MUSIC FOR THE PEOPLE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 114, 18 May 1925, Page 4

MUSIC FOR THE PEOPLE

WHY CONCERTS FAIL

(FROM ODR OWN CORRESPONDENT.) '

LONDON, 7th April v Of the sixty or seventy musical concerts given in London each week not two per cent, pay anything like their expences. This statement was made by Sir Landon Ronald, presiding at -the annual dinner of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, of which he is president. The educational side of music was in safe hands, but tho concert side was in a pretty ! serious way. >"Twenty-five years ago there was no bridge, no motoring, no cinemas, and no wireless. Perhaps you do not quite realise how enormously these'other pleasures have interfered with concert-giving. At the same time, I have a very gTave fault ■to find with concert-givers- Let me tell you straight from the shoulder— con-cert-giving is moribund; it is not dead, but it is dying, and it behoves' this great Society to put its shoulder to the wheel. The only thing that seems not to have progressed in the past twentyfivo or thirty years is concerts. You have the same uncomfortable seats the same barren and dingy halls, smoking is not allowed—why I don't know—and you have almost, with limitations, the same programmes that I used to hear as a little boy at the Crystal Palace, or, iv later days, under Sir Henry Wood, at the Queen's Hall. There is an enormous lack of progress. It wants a man of some imagination, an impressario genius, I to come along. "In addition to giving people comfortable seats and permitting them to smoke I would provide theni' with some attraction other than serious music. I cannot, see any'harm in a beautiful cinema, especially if good music could l>e given for an hour in between the pictures. But as long as concerts stop at pianoforte solos and vocal recitals by students people have never heard of, they are never going to attract the public. An average recital costs anythiii" between £40 and £60 to give in London, and the receipts for such a. concert will probably _be £2 or £3. The only way it' can be said of the English peopje tq-'dav that they take their pleasures sadly is in respect to the art of music. I should like to see- music here in London a pronounced paying success, but you are' all face to face with a future problem, which is going to affect you all." . .'