From Maureen Lehane Wishart, Artistic Director, Jackdaws Music Education Trust.
Reading the articles by David Curtis and Jo Treharne in your feature Beyond the Concert Hall (AP issue 116, 27 February), I am struck yet again, by the fact that the onus is always on the musician to make music accessible to the audience.
Neither article says anything about the audience itself actually doing some homework. These articles and others like them, are constantly emphasising that the performer must make the music accessible, attractive, not difficult; but it is difficult; it does need hard work on the part of the audience; it does need concentrated listening. Jo Treharne makes Mozart sound like an entertaining clown; he wasnt. To quote David Curtis: Do our conventional concert halls simply reinforce unhelpful stereotypes around classical music? What on earth does that mean? And again &more imaginative performance practices. Pianists doing handstands on the piano before the concerto perhaps? (and of course, only one movement of the concerto). Or what about &does the traditional concert hall present more barriers than opportunities? What is he talking about? I go to a concert to listen to the music; I ask for peace and quiet (not a jumbo jet roaring down the runway) so that I can not only listen, but also think.