Politics and music. Do they, should they, mix? Some of the twentieth century’s greatest musicians certainly thought so. Casals refused to play in his native Spain while Franco was in power. Menuhin was actively involved with UNESCO and Rostropovich’s open support of Solzhenitsyn cost him his Russian passport. Yet – despite their own continual struggles with the Soviet authorities – Rostropovich’s compatriots, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, preferred to let their music speak for them (just listen to Prokofiev’s Sixth or Shostakovich’s Eighth symphonies.) On August 21st 1968, in a cruelly ironic piece of programming, Rostropovich was scheduled to play the Czech composer Dvorak’s Cello Concerto at the Proms. Earlier that day Soviet tanks had rolled into Prague to crush Alexander Dubcek’s liberal reforms. To compound the irony, Rostropovich’s accompanists were a Soviet orchestra (the USSR State Symphony) under a Soviet conductor (Evgeny Svetlanov). Despite vociferous objections, the concert went ahead. I have it on tape. During the concerto’s hushed opening the Royal Albert Hall resounds to strident yells of protest. It must have been a nightmare for the cellist, yet Rostropovich proceeds to give a performance of such seething intensity that no one could have left the hall with any doubt about his feelings towards the invasion. In their very different ways both politics and music aspire to influence the human condition but, before musicians are tempted to play politics as well as music, perhaps we should consider the advice of Ecclesiasticus: “Pour not out words where there is a musician.”
It was not a dignified beginning to my Far East tour. My trusty instrument had retained its spike for nearly two hundred years and for it to be detached after all that time by Heathrow security officers was hard to bear: emasculating, even. But detached it was and duly banished to the hold – another victim of the ongoing crusade against terrorism. Yet, as the long metal appendage with its sharpened tip clunked unmusically onto the conveyor belt at Seoul International (earning me seriously suspicious looks from my fellow passengers), I could not help but feel that this tool of the trade had seemed a good deal less threatening tucked up inside my cello where it belonged. Where, I wonder, will it end? Will my bow soon be counted as an offensive weapon, too? Will the cello’s strings have to be removed on the off chance I might try to throttle a stewardess with my G-String? And what about all the other instruments? I am pretty sure you could give someone a good, hard whack with a flute – not to mention all the nasty things you could do with the ‘business’ end of a triangle. And surely the viola is an offensive weapon anyway? (Only joking comrades).
It never ceases to amaze me how easily we British cede to our foreign counterparts. During last month’s tour I found out that classical music is an obligatory part of the education system in many Far Eastern countries. As a result large numbers of their young people both learn an instrument and attend concerts. Not here. In South Korea I noticed that classical musicians are frequently featured on daytime television. Not here. When I dared to suggest on these pages that British television should play its part in letting young people discover classical music, I was taken to task by a Guardian columnist who opined that to find your child watching classical music on TV would be as embarrassing as learning that your granddad likes Eminem. Unfortunately, that kind of remark only fuels our media’s continuing determination to deny British children access to classical music. We have some fantastic young musicians in this country who should be given an opportunity to play to their peers on the programmes they watch. If it were not for the North of England’s great brass band tradition Coronation Street would not have its theme tune. But when was the last time the soap showed anyone learning a brass instrument? Reality TV? Not, apparently, when it comes to classical music. We need to face the fact that Britain has dumbed down – badly. Then we need to decide if we are going to do anything about it. Tessa Jowell was right to say that culture was more inherent in Germany’s way of life than ours. Sadly, she could have said the same about almost anywhere.
