Friday 2 September 2011

I was interested to hear reports of the Israel Philharmonic’s Prom being disrupted last night in the Albert Hall: different accounts of it are here and here.  The Radio 4 report this morning inevitably included a quick interview with a member of the audience opining ‘This evening was about music, not politics’. Oh, grow up.  Music is not politically neutral, and classical music certainly isn’t: its funding usually requires political will for one thing. Here's Jessica Duchen's carefully considered blog from yesterday.

A few news reports mentioned the disruption of the Jerusalem Quartet’s gig in Edinburgh in 2008: I was the BBC producer in the van outside that day, and to be honest I didn’t have much sympathy either for the cack-handed protest which just pissed people off rather than alerting them to the plight of Gaza, or for the quartet, one of whom made a rather ill-judged speech. The one person who came out of it very well indeed was Jonathan Mills, who had previously agreed with the quartet that they would briefly leave the stage every time the concert was disrupted, while the hall was cleared of the protesters: after about three stoppages he took to the stage, and bet the audience that there were more movements left in the programme than there were protesters left in the hall, a masterstroke that allowed everyone to feel that they were getting their own way.  At one point that day, a voice in the audience called out ‘This is supposed to be about miu-sic’: yes, and music carries meaning.