An orchestrated success

Chris Price

The coolest conductor in the world today is the Dude - Gustavo Dudamel. He's just turned 30, and he's the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. That means the coolest conductor in the world today conducts his orchestra in one of the world's coolest music halls, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It's cool because it was designed by one of the coolest architects in the world, Frank Gehry. It's so cool that it was spoofed in The Simpsons, with Frank Gehry doing a voice-over.

The Dude is cool for a number of reasons, partly because Hollywood actors flock to pay homage to him, but mainly because he is a product of El Sistema, the coolest music- education programme in the world. It was started 35 years ago in Dudamel's native Venezuela by José Antonio Abreu and now teaches around 300,000 children in Venezuela and hosts hundreds of orchestras. It's copied around the world, including in Britain, where Julian Lloyd Webber has got three projects off the ground under the banner In Harmony, described by those who should know as the best music-education project in the country.

When Dudamel came to Britain in 2007, he conducted the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra at the Edinburgh Festival and at the Proms. I saw him. He - they - electrified the audience. They played with energy. They stood and swayed. They wore sports jackets in Venezuelan colours. They took them off and threw them into the audience.

Actually, we don't need to beat ourselves up too much in Britain. We have one of the finest music traditions in the world. We have world-class orchestras that get by on a pittance compared with some of their rivals. We have a great system of music education. But there's no getting away from the fact that there's a big divide in classical music, between those who want to keep it to themselves and those who want to draw in new audiences and make it accessible.

We've just had the Classical Brits, a rare outing of classical music into the mainstream, sitting alongside the Last Night Of The Proms as one of the few occasions when whooping, cheering and strings are all in the same room together.

There's a very lively debate going on in the classical-music world today, which is all about how you behave at a concert. The New Yorker's music critic Alex Ross singled out a classical concert given at the White House ("Once an unremarkable event, more recently something of a freak occurrence" - I wonder why?), which President Obama opened by saying his wife was going to tell him when to applaud.

Of course, the "when to applaud" debate is a metaphor for where classical music is today. Are the orchestras doing you a favour by playing for you, or are you doing them a favour by attending? In the 18th and 19th centuries, audiences thought nothing of applauding and cheering when they felt the music demanded it - and booing if it didn't. Now, like good Victorians, we remain mute and seated throughout the concert, not daring to express emotion lest we show ignorance, deferring to our elders and betters, when we aren't even sure who they are.

As Ross explains, "Performances these days are altogether too focused on getting the notes right and insufficiently concerned with projecting style, emotion, the force of a phrase." There are people trying to get out of the straitjacket. The Orchestra Of The Age Of Enlightenment, which plays with period instruments, has pioneered "The Night Shift", subtitled "Classical Music: Minus the Rules" - which pretty much illustrates the point they are trying to make. When they play at London's Roundhouse, you can sit at a table with a beer, and the gig (as they refer to the performance) doesn't start until 10pm. Sounds familiar, except when it comes to classical music. It's probably inspired by Le Poisson Rouge in New York's Greenwich Village, where short concerts are put on in a jazz club.

Others are also breaking away. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma has started the Citizen Musician project in Chicago, taking classical music out of the concert hall and into the metro station. There are many orchestras in this country who engage at every level with kids in our schools. But who wouldn't relish a sudden, flash-mob experience in a busy train station by some of the finest musicians in the world?

Gustavo Dudamel may be the coolest conductor in the world, but he would admit that he's not the best. But that's not the point. He's exciting, he's different and he's new. And that's what classical music needs to be today. We all live our lives in a world that is increasingly informal and dependent on technology. It's time the world of classical music - whether here or elsewhere - embraces that informality and technology. It doesn't mean dumbing down, it doesn't mean undermining excellence. But it could mean younger and enthusiastic audiences. And that's got to be a good thing.

Ed Vaizey is the minister for culture, communications and creative industries.

Originally published in the May 2011 issue of British GQ.


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