"I went to two concerts in Liverpool. An enjoyable Grieg evening - the piano concerto and the incidental music to Peer Gynt - and, the following lunchtime, a recital by Boris Giltburg, the previous night's soloist. Giltburg attracted a small audience for his recital - perhaps 250 - and made a valiant attempt to drown out the pile-drivers that currently surround the hall. The Grieg concert drew the Liverpool Phil's most traditional audience. As I arrived at the hall, the coaches and mini-buses were disgorging groups of mainly elderly music-lovers. The Liverpool Phil has close links with Classic FM, and here was the tuneful fare that station prefers." [my italics]I attended that recital -- and wrote a semi-review of it on here. It's intriguing that Moss only mentions what the audience looked like for the evening concert -- perhaps it's because or two-fifty were a far wider cross section -- older people certainly, but also students, people in my generation and slightly above, and not all as far as it's possible to tell these things 'white middle class' -- I'd consider myself 'lower middle-class liberal' for what that's worth. There were three girls from St. Hilda's School at the back too.
I've already bored you with my road to Damascus but that was why I was sitting at the front of that recital. But then I was listening to George Michael (and I should preface this by saying I've never been a huge fan) on Desert Island Discs this morning and as well as turning in a Radio One playlist as his selections, talked about how he became curious in music. It seems he received a bang on the head when he was young and it completely changed his interests. The Proms began just a couple of weeks after this happened to me. Connected?
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