The classical musical world is nowadays obsessed with a new goal : Reaching new audiences. Everyone is giving his take on the subject, from playing in uncommon venues to playing with an unexpected outfit or a new concept of concerts as well as crossover concerts to reach a new audience. Well, my first question is : what’s wrong with the current audience?

Next week, I will give a recital in Prague. On the program, the famous Mozart’s sonata in C Major Kv 330. This sonata has been played many times, and by the biggest names… making it hard to tackle it, and even more difficult to assume in concert. Because yes, it’s actually the first time I’m going to perform Mozart in public!

The municipality of Trois-Rivières in Québec has found a strange way to secure the local underground parking. The authorities have indeed installed headspeakers, playing around the clock classical music in the stairwells of this big parking lot.

This topic has already been discussed extensively: classical music is a thing of the past and is thus doomed to extinction. Don’t you see all those “white hairs” in concert halls? Thanks to a post in muse affiliée, I’ve recently discovered an article by conductor Leon Bolstein, music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

I’m often asked the question “what do I listen to besides Classical music?” Sometimes, people offer me to relax with such-and-such Classical music work. When I explain them that it might stress me out, they seem a bit taken aback.

Lutoslawski, Xenakis, Britten, Carter, Penderecki, Kurtág, Lindberg, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Murail, don’t all these names say anything to you? You surely don’t listen to music known as “contemporary”. “Contemporary” even if it’s quite obvious that any music was one day contemporary.