Measure of success

If your concert-going habits mean that you always attend the same kinds of venue in the same kinds of town in the same country, the equation I am about to put to you may strike you as being rather odd. But the fact is that on the world stage there are socialist concerts and capitalist concerts; and, although they overlap, in their neat forms they are astonishingly different.

In Britain the two tend to blend into each other, with tax-payers’ money helping to build the hall in the first place and grants being available — from the Arts Council, for instance — to stage interesting events which otherwise would not be viable. The public is duly charged for attending, and the money that is raised from the sale of tickets is crucial to the final financial result. In this system there is always an anxious moment, inconveniently about five minutes before the artists are due to go on stage, when it becomes apparent whether the costs will be covered or not. Those responsible (which usually includes the conductor) may be seen looking distracted as they do quick mental calculations about the extent of the shortfall and where they are going to find the difference. Nor is a good house necessarily a guarantee of success. To budget the break-even point at, say, 70 per cent of the house is to ask for trouble. It may look from the stage as though 70 per cent has sold, but those quick tottings-up are always, without fail, over-optimistic. However, I digress.

The purer forms of concert promotion are to be found in Catholic Europe on the one hand, and American university campuses on the other.

In the US private money is solicited for every stage of the process, from the building of the hall, which will be named after (or ‘for’) the donor, to the paying of the artists and the staff at the hall itself.