What were the other conclusions, out of interest?  A diverse range of repertoire would not happen in isolation - other factors (funding, artistic policy, outreach schemes, endorsement policy, touring policy, audience demographics, etc) are essentially involved.  An ensemble performing in London has a potential catchment of 15m+ for its concerts...  some of the venues the Scottish Chamber Orchestra play have catchment audiences of a few thousand or less,  and this can't be ignored.

I can't remember the other conclusions, to be honest (this was done about 8-9 years ago at least). It was Western Europe-wide, involved ensembles from various countries. I will alert her to this thread and she may post something about it. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra do not classify as a new music ensemble, as new music is only a very small part of their work.

I can see how the potential for diversity in the UK is somewhat less than in some other European countries, as the former has not the same level of tradition of regular performance of more radical new music outside of London and a few other metropolitan areas. But I'm not convinced the diversity (in terms of range of different types of music) to be found in the more high-profile London concerts is necessarily on a par with that in Berlin, Cologne, Brussels, Vienna, Amsterdam, and possibly Paris. Things that fall outside of the more middle-of-the-road mainstream tend to get programmed just occasionally before the LS returns to their meat and potatoes.

Just to add - what is the potential catchment for the Huddersfield Festival, which has always featured an extremely diverse range of repertoire?

It's a wholly different form of musical presentation and promotion, so can't really be compared.


Are you really sure of that? For new music concerts other than by the big groups, 200-300 is a BIG audience which few get. Remember that a concert in London has many other concerts it has to compete with that are likely to be on either simultaneously or around the same time (unlike, say, in Huddersfield (or Aldeburgh)).


That is one of the most fundamental problems; the fact that new music subsidy in the UK can't compare with that in many other European countries creates huge restrictions on what is possible (this is one reason why I continually bring up the issue of subsidy - even the meagre amount there is continues to be under threat).

Ian,

I was possibly abstracting too much from one actual experience - I was in London a year ago at a loose end mid-day, and happened to catch a group of Guildhall students doing a "Arvo Part & Pupils" concert at St James's Picadilly,  that did indeed get around 240 people attending...  an audience garnered out of free listings mags, regular concertgoing programming at the venue concerned, and a bit of leafletting on the street.  Full marks, of course, to anyone who gets 240 people for anything of that kind. 

But the economics of such a performance only work when there's a huge number of potential listeners (I noted that many in the audience seemed to be tourists or visitors),  and when the only "costs" in performing were the bus-fares of the performers in getting to the venue.  Lugging a van-full of percussion and a celeste around the Western Isles to do Shostakovich #14 is an entirely different kind of proposition economically.

As you rightly say, it's a matter of financial support.  My buddy Irina Belova is currently on a tour round the remoter parts of W Sweden with the Stockholm Sax 4tet,  doing programmes of music entirely written since 2002.  They get audiences, because a "touring circuit" has been established for around a decade...  ie a system is in place to advertise and promote the concerts ahead of time, pre-sell tickets on-line, etc.  The Swedish Govt take this kind of thing seriously, and pursue a rigorous logic that people who live far from Stockholm should still have access to "the best stuff" - but that means putting money behind it.  Although the results are identical,  I think the line of thinking "a civic right to arts access for all tax-payers" has proven more persuasive than "promotion of new music", which is a more easily shot-down dirigible.  Another side to that touring network is the commitment to "outreach" programs that brings kids into direct contact with new music and how it's made - they are obliged to do workshops everywhere.  This, of course, isn't the "audience of tomorrow" - it's the audience of today.

Further to your observation about your lunchtime concert at St James' Piccadilly, Reiner: lunchtimes are always well-attended in the major venues (I went to one in the City about 18 months ago, and 350 turned up to St Andrew's Holborn). These are usually free concerts played by musicians for rock-bottom fees, or even nothing. I would bet your experience had absolutely nothing to do with the repertoire and everything to do with that fact that it was a St James' free lunchtime concert, which are well-known and well-publicised, not least to passing trade, which is plentiful. It would be great if a new-music 'lunchtime' scene (!) could take off in London somehow, in the sense of having a good venue near to people working in offices (e.g. the City), and be decently funded. Or maybe there already is one and I'm out of the loop. You'd get audiences 10 times the size of evening ones.

Just coming in on this. I agree with a lot of what was said by james, Ian, Richard, martle and others, especially on the first page. I wasn't around in the Sinfonietta's pre-Knussen days, but his incredible (and incredibly unchallenged) pre-eminence as, variously, main conductor, artistic consultant, conductor laureate etc. etc. of that ensemble does seem to have coincided with its evolution into a group of players who have a certain amount of evident difficulty in taking on any of the other things they might reasonably be expected to cope with: in my recent experience this includes Finnissy, Barry, Lachenmann, Barrett and Ferneyhough, all of whose music has suffered in performance (none of it being conducted by OK, but all sounding as if the players were more used to playing Carter, Knussen and Birtwistle).

I do hope OK won't have the same effect on BCMG. BCMG are an excellent group - better than the Sinfonietta, I'd say, at the moment, though doing different things, partly because they're not in London, don't have the kind of 'flagship' role the SInfonietta still has, and therefore aren't much involved in the Ligeti/Xenakis/Nono/Lachenmann festival-type events that the Sinfonietta often does. However, they do play quite a number of different things very well, under different conductors, and while I can see why they've wanted to add Knussen to their roster of regular artists, I hope they'll continue to work extensively with other conductors and other types of music and performance situations. Richard's comments about the ASKO Ensemble are salutary in this regard (I didn't know they'd started out as anything other than a Sinfonietta-type group, which is certainly what they seem to be now). It would be a pity if there were no room for experimentation and for a variety of aesthetics in Symphony Hall and the South Bank as well as Huddersfield and the Cutting Edge, and I think that's a more salient point than the 'minimalism/Carter' dichotomy suggested at the beginning of this thread.

I do like Knussen's own music, and I do think he's been responsible for an incredible number of outstanding performances and recordings, both with the Sinfonietta and with the BBC SO and other groups. He's also not been as narrow as people seem to imagine: as well as Carter, Birtwistle, Julian Anderson and Jonathan Cole he's also regularly programmed (in the past) Holloway, Jonathan Lloyd, Benedict Mason, Takemitsu and others and (in more recent times) Kagel (a lot!), Detlev Glanert, Charles Wuorinen, Anthony Payne and quite a few more who don't obviously have a lot in common with each other or with OK himself.

However, there are also lots of people he hasn't programmed. This in itself shouldn't be an issue: as James says, there are plenty of conductors who wouldn't programme something they had little sympathy with, and as Richard implies, it's much better that Knussen should do his own music and his other favourites well than that he should take over everything else and through lack of knowledge or lack of ability serve it less well. I think the apparent willingness of the Sinfonietta's outgoing artistic director to rely on Knussen as the centrepiece of any season is the bigger problem, and I do hope that ensemble will find a little more strength of purpose and open-mindedness to new things under its new administrative team.


PS: I love Colin's term 'vanilla' composer! (Though I think Knussen's in a different league from John Harbison ...)

It's not that OK is taking a pounding for not being sufficiently diverse. True diversity comes not from the ascendancy of one or two jacks-of-seemingly-(but not really)-all-trades but from an actual diversity of people. There are indeed other ensemble around, but I think you'll find that the LS eats up the lion's share of financial support which might otherwise go to them (and has done for many years) - they have the "right" to perform other music, but somehow they don't seem to have the "right" to pay performers to play it.