Big 20thC Music project for 2013

[A Lark Ascending]

Information is appearing about a major year long project based around 20thC music in 2013. Includes lots of concerts and a major BBC 4 TV series.

Seems to be using Alex Ross' 'The Rest is Noise' as a label (which will inevitably lead to a rash of scowling over pince-nez from certain quarters).

Some details:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2012/bbc-four-southbank-partnership.html

More details here:

http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/classical/2012-13/the-rest-is-noise

Edited February 16, 2012 by A Lark Ascending

[David Ayers]

Don't think it amounts to all that much if you look at e.g. the programme of the LPO which is supposedly the principal partner of the whole thing. In fact you wouldn't know. The TV coverage will be unbearable, not for the music but for the inevitable watery commentary.

I enjoyed this gentleman's misunderstanding of when the C20th starts and ends:

“The 20th century divides classical music lovers like no other and there's no more thrilling way of discovering what the last 100 years brought us, than by listening to its music, in all its rich, vibrant, challenging and melodic glories,” said Richard Klein, Controller of BBC Four.

I suppose as its safely tucked away on BBC 4 they can say and do what they like - no-one will even know it's there.

[A Lark Ascending]

I suspect its aimed at middlebrows like myself, the sort of people who enjoyed the Ross book.

The arts establishment will sneer as usual...they might even dismiss it as bourgeois!

[David Ayers]

Um, I think the South Bank Centre and the BBC basically are the establishment. Unless you know of some other? But yes, if you look at the published programme of the LPO it doesn't even mention this series, and its concerts contain the usual C20th elements. So far, all this seems set to add is the TV commentary which, like Radio 3 chit-chat, tells me very little that isn't already general knowledge. Of course, if the second part of that year (which falls the season after next) takes its late C20th remit seriously I shall be most interested, but I doubt orchestras will program any more Stockausen and Henze than usual - a little, as usual, but not more than usual. I hope to be surprised.

I always want things to be better, it's true.

[A Lark Ascending]

Um, I think the South Bank Centre and the BBC basically are the establishment. Unless you know of some other? But yes, if you look at the published programme of the LPO it doesn't even mention this series, and its concerts contain the usual C20th elements. So far, all this seems set to add is the TV commentary which, like Radio 3 chit-chat, tells me very little that isn't already general knowledge. Of course, if the second part of that year (which falls the season after next) takes its late C20th remit seriously I shall be most interested, but I doubt orchestras will program any more Stockausen and Henze than usual - a little, as usual, but not more than usual. I hope to be surprised.

I always want things to be better, it's true.

It will be commercially driven. But that's what is interesting. The success of Ross' book seems to have made something on this scale seem financially viable. There's a wider interest in more recent 'classical' music. On the TV front, I suspect the BBC is buoyed along by the success of its Friday night documentaries that have shown there is an audience for a wide variety of non-mainstream musical documentary (Sonny Rollins tonight!).

This side of the BBC doesn't seem to be about producing academic treatises to engage in a debate with a small number of 'connoisseurs' on their own terms, keeping 'culture' in the family of those who 'know' and can properly appreciate it (and should therefore be left the responsibility of interpreting it). It's a recognition that there is an audience beyond that sphere who are musically curious but get put off by the 'insider' culture of the contemporary 'arts' world.

To me it seems a much more interesting project than playing non-stop Schubert for a week!

[David Ayers]

Maaany people who are interested in music report that they avoid Radio 3 because they don't enjoy the talking. That includes me. If everything is perpetually geared to introducing audiences, there is then nowhere for those audiences to go once the introductions are over, except back out the door. Same for concert programming where, if the 'modern' offerings are mainly a certain restricted canon of works which are constantly being 'introduced' then the audience who basically gets those works and has heard them in concert many times has nowhere much to go. So far the announced concerts seem to make no break with the usual, and are not even flagged as part of the series, which makes me think this series is a kind of presentational afterthought. However, if future announcements reveal things being done on a scale not previously seen then it will begin to look different. I don't think this is commercially driven, I think it is an attempt to address a pressing question about how large audiences are to be persuaded of the validity and developing purpose of the musical canon. I am just not clear if there is any additional resource, and I doubt somehwat the 'introducing' model (do we need 'introducing' to Rite or Leningrad yet again?). I'll be happy to be surprised.

[A Lark Ascending]

Well, it's not the concert part that interests me. If you are not in easy reach of the capital then whatever has been done in the past to 'introduce' is an irrelevance. The London experience only reaches so far.

I take your point about needing to go beyond 'introductions' - but outside of a few urban centres (and Huddersfield!), even the introductions to the late-20thC have rarely been tried in a sustained way.

I just speak as someone on the outside, not completely unknowing about more recent music and with a willingness to take on the non-tonal, looking curiously in. As with more avant garde jazz, those who curate this music rarely show much interest in exciting that outside world. I get more of a sense of 'this is our world, it's very hard, you have to pass our tests.'

Maybe the insiders should be trying harder to communicate their excitement in the music (as you have in Boulez recently - I'm still hoping for some more inspiration from you in that thread on music of the last 50 years) rather than sighing every time the BBC or LSO lets them down. The sigh sometimes comes across as relief...phew, it's still exclusive to us.

[David Ayers]

Easy reach of the capital is probably 20-25 million people (within, say, a one hour train journey).

I do know that outside London orchestral programming is less cosmopolitan. In London the early C20th is routine, and not just the Rachmaninov and Elgar but the Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartok, Messiaen, Britten, Berg, Shostakovich. There's a difference between major concerts and special events such as the Total Immersion weekends, where the former really are about creating large audiences and the latter are more specialised and focussed (so you don't e.g. have to sit through Debussy and Stravinsky yet again to get a bit of Dutilleux (as we did recently at Gergiev's concerts). The South Bank is a democratic venue both in origin and in its current existence, and it is easy to see that orchestral programmers work hard to generate audience buy-in for their ventures (recently, Unknown Prokofiev, Bartok Infernal Dance series, soon Boulez conducts Szymanowksi and Scriabin [i'm going, but, uhh...] next season Gergiev conducts Szymanowski [more uhhh from me] Salonen conducts Lutoslawski [yay-ish] and many and various. These bodies are so expensive to run that they have to work on developing audiences which want to go beyond the Planets and Rach3, and they are quite evidently succeeding. I like what they do and I understand their constraints, but I am not too excited about this South Bank season as it seems to be more about packaging. That said, if the book, concerts and broadcasts create a synergy, that does no harm.

Edited February 17, 2012 by David Ayers

[A Lark Ascending]

Maaany people who are interested in music report that they avoid Radio 3 because they don't enjoy the talking.

Done properly, the talking is one of the main reasons for radio. Especially in this day and age when you can amass a large collection at reasonable cost and play uninterrupted music on your record player, streamer or iPod...or just get Spotify to let it pour out.

Get the right person able to enthuse and you get taken down all sorts of side tracks (would John Peel's programmes in the 60s and 70s have been better without talking?).

Now, Radio 3 has made some populist errors - most notably the breakfast show with classic hits and phone-ins. I tend to have it on at work between 7.00 am and the first lessons as a way of easing me in to the day and get really irritated by some of the jabber. I really don't want to know about composers and their dogs or the favourite coffee of celebrity piano virtuosi (alive or dead).

Edited February 17, 2012 by A Lark Ascending