This could just as easily be in the musical snob thread ...

Today saw the Youth and Music festival of youth orchestras in Symphony Hall, Birmingham.  Among the participants was the Brighton Youth Orchestra (including the pw progeny on third trombone), who gave a stonking performance of the Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story - the band's party piece, helped by the fact that they've got a couple of really outstanding percussionists.  They played, I'm told, out of their skins.  It was, by all accounts, glorious (if it was anything like the roof-raising rendition they gave in Hove Town Hall last night it certainly would have been, and the view from the band is that today was even better).  The players in the other bands were open-mouthed in admiration.

The ajudicator said that the piece was inappropriate in an event which was supposed to be about symphonic music. 

Of course, there are no whistles in Stanford and nobody shouts "Mambo!" in Dyson ....

And I thought, how typical of everything that is wrong with a certain type of English musical education.  Just like when, thirty years ago as a schoolboy, I was warned by my ex-choral scholar teacher that Verdi was vulgar crowd-pleasing trash - that feeling that music in England is about sitting, lips pursed and supercilious look on face, admiring a tasteful phrase by Mendelssohn or the oh-so-pure warblings of an Oxbridge choir.  Why can't these people accept that music is about feeling, and sometimes that means being out there and loud and exuberant?  Why does music education in England so often seem to be in the hands of people who don't really like music?  (Or, at the very least, are afraid of the emotions it can convey).

(On the other hand, the offspring did say that walking out on to the stage of Symphony Hall to play in front of a big audience was one of the most thrilling experiences of her life, so perhaps there's a bit of this that should be in the Happy Room too)

PW, that is quite simply outrageous. The symphonic arrangement Bernstein made of the dances (I assume that was the version being performed) is as 'symphonic' as anything comes in its consummate deployment of orchestral forces. Remember Dudamel et al's rendition at the Proms last year? Quite frankly, it's insulting to the players, to Bernstein and to the institution of the orchestra to claim otherwise. Is Mussorgsky/Ravel Pictures not 'symphonic' because the original was piano music? Pure snobbery. Anyway, very pleased for the petite wagneritess! 

But if the work did not fit the bill for the competition, wouldn't it have been sense to inform the contestant before they went to the time and trouble of playing it?

Any rate, congrats to Ms pw for putting it over.

I agree. A ridiculously sour and dispiriting comment from that adjudicator. Very sorry to hear that. 


Indeed yes! Brava Ms Wagnerite and colleagues.

And given a good thrashing, once bared.

If I may change tack, this is the first bit of quiet since 8am after a succession of downstairs' ex-partners kids-sort who ignore you then hammer on your door every 5 mins, the guys' ashen features as they at last departed spoke volumes, the theme time hour with the rebel Ghanian bishops followed swiftly by a sucession of rap records across the way whose leads sounded like the ambassadorial  Falklands Spokesman on Mogadon. I will now have a sniff at my in-tray and see what my addled consciousness can make of it.

A snapshot  of our education system in action, particularly the '...Vacant, remaining motionless' bit, beautifully caught MJ. Of course you may have witnessed the creative thinking a trend-setter in trip-hop choreography.

This perhaps is why TOP has 'platform 3'. It's actually platform 18b. no buffet car till Crewe, and the announcements are read backwards in association with Connex.