Ian Taylor
Journalist
‘As a writer and professional guinea pig, I have tried everything from fad diets to wreck diving in the Bermuda Triangle in the name of journalism. But now a completely different challenge: my first classical concert.’
If you’re not a lover of classical music, you encounter it in strange places. It’s the music you hear on adverts or at busy train stations prone to antisocial behaviour.
It’s the productivity-boosting playlists Spotify recommends when you search for something, anything, that might stop you procrastinating.
In each of these examples, it’s music as background noise, a passive or subliminal experience. If it elicits a response in you, it’s via some sneaky biological back-channel.
The last time I remember listening – actually listening – to classical music, the venue wasn’t exactly a concert hall. It was a brightly lit fast food restaurant in north London where a piece of music I recognised but couldn’t name provided the soundtrack to the most blissful cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten. And I’ve eaten a few.
Perhaps you’ve guessed by now, but I am not a lover of classical music. It’s not that I dislike it, but when I was growing up, my parents played the Eagles at home, not Elgar, and I’ve never felt an urge to seek it out for myself.
And yet, here I am at the Royal Festival Hall at London’s Southbank Centre, where the Philharmonia orchestra is about to give my virgin eardrums an experience they’ve never had before. Eighty-plus world-class musicians are set to play a blockbuster piece of music that even I have heard of, The Planets by Gustav Holst, preceded by two other works by Richard Wagner and Sergei Rachmaninov.
I’m excited. When you get to your late thirties, brand new experiences are fewer and farther between. Live music is a joy but my concert history is made up almost entirely of guitar bands. Nothing like this. Nothing so grand.
The hall has a retro-futuristic quality to it, like some 1960s-designed spacecraft where hundreds of passengers are taking their seats. There’s bustle. People are more casually dressed than I expected and I feel less of an imposter than I thought I would.
But while I’d like to tell you that I saw the light all by myself, the truth is I’m here by invitation. As part of its 2019-20 programme, the Southbank Centre has launched Encounters, a scheme in which hundreds of newcomers to classical music are invited to watch their first live concert, free of charge and accompanied by a leading musician or composer. In turn, they can invite another newcomer to the venue in the hope of sparking a wave of new interest in concerts.
The scheme, open to charities, local community groups and businesses (plus me), aims to give the uninitiated the best possible introduction to classical music and sweep aside any preconceptions that concerts are stuffy, elitist and unwelcoming.
‘Classical music used to be an exclusive club,’ nods the singer and composer Roderick Williams, my chaperone for the afternoon. Warm and charismatic, he strikes me as an ideal poster boy for getting new audiences to shake off their doubts. ‘I think that has gone,’ he says, ‘but I understand why people might still hesitate.’
In my head, classical music is still shaking off a cartoonish image of ‘highbrow’ culture: old and white and out of reach for anyone but Latin-speaking lords and ladies. But my own assumptions are quickly challenged, and it’s not
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My parents played the Eagles at home, not Elgar, and I’ve never felt the urge to seek classical music out for myself
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just the dress code. Tickets for today’s concert start at around £15; I thought they’d be three times that.
Classical music is becoming more accessible, Williams suggests. Yes, a little knowledge and experience will make it richer, but that’s true of anything, from great literature to competitive tiddlywinks. ‘Whatever it is that you are interested in, it starts with a formative moment,’ he says. ‘Someone maybe said, “Do you want to come along to this?” And you go and you like it and you decide yes, that’s for me. I’ll have a bit of that.’
That’s my hope for this afternoon. I want the full Julia Roberts experience. Remember the film Pretty Woman? Richard Gere takes her to see an opera for the first time and tells her about the power of the music. Sure enough, she’s
overcome with emotion, cries during the solos and, in her own words, almost pees her pants.
Hopefully, it won’t come to that, but I am more optimistic about this afternoon’s performance, however. It’s another preconception, but I’m expecting the breath to get caught in my throat, the hairs on the arms to stand upright like they do in Dolby advertisements.
It’s not just wishful thinking. There are reasons to expect that I’ll like this. I enjoy film scores, for example, John Williams especially. And without wishing to sound twee or try-hard, I want to like it.
So what can a rookie expect? ‘One of the biggest differences you’ll notice compared to other sorts of live music is the duration,’ Williams says. ‘Most songs you hear on the radio are three, four, five minutes long. Some of these pieces may last 15 minutes or more without stopping. So your attention works in a very different way here. You might find you enter a kind of meditative state, but one where you don’t have to maintain laser focus. Your thoughts will drift. You’ll make shopping lists.’
Williams says he jumped at the chance to be involved in Encounters, not least because The Planets is on the programme. He thinks it’s the perfect introduction to classical music because it’s varied, accessible and well-known. ‘You’ll know some of the standout melodies from The Planets and you’ll probably go, “Oh! Isn’t that…” And the answer is always, “Yes, yes it is.”’
Before we take our seats, I ask Williams for tips on how best to enjoy it. ‘Well, there are a couple of options. You have today’s programme, so you could do the homework and read about the music first. There’s a lot to be said for that. And there’s a lot to be said for closing it and just sitting back and saying, “OK, what have you got?”’
‘That’s what I’m aiming for. I want to be surprised,’ says Sarah, a fellow invitee. She is attending today’s concert with Streetwise Opera, a performing arts charity for people affected by homelessness. Like me, it’s her first taste of live classical music, although she has performed in the charity’s productions and workshops.
As the musicians file in and the applause falls silent, Sarah’s approach seems best. My ears have no formal training; even school music lessons were minimal, lasting just a term a year, on rotation with cookery, metalwork and drama. The teacher did try to educate us on sheet music but she had no time and no chance with a class of 30 teenagers for whom music meant Oasis or the Spice Girls. Since I can’t forensically dissect the music, I try to let it wash over me instead. It works – as Williams said it would – in patches.
First up: Wagner’s Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, followed by Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. It’s loud and grand and Ivana Gavri ’s piano playing is almost objectively beautiful, but I don’t know this music. I can’t follow it. After 10 minutes or so, it becomes an endurance test for my attention
span. I fidget. More than once I paw my trouser pockets for my phone. It’s an uncomfortable thing to admit, but the concert is probably the longest screen break I’ve had in months.
Normally, when I see live music, it’s music I know. I sing along, stomp my feet. There’s a more obvious connection with the performers. Here, there’s an invisible screen separating the musicians from their respectful audience, who only make a noise when coughing fits ripple through the room during breaks in the music.
I find myself drawn to the mechanics and physicality of what’s happening on stage instead of the music itself. The string section moving in unison. The musicians banging drums or clashing cymbals. At one point, the conductor, Christopher Warren-green, literally leaps into the air, his arms flailing like a duelling wizard. It’s hard not to enjoy, but when the interval arrives, my vocabulary comes up short trying to describe how I feel. ‘Very impressive. Very… relaxing,’ is about all I manage when people ask. God, I’m supposed to be a writer.
For whatever reason, the music felt distant, even if I was bowled over by the spectacle. I wasn’t bored, but nor was I enthralled. But that all changes within a couple of minutes of The Planets. Listening to the opening segment – ‘Mars, Bringer of War’ (great title for starters) – it instantly feels like more familiar territory. John Williams must have been influenced by Holst, because this is pure science fiction. It’s exciting. It’s Star Wars. I love it, instantly.
The Planets’ narrative makes it far more engaging for a newcomer like me. The emotion is heightened, the changes in direction easier to understand. You’re not just observing the orchestra, they’re taking you on a ride. I have genuine chills down my spine during a famous
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What lingers is the precision, the skill it must take to play that music – or write it
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and rousing section of ‘Jupiter’, although I can’t tell you if that’s because it’s a genuinely arresting piece of music or because I know it from the Rugby World Cup. Probably both. And by the time an all-female choir joins in for the haunting cameo at the end of ‘Neptune’, I feel breathless and utterly transported.
So that’s why people come, I think. The applause is long and deserved. Outside, I turn to Sarah and Brian, another attendee from Streetwise Opera. We’re all smiling and, as Williams predicted, comparing notes about the bits we recognised. ‘Amazing, just amazing,’ Brian says, shaking his head slightly.
Everybody agrees that it won’t be our last concert but I head home with a different appreciation to the one I expected. As affecting as The Planets was, there were no Julia Roberts waterworks. What lingers instead is the precision, the skill it must take to play that music – or write it. How anyone composes something that involves all these people without a supercomputer is beyond my comprehension.
The experience may not have changed me, but I do feel something: genuine awe. And that’s got to be worth £15.