Watery music

sir – The head of the Royal Philharmonic is making a serious error by believing that abolishing the term “classical music” will suddenly attract thousands of young people into our concert halls (report, March 22).

The leadership of the RPO seem to be suffering from a crisis of confidence in their art form – brought on by our society’s obsession with making everything “accessible”, or rather, watered-down.

Even during the years of Soviet Communism, Russian musicians and orchestras – with the encouragement of the state – maintained the most elitist rituals, even when playing before industrial workers in factories, positively rejoicing in classical music, and all of its white-tie-and-tail rituals.

It is very sad that in modern Britain, serious art and culture of all kinds is being dissolved into a supposedly democratised mass of nothingness. That such ideas should come from the RPO – the orchestra of Sir Thomas Beecham – is beyond belief. Stuart Millson

Classical Music Editor, The Quarterly Review

East Malling, Kent

sir – The head of the RPO wants to call classical music “orchestral music”. Would he call Beethoven’s piano sonatas or Haydn’s string quartets orchestral music too?

John H D Gibson

Colwall, Herefordshire

sir – What would happen to Classic FM? Gerald Milne Windsor, Berkshire