Listening to Mark Padmore sing Schubert’s Winterreise so incredibly movingly in the empty Wigmore Hall inevitably makes me reflect on the nature of the way culture has been experienced online in the last three months. Music seems able to transcend the limitations of the physicality of performance in a way that I don’t feel that art can. I’m sure that performers will, and do, say that it is impossible to replicate the interaction with an audience in a concert hall; but I find myself relishing the intensity of the experience of music transmitted through the web to our garden in a way that I don’t find zooming through exhibitions is in any way an adequate substitute. So, I suppose the issue is whether there is any difference between listening to Schubert semi-live as broadcast at lunchtime today and on Spotify. I’m sure I’m not the first person to try to differentiate between the nature of these musical experiences.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
I listened too. It was magical – I’d put it at more than semi-live, especially when, as here, you have the option of video. I think chamber music is more successful – the intimacy of the laptop, if you like. More problematic are large scale works and opera. The fortissimi are inevitably diminished in any broadcast. Nothing can substitute for the experience of a shaking Albert Hall in a Prom, for example. And on the question of funding, we need to get used to the idea of larger audiences, and the audiences need to get used to the idea of making a donation, however small. I recently saw a charity event that had been seen by a quarter of a million people, but less than £10K was raised.
Yes, I haven’t tried big orchestras, let alone opera. Charles
Penarth Chamber Music Festival is live on YouTube this weekend, from the musicians homes instead of the Pier Pavilion. A wonderful programme of music including family concerts, a tremendous achievement by the musicians to keep the Festival going.