A bigger splash


Last week's post 'Stop trying to serve everybody, instead just serve the music' made a bigger splash. Thanks to social media exposure, the post achieved the highest single day readership of more than three thousand posts over ten years on An Overgrown Path. Response to my exhortation to just serve the music was overwhelmingly positive, with pianist Peter Donohoe commenting on Facebook that "The last four sentences of this great article sum up and articulate supremely everything I have been feeling for years". Fellow pianist Vovka Ashkenazy was less impressed however, observing ruefully "Pity John Cage is mentioned; it could have been a serious article about serious music". WRCJ FM producer/presenter Chris Felcyn took my thesis more seriously, declaring it "Mandatory reading for anyone concerned about the health of classical music", but retired radio presenter David Kanzeg's view was that "...ignoring the sea changes in technology and the need to un-stuffy the atmosphere seems really off base to me." The value of starting a conversation was appreciated by Alex Ross who welcomed my views as "Another strong editorial from the Overgrown Path". But don't forget that while classical music debates nothing changes. Or to put it another way, while classical music debates, the houses just keep getting bigger.

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