

Don't be dictated to. Share your thoughts.