Settle down kids, and let me tell you a story. The story of one of the biggest classical music industry conferences in the world. Like a phoenix, risen from the ashes of a dream, C:N has returned: bigger, better, and less focused on innovation than ever before. What follows is a day-by-day, blow-by-blow detailed synopsis of my experiences there: why? Because when you go to review things, you get a free ticket. Also, because maybe someone, somewhere (like Xani Kolac in the lead up to this year) in a country far, far away like Australia might be able to experience vicariously through the depictions; or perhaps some of my fellow delegates will get a kick out of reliving what was a [SPOILER ALERT] fantastic week, truth be told. At the very least, let it act as a testament to a week in the life of a classical musician in Berlin.

Coercing conductors to talk from the stage to their audiences also won’t do much, unless they happen to be predisposed to doing so naturally. But luckily these venues tend to have more than a handful of concerts per year, and with the exorbitantly large team behind the production and programming, wouldn’t it benefit those making decisions to directly involve the artists gracing the stage into the experience design aspects of the concerts?

A question that lies unanswered for me is this: what if we stopped being purely responsive to change, but instead we became responsible for it?

This text was written during Classical:NEXT Conference in Hanover, Germany (May 17th-20th, 2022). I was in attendance as an observer and reviewer for Limelight Magazine. A more concise review of the conference is available at their website - the following takes the form more of a live blog of the event for those curious about the experiences and thoughts of someone in the room.

Unfortunately, Lebrecht’s penchant for spinning a good tale often leads him into the territory some might refer to as ‘classical music tabloid trash.’ Indeed, his writing is best described as the classical music equivalent of the U.K.’s The Sun Newspaper or the US-equivalent New York Post. High praise for some, perhaps.

I first got into cricket as a very effective method of procrastination. It was the summer of 2006, and I was trying my best to get through the first year of university with minimal effort and work, when I came upon this fascinating anthropological anomaly called Test Cricket. Magic! It provided literally days of excuses not to practise or revise species counterpoint whilst watching the drama unfold.

If aliens landed tomorrow and demanded to see the most exemplary demonstration of human physical prowess, it is unlikely we’d offer archive footage of Warnie smoking a ciggie before taking the field. Nonetheless, it is one of the most unique professional sports that currently exists. With its lengthy duration and the intense physical and psychological examination that all players must endure, it succeeds in standing alone as a real testament to human achievement.

Growing up as a child in Australia, you can be forgiven for the feeling that the rest of the world exists on another planet. Mostly because, well, by virtue of distance, it might as well be.

News channels often focused on stories that directly affected Australia and its inhabitants, with only extremely big pieces of news journeying the many miles that separate the country from the rest of the planet. To an Australian kid, Russia is known as a really cold place where some fairly bad things happened; Germany is known as a fairly cold place where some really bad things happened; and England is basically the old little island with the little old Matriarch, and a rather pathetic cricket team.

Phan is a lyric tenor and there are moments, in the Britten especially especially, when a bit more weight of tone would have been welcome, but otherwise his singing is impeccably correct” [1].

I’m sorry, what? There we have it kids: the exact sentence which encapsulates the current zeitgeist of classical music commentary, and the level of listening we have finally descended to.

‘Impeccably correct.’

The crowd hums with expectation. A sea of grey covers the terrain of the stalls, whilst a bell tolls, signaling the imminent downbeat. The lights dim - the ever so mildly restless crowd hushes. It’s time.

But first, an announcement - ‘please ensure your mobile phones are turned off.’

The Maestro emerges to loud, rapturous applause. Or perhaps the orchestra emerges first, followed by the designated tuner, then followed by the Maestro. Either way, a lot of applause happens to signify appreciation for something that hasn’t yet occurred.

Silence again, and boom goes the orchestra.

We’ve all been there - musicians, that is. Generally, sitting down somewhere: be it at a world famous concert hall listening to a professional performer smashing away at a piece we’ve played; a masterclass we should have signed up for; early for your lesson and listening to the previous victim; or even just listening to some friends run through repertoire.

‘I could do that better.’

The steady descent started with the first recording.

Think about it. What is music for us now? Music is the most readily available commodity in our lives. It plays on the subway trains from a caustic mixture of headphones, buskers, and inconsiderate narcissists and their varied speaker systems. It is in every shop, restaurant, grocery store, cafe, even on the street when cars drive past with their windows down. It creates a space for every individual with a set of headphones that is completely hermetic and cut off from those around them. It is on our laptops, computers, phones, soundsystems. It is purchased, it is streamed, it is unconsciously absorbed.

A few years ago, I was in repertoire class in Adelaide, when a postgraduate student was asked to play a piece by Beethoven she had been working on for us. Her response has stayed with me ever since:

“I wouldn’t want to do Beethoven a disservice.”

A full listening list from the talk given at Festival No. 6: Not So Classical.