“It’s almost akin to a papal pronouncement,” writes Laura Silverman in Thursday’s (3/4) Times (London). “On Monday the world’s most influential classical music critic, Alex Ross, will deliver the annual Royal Philharmonic Society lecture to the assembled cognoscenti at the Wigmore Hall in London, entitled Inventing and Reinventing the Classical Concert. … The time has come, Ross says, to rethink the way that Brahms, Beethoven and Bruckner are presented. Plenty of rethinking has already gone on in the UK. … We asked Britain’s classical taste-makers to tell us what they think Ross should say.” Says Marcus Davey, chief executive of the Roundhouse Reverb series, “Authenticity is essential. If you’re doing Mahler’s First Symphony don’t put a rock band in the first 20 minutes just because you think it would engage a younger audience. … The aim of the Reverb series was to bring a younger audience to classical music—and did we get a younger audience! … We didn’t reinvent the music at our concerts, we reinvented the way you might feel when you go to them.”
Posted March 8, 2010
