Happy 100th Birthday to Rhapsody in Blue

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Today (Feb 12th) marks the 100th anniversary of that (in)famous concert at the Aeolian Hall in NYC entitled "An Experiment in Modern Music" in which Rhapsody in Blue was first performed. Due to the length of the program, many of the audience members had left by the time Rhapsody in Blue was performed as the penultimate piece - the show ended with Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March no. 1. But the piece was a triumph.

[BrianTCB]

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For better or worse, those kinds of truncated versions of classics were hugely popular for many decades. Even the 120 disc set of conductor Eugene Ormandy's mono recordings ends with a disc of the "good bits" from symphonies. I think there's a place for them, too. I wonder how many people went from hearing those "highlights" and then sought out the whole thing at some point. Certainly, they were my introduction to classics, through Mum's Liberace album(!), and Mantovani, and people like that - although they didn't get me interested in the longer works. Oddly, Hooked on Classics did, though! Not quite sure how we ended up with that, as it wasn't Mum's. But when I did start getting into classical music through a wonderful classroom music teach at high school, and started seeking out recordings for myself - or borrowing them from the library - the compositions I recognised from Hooked on Classics were some of the first things I borrowed. And I don't think those kinds of "highlights" have gone away. Liberace gave way to Richard Clayderman, then there were the Three Tenors shows, 2Cellos, and now we have Andre Rieu, who even got my dad listening to classical music for the first time in his final years.

Thankfully, classical music is in great shape right now. Classical music CDs sales are generally INCREASING year on year in the UK, particularly thanks to people like Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who is doing a wonderful job of making whole pieces accessible (even more obscure ones). I saw him here in Norwich last year, and it was great to see the amount of kids and teenagers in the audience, and also to see him come out into the audience to speak to school groups during the interval and at the end of the concert.

And this is probably the best time for young classical musicians since the 1950s. Back then there was Glenn Gould, Bernstein, Van Cliburn etc. Now we have a number of Kanneh-Masons; Daniel Lozakovich (a wonderful young violinist...who's also a boxer); pianists such as Pavel Kolesnikov, Danill Trifonov, Jan Lisiecki, and Benjamin Grosvenor; the cellist Edgar Moreau; the conductor Klaus Makela; horn player Ben Goldscheider; and some wonderful singers such as Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha and Jakub Orlinski. Even better, many of those people seem keen on bringing forgotten works back into the public arena. Orlinski's last three albums have about 20 world premiere recordings of arias from forgotten baroque operas, for example - not my music of choice, but it's good to see. Kolesnikov is also excellent at reviving obscure works, and Moreau has done the same.

But there is a downside. With classical music back "out there" again (helped by the fact that it's stupidly cheap to buy these days), schools don't have the money or resources to capitalise and get kids playing instruments. When I was at school (I'm 50 now, as of two hours ago), we have eight different orchestras or bands, and two choirs. The same school now has none. Meanwhile, the govt has been drumming it into people for fourteen years that funding the arts and creative industries (and studying them) are a waste of money - although they'll undoubtedly turn to musicians, scriptwriters, producers, directors, composers, cameramen, artists etc when they are putting together their general election campaign this year. The situation is utterly heartbreaking.