The Classical Source welcomes English film director Ken Russell as a guest writer of the latest Editorial…


Happy 10th-birthday to Classical Source, and many more!

I’d suggest a night out at a concert in celebration, but the current dumbing-down of our museum concert programming – certainly in London – means too many of the same tired old war-horses are being trotted out. From a London standpoint, the LPO, LSO and the Philharmonia Orchestra are performing (however dedicatedly) almost-identical programmes – the usual-suspect composers sometimes in mediocre renditions, whilst unknown or neglected composers are ignored. Even the early symphonies of Dvořák and Bruckner are rarely heard; and whilst Vaughan Williams, Elgar and Delius are close to my heart, there are many other British composers that never get a look-in and are shamefully forgotten.

Today conductors and orchestras tend to find it easy to bash out what they know well, rather than take the time required to perform unplayed and unknown works. Orchestral standards in London now seem lower than in previous times, contemporary recordings of the classics sounding like dull and bland ghosts of the same orchestras from previous generations. If Otto Klemperer were around today, he certainly wouldn’t allow such low standards nor tolerate such lacklustre playing.

Today the global culture industry manufactures and markets sexy stereotypical conductors and standardised-sounding orchestras, producing a homogenised, streamlined smoothness. The genius-tyrant conductor, such as Toscanini and Klemperer, would never be allowed today – and would never survive in our politically-correct culture, which celebrates glossiness and superficiality. Conducting is now about acting and appearance. Dudamel may get the members of his Youth Orchestra playing, but his acclaim is all about his looks and tics.

If real conductors – Klemperer, Toscanini, Cantelli, Koussevitzky, Reiner, Szell, Monteux and Mravinsky – were around today, standards would undoubtedly be so much higher. Except that, due to political-correctness, they would probably be banned from conducting for being too demanding and authoritarian, or even arrested for assault on players and charged with GBH!

Political-correctness has destroyed the authoritarian art of conducting and lowered orchestral standards – weak conductors allow lazy orchestras to get away with sloppiness. Today’s conductors are far too accommodating, appeasing, conciliatory, compatible, deferential, negotiable, obsequious, servile, subservient and pusillanimous: all the very things a conductor should not be!

Why is it that only Toscanini (in Buenos Aires, 24 July 1941) and Klemperer (in London, 15 November 1957) – both of these performances have been preserved and are available on compact disc – can conduct Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to its zenith? Because no-one today conducts the Choral with such mesmerising devastating intensity, as today they all tend to tone and tame it down to make it sound 'safe' and 'easy on the ears’.

So, instead of hearing yet more war-horses conducted badly, why not play our neglected British composers – Robert Simpson, Alan Rawsthorne, George Benjamin, Ernest John Moeran, William Mathias, Colin Matthews, Alan Bush, Arthur Bliss, Granville Bantock, Edmund Rubbra, Thea Musgrave, John Ireland, Alun Hoddinott and Humphrey Searle?

And to end with, when did you last hear Allan Pettersson’s music performed in the UK? His Seventh, Eighth and Ninth symphonies are wonderful pieces and deserve to be heard.