DISASTER OF THE DECADE

love Beethoven and Mozart, but they have a passion for new music too, and often an equal passion to uncover forgotten black composers or women composers. And whereas in previous decades this trend could have been dismissed as the enthusiasm of a few outsiders, it’s now moved mainstream, as the success of Chineke! and the BBC’s recent all-day celebration of the music of the Boulanger sisters proved.

Just as profound in its effects is the way that the boundary between classical music and other forms of music is becoming porous. Jazz and pop musicians often aim for classical seriousness, while classical composers embrace pop-inspired grooves, technology and the ethos of the art “installation”. To put something in the “classical” box now seems increasingly arbitrary. If someone declares they are a classical composer, we have to accept it.

And yet, and yet… the familiar daily round of the “core” classical world goes on, and continues to give pleasure to millions. Orchestras still play symphonies. True, one or two debt-ridden orchestras in America and the UK have had near-death experiences over the past decade, but they survived. Pianists (some of them) can still command full houses with Beethoven recitals, and the Proms continues to draw a worldwide audience of tens of millions. These things are not going to disappear, but they are certainly going to change. In earlier times, those changes felt reluctant and often tokenistic. In the decade now ending, they have been profound and irreversible – and they’re not over yet.

LONDON SYMPHONY/ KRISTJAN JARVI 2014

This world-classical crossover concert at the Barbican from Dhafer Youssef, performer on the Arabic lute or oud, with the LSO was the acme of vapid awfulness.