A couple of weeks ago one of my daughters sang in the first night of the Proms. In case this sounds like a large claim, her role was a small one amongst hundreds, being part of the combined forces of the Halle Youth Choir along with a host of others from around the country. But this family involvement meant that I scanned the TV listings for the first night coverage with more interest than usual, and I was startled to learn from the Guardian that, amongst other unlikely sounding propositions, the pianist Stephen Hough was going to play the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes.
It's in the nature of Proms programming that occasionally something wacky gets put on, and I thought, "I had no idea Britten had made a piano version", rather than, "Flippin' Grauniad. Can't get anything right".
In the event, as going to the concert revealed and as this week's Private Eye reports, Four Sea Interludes was in fact played by the BBC SO; Hough merely ran his fingers over the Rach / Pag Rhapsody and the Lutoslawski version of the same tune (he was fantastic). The Eye says the listings mistake arose because the broadsheets don't employ many people who know anything about classical music; and that this is because the papers don't print much about it. What the Eye didn't say is that this was because most people aren't interested in classical music, and the papers can't sell the advertising space.
Why is that? Amongst a whole host of reasons is the sad fact that since the 1960s in this country the repertoire has failed to renew itself in the way it did in the past. New pieces have not been played and come into the repertoire. Only a handful of the Second Viennese School pieces, whose influence dominated music in the last century, have managed it (the Berg Violin Concerto - now name four others). None of them come remotely close to emulating the joyous acceptance of Elgar's Symphony No. 1, which received over a hundred performances in the year after its first. Conductors and administrators have programmed music by composers the public didn't like. Unsurprisingly the public has turned its face away. As a whole, it has become disengaged. The mistake in the Guardian's listings is symptomatic.
A week or so later the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra played a piece in the Proms by Helmut Lachenmann, described by the Radio 3 announcer as "one of Germany's leading composers". God help them. It's worth remembering that the Great Serialist Terror began several decades earlier across the Channel, and has not died out there yet. I listened dutifully to Lachenmann's piece. It was rhythmically tedious, ugly and one-paced. It made a half-hearted attempt at sonic invention, but got nowhere near the felicity and verve of, say, Dusapin, nor indeed of the new dance records they play at my gym. It was grim, dull and unpleasant. And putting a worldwide audience off classical music.
Sadly, there are plenty of composers out there who are writing stuff the public do like, and I'm not just banging my own drum here - I listened today to a Piano Trio by Matthew Taylor on Spotify. Excellent. I can't wait to hear some of his orchestral music. Sadly, none of it seems to have been put on at the Proms.
