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As concert life begins to return to something resembling “normal” after months of silence – the result of government restrictions in response to the coronavirus pandemic – venues, promoters and indeed the performers themselves can do a great deal to help audiences book tickets and get back to the live music and opera which they enjoy.

I’m both a concert-goer and also a publicist and it frustrates me when venues and artists make it difficult for audiences to access information about events and book tickets. It also makes my job as a publicist more frustrating when I don’t have the right information to share with potential audiences.

Now more than ever we want to encourage audiences back to venues so let’s make it easier for them.

Here some thoughts on things which deter audiences and suggestions on how to optimise potential audience engagement and retention:

  • Artist websites which do not list concerts in order of most recent. Who wants to scroll through someone else’s calendar to find the right date?
  • Artist website listings which do not include live links to the venue or ticketing site
  • Artist website listings which have broken or incorrect links to venue or ticketing site
  • Venue or ticketing sites which omit crucial information such as ticket prices and concert start times; such information is only available if you click through to another page/site. (Studies show that people usually abandon a site if they can’t get the information they want within three clicks.)
  • Badly-designed or difficult-to-navigate websites – especially those with stark white text on a harsh black background, the kind of design which fries the eyes……
  • Over-long or egocentric descriptions of artist and programme. Ditch the self-indulgent self-promotion and instead focus on fulfilling your potential audience’s (“customers”) hopes and desires.
  • Meaningless/boring programme biography notes recounting every teacher, competition and orchestra the soloist has played with. [See above!]
  • Ditch outdated rules/concert etiquette and unnecessary or inaccessible jargon in programme notes. Instead use more casual language and aim for readability in both programme notes and marketing materials.
  • Concert listings, programmes and even printed tickets should include information such as concert length (in minutes) or end time. These details are important for people who may have a train to catch post-concert.
  • State whether there is an interval and how long it is.
  • Consider adding a “newcomer’s guide” to your website, with information to make new concert-goers feel more comfortable (classical music and the etiquette surrounding it can still feel very intimidating and confusing to some people)
  • Venues and promoters should be mindful of the fact that not everyone has the facility or inclination to book online and to show ticket details on a smart phone (not everyone has a smart phone). Do not exclude those people who do not have access to this technology. An example here: A pianist acquaintance of mine described a neighbour who has had a stroke but who loves going to concerts. He cannot use a smart phone to show a ticket or scan a QR code and has difficulties with speech, reading and cognition. Although he has a printed vaccination status certificate, he has trouble remembering that it’s in his pocket to show at a venue. Thus, concert halls and other venues should be ready to allow alternative methods of proving Covid status for people who are not able to take advantage of the digital world.
  • In the age of Covid, audiences need clear information about venue policies regarding measures to ensure audiences, staff and performers are kept safe (pre-attendance testing, temperature checks on site, vaccination status, mask wearing, social distancing etc.). If your audiences feel confident and comfortable about visiting your venue, they will come.
  • Audiences need clear information about social spaces, refreshments, access to lavatories and other practicalities of the venue. This kind of information is even more important in the age of Covid when some people may not wish to congregate in crowded social spaces.
  • Front of house staff should be welcoming and courteous.
  • Engage with audiences through feedback forms, surveys, and other post-concert follow up to find out what they liked and disliked about the concert (this kind of contact can also makes audiences feel “special” and “looked after”). Curiously, it’s the things they disliked which should inform the way you present future concerts. Put simply, you won’t gain or retain audiences unless you understand their anxieties around the concert experience.
  • BUT don’t bombard audiences with post-concert marketing material encouraging them to subscribe, join a friends’ scheme, donate. Instead encourage them to come to more concerts with incentives – for example, discounts, free drinks, backstage tours, a chance to meet the artists….
  • Artists who use social media have a powerful tool with which to engage with audiences before the event. This can create a connection between performer and audience before a single note has been played and also helps break down barriers and preconceptions about classical musicians being distant, elite or inaccessible. British pianist Stephen Hough is an excellent example of someone who uses this kind of engagement through Twitter: he might tweet an image of two piano stools on the stage where he is due to perform and ask the question “which stool should I choose?”. By doing this he draws the audience into his world so that they feel they are active participants.

These are not complicated suggestions – and many organisations and venues already have these types of “audience/customer relations” measures already in place. By focusing more explicitly on the customer experience, artists, promoters and venues can better encourage and retain audiences and give them the best concert experience from the moment they decide to book tickets to when they leave the building, and beyond.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” – Henry Ford

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Darkness and light pervade Cordelia Williams’ latest release, Nightlight, which explores the many facets of nighttime – its turmoil, terror and tenderness, and the longing for and consolation of light – through a programme of brooding, atmospheric and ultimately consoling music.

The album was conceived over several years when Cordelia was nursing her newborn sons in those countless broken nights of early motherhood, where one hovers in a strange, shadowy realm between sleep and wakefulness, alert to the slightest murmur from the baby. The recording is dedicated to “those who experience despair or sublime melancholy during the hours before dawn, who are searching for solace, peace or impossible hope. To anyone lost who is waiting to be found by the light.” (Cordelia Williams).

When preparing the music for the album Williams pondered the phrase “dark night of the soul”, now used to describe our most profound trials and challenges, but which actually comes from the late sixteenth-century poem of St John of the Cross. Here “dark night” refers to the process of leaving behind the self on a journey towards an unknowable destination of light. The organisation of the music on this disc follows a similar path, from the melancholy and anxiety of Mozart’s Fantasia in D minor to the hope and consolation of Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn). The result is an intense chiaroscuro journey through music that is both disturbing and consolatory.

The disc opens with Mozart’s unsettling, almost hallucinatory Fantasia K.397, here played with a brooding intimacy, perfectly paced and poised. The piece neatly introduces the themes of this album with its switch to the joyous brightness of D major before reprising the darkly-hued introductory measures, and ending on a single open D (not the “traditional”, more familiar ending for this piece). The pedalling here is exquisitely managed, creating a romantic, ambiguous wash of harmony.

Scriabin’s Piano Sonata No. 2 portrays the sea at nighttime, from “the quiet of a southern night on the seashore” (Scriabin) to the agitation of the deep ocean, briefly relieved by gentle moonlight on the water. This is most powerfully portrayed in the molto perpetuo finale whose turbulence is tempered by episodes of lyricism, warm and light as themes and textures spill and wash over one another.

Two tender Consolations by Liszt, both in warm E major, provide an interlude of quiet contemplation before we are plunged into the disturbed, dislocated world of Schubert’s Sonata in C minor, D958. This is the biggest work on the album and like the Mozart Fantasia, it presents all the themes of the disc in an exceptionally fine performance which is sensitive to Schubert’s quixotic shifts of mood and harmony. The Adagio has a special stillness in its opening before descending into a darker, more psychotic realm. There is little consolation in this sonata and the finale, a swirling fevered Allegro dance.

Out of the darkest recesses of Schubert comes Thomas Tomkins’s A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times, a work which seems to encapsulate our strange Corona days in its sense of isolation and regret. It is elegantly presented by Williams who appreciates both its composure and stark poignancy. The music wears its age lightly (it was composed in 1649 after the execution of King Charles I): played on the piano, it has an appealing contemporary crispness.

The unadorned melancholy of the Pavan contrasts beautifully with the Chopinesque filigrees and hypnotic ostinato of Bill Evans’ Peace Piece, a work which bears more than a passing resemblance to Chopin’s Berceuse in its structure and idioms, and which is increasingly finding its way onto classical albums. Williams’ performance is tender, warm and leisurely, a welcome lullaby during the long, dark night.

The final work on the disc is Schumann’s Gesänge der Frühe (Songs of Dawn). Composed three years before he died, it shares some characteristics with the late piano music of Brahms in its introspection and intimacy, but ultimately this is where darkness is replaced by shimmering light as the terrors of the night are forgotten in the dawning of a new day. The hymn-like Im ruhingen Tempo gives way to more lovely, quirky movements and a sense of lightness and joy but tempered by the more unsettled Bewegt. The final movement is gentle and contemplative, tinged with valediction, but ultimately uplifting. Here at last light and hope shine through.

Thoughtfully conceived and exquisitely performed, Nightlight is also notably for the fine sound quality of the recording – a perfect mix of warmth and colour, intimacy and depth. This could well be my album of 2021

Highly recommended.

Nightlight is released on the Somm label and is also available to stream.

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That’s the view of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, the major UK (and worldwide) music examinations board. It’s a view I don’t happen to agree with and this emphasis on “assessment” and testing rather than encouraging musicianship, musicality and, above all, enjoyment in making music, is one of the reasons why I stopped using the ABRSM exam syllabus only a few years after I started teaching piano privately in 2006. For me, this tweet is a sign of just how out of touch the ABRSM, an organisation which apparently prides itself on being the “gold standard” for music education, has become.

Unfortunately a lot of people – parents and teachers – think assessment and “getting your grades” is what learning music is about. You can read my thoughts on this subject here.

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Critically acclaimed British pianist Brenda Lucas Ogdon returns with her new album ‘Ravel que J’Aime’ (released 1 October 2021).

The album marks only the most recent chapter of Brenda’s rich musical history. Having been awarded the Gold Medal from the Associated Board for the highest marks in any Practical Subject throughout the British Isles, Northern Ireland, and Eire, Brenda has since gone on to perform amongst the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Scottish Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and across the US, Australia, the Soviet Union, Hong Kong, and more.

Brenda Ogdon has announced that her royalties from the album will be donated to Shelter – the UK homeless charity. This act follows in the spirit of the artist’s previous charity work. In 1993, Brenda established the John Ogdon Foundation – a foundation which completely funded three scholarships for gifted young musicians allowing them to pursue romantic and contemporary piano to a post graduate standing. The initiative was founded in honour of Brenda’s late husband concert pianist John Ogdon who died in 1989.

[source: press release]

In this Meet the Artist interview, Brenda Lucas Ogdon talks about her influences and inspirations and the experience of travelling and performing with her husband when he was still alive.

Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in music?

I was inspired by the lovely, glamorous pianist Eileen Joyce. Not only by her amazing pianism but by her elegant changes of beautiful dresses during her recitals. I was also inspired by the recordings of the Beethoven Sonatas/Concerti by the great pianist Artur Schnabel.

What has been the greatest challenge of your career?

The sudden, unexpected death of my husband, John Ogdon. I was a widow at the age of 53 and my life was turned around. After performing the duo piano works with John for at least 12 years, I had to revive my solo career. It took some time but eventually it happened.

Of which performances/recordings are you most proud?

I am very proud of the send recording we made of the two Rachmaninov Suites for 2 pianos. EMI amalgamated these with other recordings we made for them of Debussy, Bizet, Arensky, Khachaturian, Shostakovich, in a two-CD set, still available on the Warner label. I am also proud of my solo discs of The Well-Tempered Clavier Book 2 by J. S. Bach, released in 2018 on Sterling Records.

Which particular works do you think you perform best?

I really do not have a view on that question. At the moment I am releasing a double album of Ravel “Ravel Que J’Aime”, so I am hoping that it is Ravel.

What do you do off stage that provides inspiration on stage?

I am always listening to other musicians which gives me a lot of inspiration. My daughter Annabel and I listen frequently to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra via their website.

How do you make your repertoire choices from season to season?

I do not tour or give live concert performances anymore as I am 85 years old and those glory days are not possible for me physically. I have always loved recording so that is what I am happy to do now. The Ravel is for the charity Shelter – I am donating all my royalties to this charity, which I feel passionate about.

What is you favourite concert venue and why?

The Wigmore Hall in London. It is just such a perfect recital hall.

What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music audiences?

More funding for primary education in instrumental tuition in state schools. The rest will follow.

What is your most memorable concert experience?

Difficult to pin down one experience against another: several memorable Promenade [Proms] concerts with John; a travel nightmare to give a concert in Spain when the French air traffic controllers were on strike so we missed the date. We eventually travelled and arrived in Malaga in the middle of the night. We played the concert a day late and when we walked on stage the audience erupted in the loudest applause I have ever heard! It was quite memorable and great fun.

As musician, what is your definition of success?

Success is when everything that you have worked and prepared for clicks into place at the right moment.

What advice would you give to young or aspiring musicians?

For performing musicians it is a tough world at the moment. Competition is strong and standards are very high – for example, the recent Leeds International Piano Competition where really amazing pianism was evident. Young musicians should listen to performances by major artists. They should try to accept the fact that there will be disappointments as well as triumphs in the life ahead of them and deal with that in a calm manner.

What is your most treasured possession?

My Yamaha Model C6 Piano

Brenda Lucas Ogdon’s latest album ‘Ravel que J’Aime’ is released on 1 October 2021, preceded by two singles of Miroirs: II. Oiseaux Tristes and À la manière de Borodine. All royalties from the album will donated to the homeless charity Shelter. 

Brenda Lucas Ogdon graduated with honours from the Royal Northern College of Music, where she met her future husband, John Ogdon.  She embarked on a world-wide solo career and a piano duo partnership with John.  This took them to almost anywhere in the world where grand pianos existed.  Brenda has appeared at the Cheltenham, Aldeburgh and Edinburgh Festivals, and also Sintra in Portugal and Maine in the U.S.A.  She has recorded for several major labels including EMI & Decca and her work has frequently been broadcast.  She has appeared with major orchestras throughout the UK, Australia and the U.S.A.

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