Page 155 - Media Coverage Book - 75th Aldeburgh Festival 2024
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The tenor Ian Bostridge stopped a concert in Birmingham in April because of audience members
using phones CREDIT: The Wigmore Hall Trust, 2024
Bostridge was unaware that the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra had broken with the
traditional no-phones policy and now allows audience members to film its concerts with hand held
devices.
But do we really want a sea of phones waving about during classical concerts? Will the snatched
films – with their poor sound quality and wobbly images – really be worth the distraction? I asked
four musicians for their views…
“Tagging feels like the modern equivalent of getting flowers after
a performance”
Esther Abrami, 26
French violinist and artist-in-residence at the English Symphony Orchestra who made her debut
at the Royal Albert Hall in 2022
As an artist who has connected with a younger generation of music lovers through social media
[Abrami has 421,500 followers on TikTok and 324,000 on YouTube] I’m all for people using their
phones in concerts.
Classical musicians are always being told younger people are not coming to see us. If we don’t want
the music to die and the concert halls used only for pop then we need to adapt and welcome
younger audiences. Many young people have no idea what a classical concert is like. But when their
friends share clips online, they think: “Oh that looks cool! I might go to see something like that.”
Older people need to accept that we now live in a world where people take pictures or make videos
of things they enjoy.
