South Bank sidelines major orchestras in classical revamp
NewsLondon’s South Bank Centre has sent us its new classical strategy for next season.
It makes depressing reading. Lots of worthy ‘new’ ensembles, but the major resident orchestra are pushed to the back burner and there is little sign of the big international ensembles that used to give the site its aura.
There doesn’t seem to be much music for grown-ups.
Read this:
– New experiences introducing new audiences to classical music including Paraorchestra’s immersive orchestral experience, Barokksolistene’s 17th century alehouse, Aurora Orchestra’s thrilling ‘Symphonie Fantastique’, and The Multi-Story Orchestra with special shows for families
– A commitment to championing artists as part of a new cohort of Resident Artists, in collaboration with the Southbank Centre’s Resident Orchestras, featuring genre-blurring pioneers and big names in classical music: Abel Selaocoe, Daniel Pioro, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Víkingur Ólafsson and Manchester Collective
– A refreshed contemporary programme featuring exciting new commissions, world premiere album projects, and multimedia experiences including a specially made production from violist Lawrence Power and creative studio Âme
– A celebration of two towering figures of the 20th century: Shostakovich and Xenakis, as well as global stars of keyboard and chamber music including Mahan Esfahani, Iveta Apkalna, Nobuyuki Tsujii, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, Emerson Quartet, Colin Currie Group, JACK Quartet, Isata Kanneh-Mason and Maxwell Quartet.
– The Southbank Centre is delighted to announce two new additions to its group of Resident Orchestras: Aurora Orchestra and Chineke! Orchestra.
Toks Dada, Head of Classical Music at the Southbank Centre (pictured), said: “With this programme, we are being artist-driven, audience-focused, and pushing forward the artform of classical music. We are championing a new cohort of Resident Artists, in collaboration with our new group of Resident Orchestras, featuring genre-blurring pioneers with whom we are commissioning new work and enabling their creative vision.We’re working with new partners to create new ways for people to experience classical music, in many cases for the very first time, including an immersive orchestral experience from Paraorchestra, Barokksolistene’s 17th-century alehouse, and events for young people, including The Multi-Story Orchestra’s musical journey around our site. We also celebrate our multicultural society with work that reflects cultures worldwide; celebrate 20th-century pioneers; and bring multimedia into the concert hall. Beginning with the curated Opening Weekend Festival, we are inviting more people to immerse themselves in the wonder of classical music.”
“genre-blurring pioneers”
Depressing indeed.
Looks quite exciting to me
At least they’re trying – the old mould is pretty much broken
Until classical music is regarded as important, worthwhile and normal in everyday life on the BBC, in schools and elsewhere, it doesn’t matter a damn what cool ‘groundbreaking’ schemes the Southbank centre introduces because the audience will remain more-or–less the same.
Generally speaking, in 2022, people are not introduced to classical music in concert halls, it happens elsewhere and then (hopefully) they go out and buy tickets.
Goodness me, not everything is the BBC’s fault – it is the most significant broadcaster of classical music and if anything we should be lobbying the government to protect it against cuts, rather than lambasting it for not doing enough. What do the streamers and other terrestrial broadcasters do for classical ? Answer – v little bar sky arts.
Also, we’ll done Toks for being brave enough to be different! How boring it would be if classical music seasons remained the same forever – everyone should be welcomed in!
“not everything is the BBC’s fault”
I didn’t say it was exclusively the BBC’s fault. However, many people have commented here on how the BBC’s commitment to classical music has declined, particularly on TV, which is more influential than R3.
If you had spent a little more time thinking about my comment instead of rushing to type your knee-jerk response, you would have realised that I mentioned the importance of classical music being perceived as ‘normal’. Shunting classical music away to R3 does not achieve this, in my opinion.
Oh Dear! If ever a programme was designed to have us all clutching our pearls this would surely be up there with the most woke. I admit as an old fuddy duddy concert goer that I have heard of next to no one in this list and so I pass and leave it to Toks Dada – how apt their surname – to fill the Southbank with an audience that now seems to figure exclusively in the minds of the administrators of so much of our cultural life. And who knows it may actually work, although they might struggle to get the audience to detach themselves from their electronic devices for the duration of the concert. Unless of course social media platforms are underwriting the costs and not we privileged taxpayers?
As an ‘old fuddy duddy concert goer’ you really should have heard of at least half of those names. They’re serious, well-respected artists that regularly work with the white bread orchestras you love. Get a grip.
Small orchestras, few foreign bands… It looks to me like they are getting ready for yet another wave of covid. Is that fear going to stay with us for long? Quite depressing.
It isn’t Covid; it’s wokery of the very highest order. Mr Dada and his militently diverse comrades have taken over and are prioritising trans one-armed ‘musicians’ over great international orchestras and Florence Price over Beethoven and Wagner. One might be forgiven for thinking that the Southbank Centre was a failing department of social services rather than our national performing arts centre.
If the silent majority doesn’t fight back fast the last bastions of civilisation (Wigmore Hall, Covent Garden etc) will go the same way. Hopefully audience numbers at the Southbank will plummet, lessons will be learned and Heads will Roll!
Interested to know why you conflate ‘woke’ with ‘failing social services’ … Do I detect a touch of sneering bourgeois contempt?!
We know where dada ended – the art form which celebrated childish nothingness.
Why ‘pushing forward the art form of classical music’? Is it not something that simply stays with us, because it has universal meaning? No: since we ourselves are ‘moving forward’, the danger is, that the music will get behind, while it was already written in very behind times. We have to liberate classical music from its past which gets ever more behind with every minute that passes. And we get this done by pushing the art form into dada, lemming-like.
All those well-intended efforts to make the art form accessible to new, younger audiences would be better spent on education, instead of hip wrapping paper.
I’m sorry that SD doesn’t think that Xenakis, Shostakovich, Berlioz, string quartets and harpsichord virtuosi are for grownups.
Consider the author of the post, “Anon”.
Das Land ohne Musik
Another obviously race baiting article on this site. Can you tell me Norman, what makes Shostakovich and Xenakis not suitable for adults? It seems adding the Aurora and Chineke to the mix of resident orchestras has exactly the opposite effect of what you purport to be a weakening of programming. All you do with this post is trying to appeal to your bunch of old crusties that come here to be annoyed how “woke” everything is.
Enough with this miserable attitude.
What you’re missing is that the people who are in charge of the Arts now – pretty much across the board – and certainly at the South Bank with Jude Kelly and Mr Dada – are obsessed with race, gender and sexuality. Norman Lebrecht and other crusty old gits who comment here about ‘wokeness’ are merely reacting to that reality. Talk of ‘race baiting’ is basically the new/old trick of shutting people down with nasty accusations.
‘Crusty old gits’; OK to use abusive language as long keeping off race and sexual proclivity. Whatever Lebrecht’s failings, try considered criticism, not abuse.
Dumbing down again. Just like at Symphony Hall, Birmingham, where Toks Dada was previously. At least it will save me the cost of travelling down from Birmingham!
GIven your reputation in Birmingham the southbank will be releived to see the back of you!
“relieved”. I like that Tim says it as he sees. He’s also put an enormous amount of his disposable income the way of the CBSO over the years.
Oh sorry I thought tim was that creepy guy who hang’s around backstage but must be someone else. Thanks for your donations Tim all though management keep them all and we never see a penny!
Are you a troll CBSO musician?
Well you can certainly say farewell to my custom .
Absolutely appalling pandering to a vocal minority With little or no interest in Classical music . You will probably notice a sharp decline in revenues
Sounds fair enough. Our local concert hall ,The Anvil in Basingstoke seems to be cutting out any classical music that might be described as “popular”. If it’s not popular it’s probably no flipping good ! The local Spring Festival in Newbury is also going in strong with the less popular which is depressing .
“genre blurring”? Isn’t that just being pissed? More woke bingo salad.
Don’t disparage the Woke Bingo Salad, we had one last week for lunch and everybody worked twice as hard for the rest of the day.
Sally
However, I would change ‘worked’ for ‘woked’.
The new David Geffen Hall in New York is being marketed the same way. In the new New York Philharmonic season there is not a single work by Wagner or Strauss (in what is being billed as a new hall) and Brahms is represented by only the violin concerto. I fear that in the hall’s design acoustics have taken a back seat to pretty seat fabrics and distances from the stage.
Your fear will have to wait until the hall actually opens. Then, we’ll see/hear.
Maybe wait to see how they actually play? Wouldn’t the resident orchestras be part of their own plan? Is the Philharmonia suddenly not welcome there?
You’ve built much of your career lamenting how orchestras and presenters play it safe. This doesn’t look all that safe to me.
They can’t win, it appears.
There is such a difference between programming adventurously and programming wokishly. It has to do with the notion of quality, musical quality, which is something on the inside, not on the outside.
What a shame. We just get back to classical concerts, and they are disappearing under the incoherence of ‘genre busting’.
Sooner or later the promoters pushing this progressive agenda will have to present their takings from the box office and those figures won’t lie. They’ll find out in stark terms what people want to listen to and the luxury of propping up these ideologies with public money can’t last forever. Good luck! My guess is that their actual potential audience will stay away in droves and in its place will come none of the demographic they hoped to attract.
I would love to know what kind of in-depth research and analysis has provided the data to suggest that this is the way forward for the South Bank. They say they are ‘audience-focused’ so presumably it’s not just one man’s vision – audiences are demanding and driving this change with a desire for a contemporary programme delivered by young artists. So younger and bigger audiences are absolutely guaranteed, because they HAVE done their research, haven’t they??
The queues for tix to the Xenakis concerts will be heaving!
But I’m glad Xenakis is finally getting all the attention he deserves, I couldn’t live without his calming music after a day’s work load! And then, you get two benefits for the price of one: restoring one’s balance AND the feeling one is entirely modernised.
Sally
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpCYdmue62o
Londoners can keep their “genre-blurring pioneers” for themselves. I want my Bruckner with a lot of Sauerkraut and Lagerbier.
Pfui Teufel! It is well-known that Sauerkraut stimulates growth of rightwing cells in the brain. Has been demonstrated by TIT’s research programs in the seventies when testees were subject to daily listening sessions of Bruckner and a diet of Suaerkraut and Lagerbier. They went in as perfectly liberal and tolerant and came-out as conservative neo-imperialist with tinnitus and digestion disorders.
I’m more than happy to blame the Broken Broadcasting Corporation for everything. They’re a shambles anyway. This story sounds like a typically crazy decision made by utterly clueless individuals sitting on a committee. I might have guessed that the mediocre Kenneh-Mason clan are included in the mix.They are so over-hyped; I don’t rate them at all and they will, no doubt, be dumped when the next lot appear. Commercially-hyped musicians are not my thing. London is so far behind on the international music scene. It is still in need of a decent concert hall and it’s a pity that such luminaries as Simon Rattle and a certain Valery Gergiev were basically duped by this Tory government. This is a pathetic idea. Concert halls are, in the main, built for orchestral, chamber, and choral music and not for ethnic and/or politically-correct musical experiments.
Out of all of this, I’d recommend seeing Paraorchestra, if you’ve never seen them before. A truly inspiring group of musicians who’ve brought imaginative performances in different forms to Birmingham over recent years.
In case it has escaped the old duffers here, the world changes. It evolves. It is not trapped in aspic. Whilst this site is increasingly mainline catnip for the angry and dispossessed of classical music – for whom no insult is too low – I offer my congratulations to Toks Dada and the Southbank Centre for moving things on. That is what the centre has always done and I hope continues to do