Oh the joys of the Lottery. Concert halls the length and breadth of Britain with remarkable histories and equally remarkable states of decay are being lavished with the kind of care and attention which would be the envy of any grande dame. Tonight it is Birmingham’s turn to reopen the sprucely painted doors of its fabled Town Hall – a venue which, since its incarnation in 1834, has hosted such musical luminaries as Dvorak, Saint Saens, Johann Strauss, The Beatles, Buddy Holly and, of course, local hero Edward Elgar. Other cities which either already have or soon will follow suit include Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast and London. In each case Lottery money has been mixed and matched with civic pride to raise the many millions required and I believe it is money well spent. Questions have been raised as to the viability of, say, Belfast’s Ulster Hall competing with the city’s gleaming new Waterfront Hall or Birmingham’s Town Hall with Symphony Hall but the benefits to audiences are plain to see: the Barbican’s response to the reopening of the South Bank Centre has been to programme their most vibrant season in years. Live performance has never been more popular. People need respite from their sedentary TV’s and computers – something the government has hopefully taken on board in the Comparative Spending Review. The rewards of cultural nourishment can be hard to quantify in terms of immediate cash but a nation which flourishes artistically will be happier and more at peace with itself and you can’t put a price on that.
Roman Abramovich has a lot to answer for. Apart from elevating a run-of-the-mill football club way above its natural status he is also responsible for reintroducing one of those slightly annoying, archaic words which become common parlance for a week or two before they slink back to the dusty recesses of the lexicon where they belong. ‘Oligarch’ is the word in question and it was much in evidence last month when the sale of the great cellist Rostropovich’s art collection was halted on the eve of its auction at Sotheby’s, London, because a ‘Russian oligarch’ had snapped it up. Although this pre-emptive deal was described by the auctioneers as ‘highly unusual’, the strangest aspect of the sale to me was the content of the collection itself. Here we had the results of a lifetime’s interest in art by one of the twentieth century’s greatest musicians. Yet not one of the 500 lots had anything to do with music. Odd.
The 2008 edition of The New Penguin Guide to CDs thudded through my letter box the other day. (Actually it didn’t because there is no way that such an enormous tome could fit through any known letterbox – even a Russian oligarch’s). Its 1588 pages – at least 500 pages more than when it launched in 1975 – is yet further proof that recorded classical music is far from finished. In fact the number of currently obtainable classical CDs is much greater and covers a massively wider range of music than at any time in history. So what keeps confounding the prophets of doom? The answer lies in the music itself and the musicians who make it. No finer example could have been provided of the power of music to literally transform people’s lives than the astounding performances given this summer by the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra from Venezuela. Here were poor kids from the barrios who passionately believed in the music they were playing and wanted the world to know it. Or consider the burning desire of young British violinist Ruth Palmer. Fed up with being rejected by managers and record companies she determined to “do it herself”. Hawking herself from one potential sponsor to another, she managed to cobble together enough cash to record Shostakovich’s First Concerto – “something I was passionate about and in which I felt I had a lot to say”. The recording won her both rave reviews and the “Young Artist of the Year” award at this year’s Classical Brits. So there’s the rub for those who enjoy forecasting the death of classical music: musicians who truly have something to say will always find a way to say it.
