The Southbank Centre is hosting a year-long festival designed to tie in with Alex Ross's surprise best-seller The Rest is Noise, which explores the story of twentieth-century classical music. What a brilliant idea. How useful for readers who want to engage with the book in a more communal way than sitting by their stereo (or with their iPod) while reading.
Alex Needham, in a recent Guardian article, thinks that this, along with other upcoming festivals, demonstrates that audiences are actually keen to hear more modern and stereotypically "difficult" music. I certainly am! As a teenage cellist I found that music by Bohuslav Martinu (among others) spoke to my emotions and experiences much more than the centuries-older standard cello repertoire. It's only recently that I've had the chance to explore modern music in any depth; I wonder whether, if I'd had access to the sort of performances that Needham describes, I might have been more interested in the idea of music as a career.
There are also interesting projects afoot to make visuals a more integral part of the concert experience, something which may help to appeal to the elusive "young people" demographic. If it's done well this could complement and add to the artistic experience of a concert rather than (as it might) distracting from it. I went to a glorious James Gilchrist concert at Kings' Place which was staged by Transition Projects and I thought it was brilliant.
It would be interesting to hear what Greg Sandow has to say about this. He has good points about the difficulties that classical music is facing but I sometimes think that he doesn't talk enough about why it's worth saving.
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