M u si c
Middle Europe vs the Rest
Peter Phillips
My recent experiences at the Interna- tional Music Festival in Lucerne (called locally, with some reason, the IMF) has convinced me more than ever that there are two concert-giving worlds in Europe. Whether these should be called 'the German-speaking' and 'the Rest' is debat- able on account of the uncertain status of Edinburgh in this equation. I refer to those festivals where the repertory is biased towards 18th and 19th century German and Austrian works, where the artists are all mega-stars, where the big record labels move in like the Mafia and where the average cost of a ticket is somewhere around £30. This is as opposed to the other kind of international festival, more familiar in England, where the repertory includes early and modern music, where the orga- nisers take risks with the ensemble they invite and never book the Berlin Philhar- monic under Karajan, where the big record labels can only be bothered to the extent of taking out an advertisement on the penulti- mate page of the festival brochure and where the average price of a ticket is £8.
Lucerne, even among middle-European German-speaking festivals, is an extreme example. This year there is one pre-18th century concert (given by the Tallis Scho- lars) and one 20th century concert (given by the Ensemble InterContemporain, con- ducted by Peter Eotv6s). These, along with their programmes and artists, have been completely submerged in a bewildering company of symphony orchestras, singers and conductors of the very highest reputa- tion. Featured in every shop window are full-size portrait-style photographs of the accredited masters: Karajan, staring im- periously out; Bernstein, allowed to look more casual, sitting at home consuming a score by the power of his concentration.
On the other hand, there are few festiv- als outside Switzerland and Austria which would dare to restrict their presentation quite so much. This is both because they cannot afford symphony orchestras of this standing every other night, and also be- cause the press, and in the end the public, would not stand for it. I was struck recently that several critics were disappointed that the Oslo Philharmonic on its visit last week to the Proms did not promote any modern Norwegian composers, which is to say that indirectly they wished there had been some modern music in the programme. The Proms, in fact, have long taken a responsi- ble attitude to commissioning new music, even though it was predictable that attend- ances at these concerts would be dis- appointing. It was Sir William Glock who had the idea of packaging a modern work among old favourites, so that more people might hear the modern piece as it were by mistake, and so, it was hoped, overcome their prejudice.
The Proms have been equally responsive to early music, though they really do have a problem about staging it in the Albert Hall, as has been shown in the past ten days by two baroque orchestras which must have been inaudible more than halfway back or halfway up. The audience for the second of these (Amsterdam Baroque/ Koopman, 27 August) was one of the smallest I have ever seen at the Proms for any kind of music, and yet these players, among others, are slowly revolutionising our perception of pre-classical music. For these possibilities, which the public cannot perceive and will not initially support, we need festivals and promoters with the desire to experiment.
Each of these two systems that I describe has built up methods of operating which to a remarkable degree make them mutually exclusive. It is rare for the Berlin Orches- tra to appear outside a handful of German cities, whereas the smaller groups which supply such festivals as Bath, Holland, Flanders, Paris, Como and many others are considered too risky in Lucerne and Salzburg. It may even be that their fees are so adapted to other circumstances that the administrators of these two festivals can hardly believe that a group asking so little can be worthy of their attention. The Tanis Scholars' fee, normally such a bone of bitter contention and fascinated disbelief, was almost held to be derisory in Lucerne.
However, I sense that a rapprochement may be at hand. The artistic director in Lucerne told me that the two other festiv- als which are considered to be in their super-league are Salzburg and Edinburgh. Salzburg this year had its first ever early music concert (Andrew Parrot's Taverner Consort singing the Monteverdi Vespers), which apparently was received with stoical politeness, but it counts as a start. They fared better than we did in Lucerne, where members of the audience were heard to leave between each item. Yet they intend to persevere with early music. Edinburgh has a reasonable record for modern music, helped by its extra-serious-concert activi- ties, though its resistance to early music is the more regrettable since Scotland had a flourishing and individual school of com- posers before the unification. I have told them so.
Looking at it the other way, there has never been any problem finding a market for the big boys like the Berlin Philharmo- nic. The problem is always getting the public to pay realistic prices for a seat at their concerts. But if these alternative repertoires really catch on, the bottom could just drop out of the German sympho- nic repertoire. I hope it does. It is incom- prehensible to me why people are prepared to pay such prices to hear Karajan conduct- ing Beethoven's 4th for the 1,659th time. No piece of music can withstand that kind of repetition.
Previous page
