Why Brum beats London for classical music

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will present its new music director, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, at the BBC Proms on Saturday night.

Mirga is smart, sharp and 30.

London orchs are conducted by grizzled blokes who have been doing the same thing for years.

Richard Bratby in the Spectator explains why Brum gets it right where London goes wrong.

Birmingham’s energy comes from a very un-English willingness to live in the moment: and then to push on to the next big thing. New is good. Tastefully repurposed heritage building, or shiny new shopping centre? No contest. Birmingham has always been about commerce, progress, change: the values embodied by 18th-century innovators like Matthew Boulton and James Watt, whose statues, coated in dazzling gold bling, stand across Broad Street from Symphony Hall. It doesn’t yell about how tolerant, lively and diverse it is: it just gets on and does it. Birmingham has had three Muslim mayors.

Read on here.

pic: Brum’s Laura Mvula