Having been at some concerts this weekend, I’ve just read a really interesting piece by the Director of the Cheltenham Music Festival. What exactly is classical music? Here are some of his musings:

Our name, the Cheltenham Music Festival, remains fraught with issues. For starters, what is the ‘jazz’ of our sibling Cheltenham Jazz Festival, if it isn’t also ‘music’? And how wise would it be to call ourselves the Cheltenham Classical Music Festival? … In a programme like this year’s, where would it leave Romanian gypsy kings Taraf de Haidouks, Northumbrian pipist Kathryn Tickell …?

And how potentially unappealing is that word ‘classical’ anyway? For too many it seems to imply something that’s a bit dried up, exclusive and unattainably complex - sounds dreamed up by dead people and residing in a musical museum. Yet every single note of every single concert in this Festival will, I hope, blow these notions apart - this same classical music is vibrant, welcoming, absorbing and very much alive.

But if ‘classical music’ is a problem term, are the alternatives any less problematic?

Some call it ‘Serious Music’. Oh dear - can we possibly dare to take it, and ourselves, that seriously? Where is the joy of music in that, even if some classical music is extremely serious and beautifully miserable?

Some call it ‘Art Music’. I know where they’re coming from, but does that imply that any other kind of music isn’t ‘art’?

If people are drawn to this kind of music, as they seem to be, later on in life, should we call it ‘Grown Up Music’? …

If for most people a Music Festival takes place outdoors, why not call it the Cheltenham Indoor Music Festival? With the exception of all our weekend Surround Sound events, that would at least be true…

And I suppose if a Music Festival for most means, in its broadest sense, ‘Popular Music’, how about the Cheltenham Un-Popular Music Festival? The trouble is, quite a bit of the music featured in this 2008 Festival - Carmina Burana, The Planets, The Lark Ascending, Grieg’s Piano Concerto - really is very popular music.

He doesn’t know the answer, and neither do I. Do you?

Went to a great concert yesterday with Tim and Ann, who are visiting for the weekend. Unusually, we sat on the Town Hall stage and watched the orchestra that was on the ground at the back of the hall, I guess because the BBC Philharmonic at fairly full strength was too big for the stage. They started with Vltava from Smetana’s Ma Vlast, and I was reminded what a beautiful piece it is, even with its false ending. It was also great to be hearing it live; the depth of the double bass and the sparkle of the percussion add something that I don’t remember just with recordings.

The challenge of the evening was Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, completed in 1954. Tim and Ann really like it, but on my first hearing I wasn’t grabbed. Too often the percussion, for example, seemed to be playing completely incidentally to the rest of the orchestra. However, as a percussionist, at least there was an impressive range of percussion, including 4 different cymbals, 2 tenor drums, 2 side drums, gong and celeste. I must listen to it again — and it was recorded for BBC Radio 3, but I can’t find out when it will be broadcast. Alternatively the Phil have recorded it.

The second half started with a very robust rendering of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with soloist Aleksandar Madžar. Fantastic - with lots of great tunes that the Lutoslawski seemed to lack. The evening closed with Kodály’s Dances of Galanta, which was quite enjoyable, and raised a smile with its unexpected final few beats.

Second up we tried our luck with The Dowland Project - an intriguing mix of 15th - 17th Century tunes with tenor, lute, viola and, err, sax. The Dowland refers to composer John Dowland, but they only did a few of his tunes, with music from all around Europe. One review of their most recent album Romaria says

Romaria is an ethereal listening experience. Its bold improvisatory elements make this recording well suited for the jazz enthusiast who is looking for a little something different.

John Surman’s sax clearly lift it beyond just an ‘early music’ ensemble, and I thought his use of bass clarinet was inspired. He pushed into its higher registers, where it sounds quite sax-like, plus using it down low where it adds a funky woody vibe. It didn’t quite attract me like the Hilliard Ensemble + Jan Garbarek combination does, but it was great to see them live, because they were quite clearly enjoying themselves as they played. And that’s something you can hardly ever tell on a recording (except one Nina Simone track where one of the players at the end says “that’s groovy, baby”).