Performing new classical music

There's an excellent article in the New York Times today about performing new pieces of classical music. It captures succinctly the challenges players face in making sure they try and get new music performed, are completely dedicated to the value of performing it, and try and work out what pieces deserve another performance. This got me thinking because a lot of the conducting I've been doing recently has been pieces by Edinburgh University students.

I hope it wouldn't be a shock to any composers whose work I've conducted recently to say that I don't think any of it is up there with Bach and Beethoven, as much as I've enjoyed performing it. And to be honest I probably wouldn't consider giving another performance to many of the pieces either. However, I would keep going back to these same composers and performing more work by them and there are two reasons for that.

Firstly, because most of the great pieces you hear in concerts were written by composers who were middle-aged at the least. Of course there are a few notable exceptions such as Mozart, Schubert and Mendelssohn but most composers don't write their best music until they're past thirty or even forty. But does that mean they shouldn't have their music played until they're that age. If that happened then they would never develop fully as composers. Music is not complete until it's been performed to an audience (however small).

Secondly, there is a habit in the classical music world to always want to hear the same pieces over and over again. It's easy enough to fill a concert hall if you're going to play Beethoven, Stravinsky or Mahler but not so easy if you're going to play Lutoslawski or Schoenberg. This is the result of a culture which has developed since the nineteenth-century where classical concerts are like a museum where for something to have value it has to be old and culturally significant. However, I would argue that there are lots of pieces written throughout history which are extremely enjoyable and worth hearing once, or even a couple of times, even if you don't want to listen to it on repeat. This applies to long dead composers whose music we haven't heard but is important in considering whether to play a new piece by a living composer - most things are worth hearing at least once.