Kyung Wha Chung: 'I have always welcomed children to my concerts'

There is a responsibility on all of us to encourage the next generation to play instruments and to attend classical concerts’ Violinist Kyung Wha Chung. Photograph: PR
“Classical music is dead” is what the media tells us, time and time again. How incredible, therefore – indeed, how wonderful – that an incident taking place in a violin recital is able to make headlines all over the world, sparking lively debates on the behaviour of musicians and audiences alike.
A little over a week ago, I made my comeback to the European stage following an injury to my left hand 12 years ago. Returning to London’s Royal Festival Hall was a night laden with emotion. For many years England was my home. There was a time when I thought I would never perform again and I was thrilled that, against the odds, I had been able to. It was a true homecoming for me.
When I came out onto the stage, I was overwhelmed by the warmth from the 3,000-strong audience. The hall was filled with families and children, and I enjoyed meeting many of them at the signing session after the concert. However, the night’s pressures being what they were, I was somewhat taken aback by the interruption of protracted adult coughing – and subsequent laughter – after the first movement of the opening work. After almost two minutes, as I was about to resume playing, my focus was stolen by a restless, coughing young child, directly in my line of vision. That this cough, and my surprised reaction, should go on to gather global headlines, is something of a revelation, and it has raised a number of interesting issues on conduct in a concert hall.
The concert hall and the theatre are probably the last havens of peace; places in which it is still expected that audiences can sit, absorb, think and contemplate without interruption. These periods of concentration are necessarily lengthy, and increasingly rare in the modern world.
I believe it is important, therefore, to foster education in young people today, so that the art of true listening is not lost. Learning to listen is a life skill – it opens us up to a world beyond our everyday experiences and enables us to connect with something transcendental and extraordinary. When that connection is made between musician and audience, with no need for words, it is a most precious exchange. So there is an enormous responsibility on all of us to encourage the next generation to play instruments and to attend classical concerts.
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I have always welcomed children to my concerts, and indeed think it is a vital part of music education that they experience and discover the joys of live performance. However, I think it is also important that the very youngest children are taken to appropriate events, where they can feel comfortable to move, whisper and react animatedly. The concept of “children’s concerts”, which foster much more relaxed environments in which small children are actively encouraged to engage with music on a physical level, is the perfect example of this. It should never become an ordeal for the child to sit attentively – many adults struggle to manage this themselves!
Live performances hold a certain magic, and the concert hall still commands the ability to create a sacred world far removed from the bustle of everyday life. There is a special vitality and excitement to each concert, a bond uniquely shared between performer and audience, which is best enjoyed in the traditional stillness and peace of the concert hall. So there is still a fundamental truth in the words of the great conductor Leopold Stokowski, who said (when addressing a coughing audience in Philadelphia): “Great music is sound, painted on a canvas of silence”.
The overwhelming interest in and passion for these issues – with opinions expressed in equal measure on both sides of the debate – ultimately serve to point to one overwhelming conclusion: that, in the 21st century, classical music is far from dead.

Pop-angled James Bay tipped for Brits Critics’ Choice as shortlist announced

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James Bay: a contender for 2015 Photograph: Maria Jefferis/Redferns via Getty Images

A smooth-faced young man with a gruff voice, a politically minded hip-hop performance poet and a dance-pop group fronted by a former actor in TV drama Skins have been anointed as the new acts in contention to become household names in 2015.
James Bay, George the Poet and Years & Years are the three shortlisted acts for next year’s Brits Critics’ Choice award.
In previous years, winning the prize has proved an accurate predictor of commercial success: the first winner, in 2008, was Adele, and she has been followed by Florence + the Machine, Ellie Goulding, Jessie J, Emeli Sandé, Tom Odell and Sam Smith.
The outside contender is George the Poet (real name George Mpanga) – a Cambridge graduate who has gained grassroots popularity posting his poems to YouTube.
While earnest, serious-minded British hip-hop seemed to have been dealt a blow with the commercial failure of Speech Debelle after she won the Mercury prize in 2009, it has seen a resurgence this year, with the acclaim for Young Fathers, this year’s Mercury winners, and the success of Kate Tempest, another performance poet setting words to beats.
Years & Years, meanwhile, are a three-piece group with a 90s-influenced dance-pop sound. Frontman Olly Alexander has a parallel career as a TV and film actor, with roles this autumn in the film The Riot Club and the TV series Penny Dreadful.
But the likely favourite is singer-songwriter James Bay, 24, who follows in a line of male singers who have achieved huge success in the past few years by matching inoffensive singer-songwriter pop to incongruously bluesy voices. He shares management with George Ezra, this year’s breakthrough act in that genre, as well as James Morrison, a previous exponent.
Virgin, Bay’s record company, has been pushing him hard, even doing what used to be commonplace but is now considered almost unthinkable for budget reasons – hosting a lunchtime showcase for tastemakers, with food and alcohol laid on.
A look at historical patterns suggests it’s not just the marketing muscle of Virgin – part of Universal, the world’s biggest record company – that makes him the likely winner. All the previous winners have been solo artists offering commercial, mainstream music – exactly what Bay does. No dance act has ever won and neither has a hip-hop artist.