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(Picture source: ClassicFM)
Recently I was contacted by a marketing company working for superstar Dutch violinist, composer and concert master André Rieu. In addition to inviting me to review Andre’s latest CD ‘Roman Holiday’, I was also asked if I might help advertise “André Rieu themed parties”.

For many “serious” classical music fans, André Rieu epitomises high schmalz and low culture: the Disney-esque concert master with the curly mullet, his concerts brimming with Viennese waltzes and polkas, the women in his orchestra resplendent in bouffant crinolines. Ye gods! The man even has his own tv series on Sky Arts. However, for many people he also represents an accessible way into classical music: his concerts sell out, he makes millions in CD sales, he has undeniably clever and powerful marketing and PR. The latest strand in the André Rieu empire is “themed parties” where, presumably, people sit around listening to his new CD (mullets and crinolines not necessarily obligatory). Whilst enjoying a joint guffaw with my musician friends and colleagues on Facebook, a number of people suggesting that these parties might be like updated Tupperware or Anne Summers parties which take place “guiltily behind closed doors”, the idea of a classical music themed party began to gain some credence – for me at least…..

How to engage new audiences is a constant preoccupation of almost everyone in the classical music industry. Many things have been tried, from The Late Shift (classical music in a pub) and Speed Dating with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment to performers eschewing formal clothing in favour of comfy sneakers and jeans and swearing a lot while talking about Bach’s sex life, or asking the audience to pay only what they think the concert is worth (a recent initiative from the Hallé). These days you can enjoy contemporary classical music in a carpark, or Baroque music in a semi-ruined church (The Asylum in Peckham). I’ve hosted and performed in several concerts at Brunswick House, part of the London Architectural Salvage & Supply Co, where you can buy the chair on which you are sitting, or even the piano, as everything in the building is for sale. 

Performers, promoters and concert organisers are constantly trying to find new ways to rebrand the notion that most classical music was written by “dead white males” to sex it up for new audiences and the younger generation. Trouble is, the younger generation can spot an older person trying to get on down with the kids a mile off, or recognise when they are being patronised – and to be honest, classical music doesn’t really need sexing up: it’s quite sexy – and exciting and varied and heart-stoppingly wonderful – enough as it is.

(Picture source: Kef store)
Is the idea of a “themed party” where one enjoys classical music really such a preposterous one? Once upon a time there were record clubs where people met to listen to LPs and enjoy and discuss the music/performers they heard. If not André Rieu, what about a Philip Glass themed party, or a Mozart party (with the option to wear powdered wigs and brocade waistcoats), or a Messiaen party where we all wear shades of mauve and orange with flashes of sky blue? Joking apart, such events could be another way to engage new audiences by allowing people to sample classical music in an informal setting (someone’s home or a small intimate venue), where there is no etiquette (beyond good manners), no need to worry about clapping at the wrong time, or not knowing enough about the Second Viennese School….. (In fact, this notion is not so far removed from something I was involved in until recently – the London Piano Meetup Group, an informal group of pianists and piano fans who met in various venues to perform, share repertoire and generally rave about what we love about the piano and it’s literature.) You see, I believe that if people are allowed to explore classical music on their own terms in a friendly and unpretentious environment, they might just consider buying a ticket to a concert at the Southbank or Wigmore Hall. In some ways, it’s just about giving them to confidence to make that leap from living room to Leipzig Gewandhaus…..

Returning to Mr Rieu, here is an intelligent and entertaining article on what mainstream classical musicians and orchestras might learn from André. After all, he must be doing something right, given his full houses and million-dollar CD sales….. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

More on engaging audiences for classical music here

Five Ways to Attract New Arts Audiences

What’s wrong with the classical concert experience in the 21st century?

Classical music isn’t a secret society unless we allow it to be

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Who or what inspired you to take up composing, and pursue a career in music? 

I grew up surrounded by a family of musicians. Everyone played in the local brass band and my grandparents were really my first teachers. When I was 15 I received a scholarship to study at Chethams School of Music in Manchester and whilst there a friend and I sneaked out of school one day to see a production of the Rite of Spring. It was the first time I’d experienced orchestral music and dance performed live together and I found the whole experience hugely overwhelming. As soon as I left the theatre I knew I wanted to write music.

Who or what are the most significant influences on your musical life and career as a composer? 

Early on in my career it was brass bands that provided me with a way into music. I grew up playing the tenor horn and moved onto French horn when I started at Chethams. It was here that I experienced orchestral music for the first time. The music of Stravinsky, Turnage, Prokofiev, John Adams really struck a chord with me. Even now I find those early influences really underpin what I want to do as a composer. My music is often very fast, driven and rhythmic. It’s immediate, and for me that’s important.

What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far? 

I’m about to start working on an opera. I think this will be my most challenging project, but I can’t wait to get started on it.

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working on a commissioned piece? 

For me the aim of the process is to hear my music performed. I’ve never been good at writing music without a performance in mind. The process is hard, long and at times frustrating but to finally hear the music performed is what drives me. Of course when you are working to a specific commission or brief you can’t necessarily write whatever you want, but the restraints that come with a commission are good for me; it gives me structure and a guide.

What are the special challenges/pleasures of working with particular musicians, singers, ensembles and orchestras? 

I love collaborating with other artists. As a composer you spend a great deal of time alone and this can sometimes be counter productive. So the opportunity to actually create music with other musicians, artists or choreographers is something I thrive on. I really work my best when I’m working with others, so when I’ve collaborated with choreographers or librettists I feel I’ve written some of my strongest pieces. When you know the ensemble you are working with so well it can help drive the creative practice. I have a great relationship with Tredegar Town Band, for whom I have written two large works now. Since I know the players and conductor so well we can just get straight the heart of the music. It’s wonderful.

Which works are you most proud of?  

That’s a tough one because I am very self-conscious about the music I write. In most of my works there are moments that bother me, either because listening now I find it naïve or I feel I could do it better if I was able to write the piece again. But I suppose the two pieces I’m most proud of are Dark Arteries, a ballet I’ve just completed about the miners’ strike, and Velocity, which was commissioned to open the Last Night of the Proms in 2014. It was such an honour to be asked to write that piece, the whole experience was just incredible.

What is your most memorable concert experience? 

A few years ago I heard the Berlin Philharmonic play Brahms 2 in Oxford at 10:30 in the morning. I have never heard such an incredible sound in my life. Every single player, from the front desk to back, played like they were leading the orchestra and the performance was thrilling. I heard them play the whole of the Firebird score last year at the Proms and I was in tears at the end. They’re such an incredible group of musicians.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians? 

A career in music is tough and is full of challenges and frustrations and so you have to work hard and practice your craft every day. Go to lots of concerts and listen to lots of different kinds of music. Take what you do seriously and be self critical, but don’t be self critical it impedes on you improving, know when to give yourself credit!

Where would you like to be in 10 years’ time? 

Happy, comfortable, maybe taking a walk in the Blue Mountains.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Having a lovely time on my roof with my London family…. Also eating sushi….

What is your most treasured possession? 

My pictures of my friends and family.

What do you enjoy doing most? 

Time in London. I love this town and it breaks my heart to see what’s happening to it at the moment. I just hope that we can get it back on track, it’s the most amazing city in the world and we shouldn’t allow greedy, corporate villains to take it from us. It is the centre of cultural universe and we must fight to keep it that way.

 

 

 

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Philip Glass

As a string player who can make a claim to only the most rudimentary pianistic ability (accompanying On the Dodgems in a pupil’s ABRSM preparatory test really did make me go cross-eyed), I embarked on this Pianist’s Alphabet entry on Philip Glass with the fitting trepidation of the interloper.

Why do I want to write about Philip Glass’s piano music? The answer is envy. There are many marvellous tricks that we string players can execute – vibrato, portamento, flying staccato – but one thing that is harder for us is the motoric or raindrop ostinato which is so integral to Philip Glass’s music. We can try, in pieces like Arvo Pärt’s Fratres, but various physical impediments stand in the way of pellucid purity, the bow being the major one; therefore, in Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, we are far better suited to the long notes, which can be made expressive with different bow pressure, or judicious vibrato No doubt there are also many difficulties inherent in Glass’s piano music, which require the same attention to the voicing and spinning out of its long harmonic lines as a piece of Bach, but the results are marvellous: mesmeric, crystalline, resonant, and eloquent, despite the ‘limitations’ Glass places on his musical palette.

Like many people – I assume – I first became properly acquainted with Glass’s music through film scores (specifically The Hours and Notes on a Scandal) and when I came to know more of his music, I began to wonder how it was that his minimalism possessed such rhetorical power. I also wondered why so many people, hearing similar styles of music, by composers less aesthetically adept than Glass would tut ‘Sounds like Philip Glass’ with a dismissive, mirthless laugh.

In Tristian Evans’s Music, Multimedia, and Postminimalism (Ashgate: 2015), the author’s more positive and open-minded analyses explore why Glass’s music possesses such infinite adaptability, moving between the spheres of absolute music and ‘film music’ with ease – an ease which, as Edward Strickland writes in New Grove, has led to Glass becoming ‘one of the most commercially successful, and critically reviled, composers of his generation.’ You can read an example of such criticism by Justin Davidson, in the New York magazine. However, the ways that Davidson, amongst others, censures Glass, are precisely the reasons why I like his piano music: Glass is famous for his musical intertextuality (mainly quotations of his own ideas) and references to other music. In his Etude No. 2, there’s a clear referential link to the first Prelude of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, and it is pursuing the twisted paths of motivic reference – through the repetition that Davidson finds so distasteful – that I love.

Finally, performance. As an encore to Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos in E-flat at the 2015 Proms, the Labèque sisters played the fourth of Glass’s Four Movements for Two Pianos. Witnessing the intricacy of their interaction, the delicacy required to balance the musical texture, and extract its essential melodic trajectory, was a masterclass in communicative, rhapsodic piano playing.

Corrina Connor

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More than a quarter of a century ago a family of piano enthusiasts in Swansea had a simple dream – to establish a local specialist business for pianists looking for something truly special. It all started in an unassuming 250 year old coach house with fantastic local historical charm with room for just 23 pianos. However, for the aptly-named Coach House Pianos, it was the perfect place to starting building a business that was set up to give pianists simply the best instruments for a variety of different players.

It’s clear to see that the company has always focussed on nothing less than excellence – from Steinway to Zimmerman and Yamaha to Bechstein. By building its reputation over the course of over twenty years, Coach House have housed everything from brand new Kawai baby grands to genuinely antique, century-old Steinways.

coach-house-bannerEvery pianist will agree that when it comes to meticulously crafted handmade pianos, like Steinways and Yamaha’s, that there’s an air of uniqueness and almost personality around each individual instrument. They all carry a story; develop their own sounds; create their own tonal qualities and offer an experience that’s different for each pianist.

That’s always been the dream of the family behind Coach House pianos, which is why their appointment as an official Steinway & Sons stockist was so important to the company.

Not only was it vital from a business perspective but it gives validity to what they do and what they offer players; pianists know that these instruments are more than just ‘buying a product’ but help start a journey towards unique musical experiences.

 

“Today, little has changed, apart from the size of our establishment!”

Fast forward to 2015 and the firm prides itself on being the UK’s largest stockist of new and used Steinways – irrefutably revered instruments that most pianists would consider themselves honoured to even play. The company was forced to move its premises from the small converted coach house into something more practical and fitting of the illustrious international Steinway name.

Now sitting in a purpose-built two storey showroom, Coach House Pianos has transformed the premises into somewhere that Steinways feel more at home. Marble floors, crystal chandeliers and the perfect acoustic environment house literally hundreds of pianos.

“Today, little has changed apart from the size of our establishment,” say the company. “Same family, […] same standard of service!”

www.coachhousepianos.co.uk/
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As a footnote to this article, I can attest to the high-quality service of Coach House Pianos. The company kindly loaned us, free of charge, a beautiful Steinway Model D for the Concert for Hannah Lindfield in September.