Ian Foster's recent question aout the violinist Andrew Marwood sent me
into the bowels of an ancient CP/M computer with decaying disc drives where
I kept my records of concerts I went to during the six and a half years I
lived in Scotland, from 91 to 97.  That stimulated me to get on with a job
I've kept putting off, and to get those records transferred onto something
more up to date.  I've also done a bit of analysing and the results are, I
think, rather interesting.  I should be interested to know how they compare
with other listmembers' concert-going habits.

During 6.5 years I went to 132 classical music performances, 69 opera
performances, and 26 "others" - world music and musicals, mainly.  That
works out at one every ten and a half days - definitely the most intensive
live music period of my life, with a possible exception for my college
years.  At a rough guess of 12 UK pounds a ticket, and allowing for my wife
being at 100 of these performances, that works out at close to 4000 pounds,
or 615 pounds a year.  The equivalent in CD purchases would be roughly one
a week (actually I bought plenty of those as well, but that's another story
. . .)

The 132 straightforward CM concerts give a total of 344 pieces - average of
2.6 pieces per concert.  This low number (below 3 for the standard overture
/ concerto / symphony programme) perhaps reflects my taste for large-scale
orchestral and choral works that occupy a full evening by themselves.
However, there were a handful of recital and small-group performances for
which I no longer have detailed information - they would nudge the average
up a little.

Of those 344 pieces, 80 were symphonies.  I'm very surprised that I
only heard, on average, one symphony a month, or only once in every three
times I went to a musical performance of some kind or other.  My symphonic
experiences in Scotland embraced all the Mahler symphonies including the
Cooke II version of the tenth and Das Lied von der Erde but excluding
the seventh (and I do not recall there being a performance of it that I
missed).  There were two each of 1, 5 and 8.  Bruckner got one 4, one 7,
two 8s and a 9.  Beethoven - one 3, two 4s, one each of 5, 7 and 8.  Mozart
scored only five symphonies and Haydn just three.  Shostakovich did well
with performaces of 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (twice), 14 and 15.  Sibelius
had three performances of 2 and one each of 5 and 7.

There were almost exactly the same number of concerti:  82, not counting
concerti grossi (if that's the correct plural?), concerti for orchestra
etc..  25 for piano, 18 for violin, 8 for cello, 6 each for trumpet and
percussion.

Of other orchestral pieces, the Rite of Spring stands out as the only one
to score 4 performances - there are plenty of things with three, such as
the Tchaikovsky and Sibelius violin concerti, Sibelius' and Rachmaninov's
2nd symphonies, Brahms' 4th (also two 2s and a 3, just to prove that I *do*
try with Brahms symphonies!), Magic Flute, Tosca, Traviata, La Boheme.  In
the other direction, I only have 6 pieces of Bach listed - an astonishingly
low figure for the greatest composer of them all.  Inevitably there was a
bias towards Scottish composers - James MacMillan's name occurs sixteen
times (and I don't regret a single one of them!)

Of course the nature of classical music concerts is that in order to hear
music you do want, you have to have to go to other things that you might
not have chosen for their own sake - either they're on the same programme,
or the structure of a money-saving subscription series forces you to pick
one or two concerts for the sake of getting a better deal on others.  I
wouldn't have picked the Tchaikovsky violin concerto three times in six
years for itself - I have nothing against it and I enjoy a spirited
performance, but once would have been enough.  However, this should give
something of the flavour of what was available during those years, even
if filtered through my particular tastes:

(Composer - no. of pieces)
Adams - 4
Barber - 3
Birtwistle - 2
Britten - 13
Donizetti - 4 (operas)
Gorecki - 4
Janacek - 4 (incl. 3 operas)
Messiaen - 3
Part - 6
Scharwenka - 1

There were at least 35 different orchestras and other smaller CM ensembles
(not counting assorted opera companies), and the list of distinguished
conductors includes such people as, in no particular order, Essa-Pekka
Salonen, Neeme Jarvi, Alexander Lazarev, James Judd, Yuri Simonov, James
Loughran, Frans Welser-Most, Alexander Gibson, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Michael
Tilson Thomas, Walter Weller, Mariss Jansons, Leonard Slatkin, Neville
Marriner, Richard Armstrong, Donald Runnicles, Stephen Cleobury, Gary
Bertini, Mark Elder, Peter Maxwell Davies, Claudio Abbado, Valery Gergiev,
Gunter Wand, Nicholas McGegan, Paul Daniel, Gunther Herbig, Colin Davis,
Marin Alsop (last but not least, for the feminists).

I'm curious as to how many people on the list have access to such a breadth
of live music and performers at reasonable prices (and by "access", I mean
that I could drive from home to any Glasgow venue in 45 minutes, or an hour
for Edinburgh).  I could probably match it here in London, but the cost
would be frightening and the travel times wouldn't be any better (I need
to allow an hour to get to the Barbican and rather more for the Festival
Hall - it can be less but the Underground train service is not as reliable
as it was, particularly the Central line which is the one I live on).  It
seems to me that central Scotland might be one of the very best places on
the planet for a classical music enthusiast to base him/herself, and
there's a lot about the musical life up there that I miss.  I hope that the
forthcoming political upheavals (first the Scottish Parliament and then, in
all probability, an ever-more powerful movement towards independence) don't
destroy one of the things that makes it such a good place to live.

Ian Crisp
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