# The concerts you go to: old music or new?



## Freischutz

*Important note*: that's "old" or "new" _to you_, not to the world, e.g. if you're at a concert for something from the 16th century that you've never heard before, I'd count that as "new" for the purposes of this thread because it's the first time you've heard it.

I'm interested to hear about people's motivations for attending concerts and also why they have them.

I have personally had a big shift in my reasons for going to concerts in the past couple of years. Previously, I had always thought of concerts as the place for me to get the "real" and "authentic" experience of pieces that I had come to love through recordings. I'd look through season programmes for listings of all the great works that I was familiar with and would go in the hope that sitting there and having actual musicians play it in front of me would be revelatory and uplifting in a way that recordings could never be.

I don't know about you, but I think this was a totally bogus and useless way of thinking about concerts. With few exceptions, the concerts were enjoyable, but always with an undercurrent of disappointment and I think the problem was my familiarity with the music. Because I loved the music so much, I had favourite recordings that I had listened to again and again, and this meant that I had a very solid idea of exactly how the music should sound. Great though the real life orchestra may be, deviations still feel like deviations.

So now, I very much believe it is important to have a minimal familiarity with the works on the programme. It doesn't matter what era it comes from just so long as I haven't heard it before, otherwise I'd be going to the concert with too many preconceived ideas - I find it has to be a blank slate for the music to "speak" to me in that setting.


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## mmsbls

I go to concerts that I think I'll enjoy whether the music is old or new to me. I've never had the experience of not enjoying the live performance of a work that I like* so that's never a concern for me. I'm usually excited to hear a new work, but by far my most powerful experiences during performances have been at works I absolutely adore. So I guess I'm on the opposite side from you in thinking about attending concerts to hear live performances of recorded music I love - I think it's one of the more elevated experiences in life.

*When a professional orchestra is performing


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## ptr

New or old don't come in to my equation for me. I choose concerts based on if I perceive them to give me an interesting experience or not, featured composers/works, artist(s) and venue and not least my own mood are parts that all figure in the calculation.

Of course, if I have heard a work many times live, it tend to give these a lower priority. But often, the programmes are mixed and then You get the sour grapes with the sweet ones!

/ptr


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## Guest

Old and new, and in the contexts you refer to above.


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## Chordalrock

I go for the sound quality and not much else. Works that I wouldn't necessarily listen to when I'm home are just fine or even great stuff in live concerts. I just try to choose composers that aren't too dissonant and are considered great. And I prefer big orchestras. So mid-Romantic to Sibelius or something, whether I've heard the particular works or not.


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## Taggart

Mostly new music to me. If you go to a concert with music by Handel, Mudge, Eccles, Hebden and Purcell it's almost bound to be "new" music for most of the time. We'll be going to some Jordi Savall in June and also the 16. the Jordi Savall is based on Folias - obviously old to me and to most people - but promises "to recreate the lost sounds of medieval Spain, Provence and Italy in the context of traditional musics from Armenia, Persia and Turkey." That's going to be new to most people. The 16 have music by John Sheppard, Richard Davy and William Mundy. Much of this will be new, although Davy is well represented in the Eton choirbook. The other two are associated with Mary Tudor's attempts to revive the Catholic liturgy in England.


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## DrKilroy

Still fresh, but not exactly new - when choosing a concert, I usually pick one which includes a piece I know and like. In such a case, there are probably some points of the programme I am not familiar with. I prefer to listen to the unknown piece once or twice in order to make myself at least a little acquainted with it. I should not listen to it too much, however, as it happened to me once with Holst's The Planets. I enjoyed the work so much that I listened to it like every week. When the concert came, the rendition I heard was flawed and bland in comparison to the recording I had been listening to. Fortunately, the same concert included Scharwenka's Fourth Piano Concerto, which bored me at first listen, but later I have come to enjoy it.


Best regards, Dr


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## lupinix

mostly old frankly, I really don't have much money and only go to a concert if I really really really want to hear it live. If I would have more money though, I would go to a lot more concerts, both old and new


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## PetrB

I can not think of the last symphony concert I attended which did not have _at least_ one or more pieces from the 20th century (modern), or much newer works, on them, and none of that was anything near as retro-romantic conservative as, say, Rachmaninov.

The last time I heard an all older music program was probably ca. the mid 1950's when my grade school class made a mid-day excursion to a specially scheduled kiddie / grade-school student attendees program. (That means I have been choosing my concerts for something modern on the program since I was about 11 years old.)

Even with that mode of selection, one gets plenty of the older repertoire.


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## ShropshireMoose

For me it's a combination of what is being played and who is playing it! There are some performers that I never wish to see or hear again- I must add that I would never judge an artist on one concert alone, as any one can have an off day. There are also some pieces I have no desire to hear again, and if they make up half of the programme, then I will avoid the concert, as I have no wish to fork out for a concert where I know I will only enjoy 50% of what's on offer. I am always, however, interested to hear what any artist may have to say even about pieces that I know very well, and what Freischutz says about not wanting to hear works that you know well from recordings highlights the danger of living solely by them. This bears out the fear expressed by the great pianist Josef Hofmann about recordings. Hofmann made no commercial recordings after 1923, though he continued performing until 1948, because he said that whilst he might play a work one way for the recording, the following day he may have a completely different conception of the work, and he couldn't bear the thought that people would listen to a record and think: "That's the way Josef Hofmann plays that piece", when he could- and did- have many ways of playing it. 
I love the possibility of hearing something done on the spur of the moment, of that inspiration that the truly great artists can have when everything comes together, and so whilst one can sometimes experience disappointment at a concert, one can also get tremendous uplift, and since you have to ultimately make your own mind up about it, following the advice of critics can be hopeless. Many a critique that I've read has made me wonder whether I was actually at the same concert as the critic- hardly surprising really, as a critic is only offering their own opinion after all, which is no more nor less valid than that of the next person (as Neville Cardus once said). As for following the advice given in the brochures of various concert series, that is worse than useless, as according to them, every concert they are putting on is quite the best thing you are ever likely to hear- and sometimes the superlatives are such that even were a god to come amongst us they would have a job to live up to them! 
My feeling for what it's worth is hear as much as you are able, by as diverse a collection of musicians as you can and then you will gain knowledge and learn what you like best- and stick to it, like what you like because *you* like it, and not because somebody else says you should.


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## hreichgott

Usually both in the same concert. At least around here, programs tend to have a mix.


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## senza sordino

A bit of each for me. Most concerts have something new. But I go to concerts to hear something that I really want to hear and see live, whether new or old. Or perhaps to see a particular performer soloist. James Ehnes is coming to town to perform Elgar's Violin concerto, not my favorite, but it's to see him.


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