Bringing the music back

Wigmore Hall

It’s a landmark moment. This week, Wigmore Hall re-opens for live concerts. Although live-streamed ‘behind closed doors’, it signifies the start on a long road to normality, a journey back to the music making and listening that we all took for granted just a few months ago. 

Music festivals, concert halls, churches and other places of performance are now girding themselves for the painstaking task of assessing all the risks of each step forward; from a soloist on a platform and a sound engineer, to a small consort, to an orchestra - even, praise be, to an actual, live audience.

There are going to be plenty of risks assessments, deep cleans, health warnings, new procedures and a lot of worry before we get there. But the journey is one to be taken with enthusiasm and imagination. 

For many musicians, whose livelihoods have been so suddenly interrupted, performing online has become an unexpected necessity. It doesn’t suit everybody. But not being able to perform isn’t just about not earning a living: it’s about not properly living at all. It’s about not being able to express yourself; not fulfilling your purpose. I’ve talked to players who speak of the frustration and emptiness when all the music around them is just on the pages of books and on their music stands, not vibrating and flowing from their instruments and voices.

Of course, there have been some wonderful innovations. Virtual choirs, already popularised for one-off events, have sprung up everywhere. And even entire orchestras have worked together online, such as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s Bach, the Universe and Everything concerts. Each participant submits a home recording, and these are knitted together by an editor. This requires considerable technical effort, and a lot of time, quite apart from the precision and commitment of every musician involved. It’s surprising just how good some of these are. 

But for the most part, for the vast majority of musicians, working freelance, probably doing their best to keep up some teaching commitments by video, and juggling other responsibilities in lockdown like childcare, such collective enterprises are rare or impractical. To perform, they have had to manage on their own (or as a couple), overcoming whatever technical and acoustical limitations they find in their situation, and being increasingly resourceful with social media - for some, a new venture. They have streamed videos on Facebook and YouTube, linked to them from Twitter, and channelled them on Instagram. It was all possible before, but instead of an entertaining promotional outlet, it’s become the only way of reaching an audience. 

And to them all, I say thank you, and well done. Thank you for having the courage to take an often unfamiliar path, to try out new technology with all the testing and unexpected problems it involves, and to share your talents in a new and challenging spotlight. 

I’ve really enjoyed seeing and hearing musicians who have previously performed in the concert series I manage, Music at King Charles. For example, violinist Ken Aiso has been broadcasting daily 15-minute recitals from home. Steven Devine has explored new repertoire. Members of Eboracum Baroque have made solo videos. And Cantabile,the London Quartet, have recorded songs from their four homes. 

All this is fabulous, and it’s encouraged me to take my concert series online over the summer, to give artists like these an opportunity to perform, and also to talk about what they’ve been up to and share their lockdown journeys.

But it’s not the way it should be. As well as enjoying their music, I’ve found myself spending less time with CDs and the radio and more on YouTube watching live concert recordings, such as the wonderful and inexhaustibly refreshing Netherlands Bach Society’s complete Bach project. 

Because I miss it. I miss the air of expectation and chatter front of house. The last-minute adjustments backstage. The nervousness. The smiles between players when something they’ve rehearsed works out or when someone is mischievous. The scrape of chairs, opening of instrument cases, tunings, polishings, page-turns, deep breaths, sweat and concentration. And above all, the silence, the noise and the elation of an audience. 

And this is why I think that, rather than just listening to recordings and waiting for normal concerts to resume, we need to explore the journey back to normality, back to the heights of expression and collective music-making, alongside our musicians; recognising the difficulties it involves, giving opportunities to them to describe through whatever performances they can manage how music continues to stretch and challenge them, and share the unexpected solace and delight to be found in these chance encounters with music and the people who are keeping it alive for us while we wait for its full reawakening.

See also: Reflections on online concerts