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To judge from recent headlines, one could be forgiven for thinking that classical music in Britain was in danger of dying out. Last autumn, Arts Council England deprived several ensembles of

their subsidies, including English National Opera and the Britten Sinfonia. This year it was the turn of the BBC Singers and the BBC’s English orchestras: the former were to be disbanded,

the latter to lose a fifth of their musicians. After a short but highly effective campaign, the BBC Singers (but not the orchestras) have been reprieved. But the entire classical music world

in this country remains in shock. Concert- and opera-goers have been living on borrowed time, ignoring the cumulative impact on audiences of declining arts education in state schools. A

musical tradition that goes back five centuries, with a constellation of composers ranging from Edward Elgar to Benjamin Britten, from Thomas Tallis to James MacMillan, will in future depend

more on private philanthropy than on public subsidy. Yet it is not all bad news. Missing live music after several months, I found myself attending two concerts over one weekend — both

highly unusual in form and content. Last Friday I heard the Manchester Collective at Kings Place performing George Crumb’s “Black Angel” and other contemporary works, with electronic

amplification and accompaniment, plus exotic acoustic elements that included glasses of water played like a celeste only with bows. And on Sunday the great Israeli virtuoso of the mandolin,

Avi Avital, gave a recital at the Wigmore Hall with the equally talented Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova. Their programme was more conventional, ranging from Mozart to Villa Lobos, but

all the music had of necessity been adapted from piano, violin, cello or orchestra to the more or less unique combination of mandolin and accordion. What these two very different

performances had in common was a much younger age profile than the average classical concert. This is partly explained by the offer of cheaper tickets for targeted age groups, paid for by

supportive charitable foundations. Seats at the Kings Place concert for under-30s cost £8.50, with no booking charges, while at the Wigmore there are a limited number of free seats for

under-25s and £5 seats for under-35s. However, cheap seats only work if young people are aware of them and this only happens if they are motivated to try classical music for themselves in

the first place. All too often, it is only those who are already initiated by parents or school, and hence might well go to concerts anyway, who benefit. Other factors were doubtless in

play. The Manchester Collective deliberately cultivates a cool image, with an emphasis on dramatic lighting and dry ice to create an atmosphere in which people used to more popular genres

will feel at home. Both Avi Avital and Ksenija Sidorova evidently had plenty of loyal fans, most with Israeli or Baltic connections respectively, who were of their generation. Even so, both

audiences were predominantly middle-aged or older. At the Wigmore Hall, the contrast between the youthful vigour of the musicians and their geriatric listeners is often painful to behold. Is

the problem perhaps the music? The Manchester Collective may be an amplified string quartet, but it is still a string quartet. Rather than play the standard repertoire, most of it centuries

old, they champion or in some cases commission new music. On Friday the ensemble played two works they had commissioned: a quartet by the British composer Edmund Finnis plus a piece by the

New York hip-hop artist and poet Camae Ayewa, whose nom de plume is Moor Mother. Like their opening number, “Carrot Revolution” by another New Yorker, Gabriella Smith, these works were

atmospheric and at times very beautiful. Finnis’s four short movements were all impressive but self-contained; Smith’s was through-composed, relentless and intense. To my mind, though, all

three lacked a musical argument, which made it hard to avoid letting the mind wander — though that may have been intentional. The second half began with a complete contrast: the slow

movement of Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, one of the pinnacles of early romanticism. The sombre theme and grisly subject, familiar from the song by the same composer, were never played

with such ravishing eroticism. One shuddered with vicarious horror as Death seduces the terrified maiden, the pulse of her flesh and blood gradually subsiding into a dirge and finally a

consolatory farewell to life. Yet Schubert here was merely playing the part of a warm-up act to Crumb’s Black Angel, a cult piece whose extraordinary (and almost incomprehensible) score was

displayed in the interval for the audience to peruse. The composer was described by the leader of the Collective as “obsessed” with Death and the Maiden. Its theme emerged twice from the

chaos, played at the very top of the instruments to produce a ghostly sound. Black Angel was described in the programme as “about as close to an acid trip as you’ll get without breaking the

law”. I can’t comment on the narcotic comparison, but the piece was certainly a violent and at times disturbing journey which pushed at the boundaries of musical expression. The audience

loved every minute of it. The combination of mandolin and accordion produced less extreme sound effects but was no less original and powerful. As a Renaissance instrument, the mandolin does

in fact have a (relatively small) classical canon of works. The accordion — invented only in the early 19th century— has only occasionally emerged from the realm of folk, ethnic, jazz and

other popular genres to feature in the classical concert hall. Avital and Sidorova paid homage to this tradition by performing their adaptations of classical works based on folk music by

composers such as Bartok, de Falla and Villa Lobos. They opened with a curiosity by the great violinist Fritz Kreisler, who in 1905 composed a Praeludium and Allegro, passing it off as the

work of a largely forgotten 18th century Italian, Gaetano Pugnani. With its triple action of keyboard, buttonboard and bellows, the accordion can function like a miniature organ. It was

shown to powerful effect in the Kreisler, the Mozart piano sonata K304 and the Suite Italienne by Stravinsky. Amazingly this duo have been playing together for ten years, sometimes

accompanied by the Israeli percussionist Itamar Douari. Avital explained that he had been inspired by an experience as a child in Munich, when two Russian street musicians on accordion and

mandolin had played the Saint-Saëns Introduction et rondo capriccioso, weaving a spell that had never been broken. His own fingerwork on the mandolin really is miraculous, of course, and at

the age of 44 he is deservedly an international superstar. What a pity that such easily enjoyable music as that of Avital and Sidorova is not more readily accessible to children and

teenagers. Similarly, many heavy metal fans who would never be seen dead at a classical concert might be transported by a work like Crumb’s Black Angel. It seems to me tragic that so many

people have never encountered Schubert, than whom nobody has ever been more naturally gifted in song. The abdication of responsibility by the state-funded BBC and Arts Council for

perpetuating the musical dimension of Western civilisation means that the private and charitable sectors must now assume their role. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication

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