| The biggest thing for me, when choosing a recital programme, is knowing your audience.
Most of the recitals I do are not for the contemporary-musically-literate. They like a good tune, so I tend to choose pieces that are accessible to their ears (sorry, no Berio here). I will be honest, this suits me quite well - having been forced to play/listen to contemporary music at university I became fairly sick of much of it (especially the composers who write purely for what is possible, not necessarily what is pleasurable to listen to - it becomes more a technical exercise than a musical experience). I don't shy away from everything contemporary, but I don't include a vast number of pieces of that style in my recitals.
If I was playing to a more contemporary-music-appreciative audience I would probably include more pieces of that genre, but at the moment my recitals are not for these audiences.
I understand the "introduce new music" aspect of many recitals, but I am very careful about what new music I will introduce. For example, taking the contemporary trumpet book Go Blow Your Own (published by Boosey & Hawkes in collaboration with ITG - well worth checking out if you don't already have it) I would happily include some of the pieces (I have already included Carol Barratt's Cantilena and have got Karl Jenkins' Salm O Dewi Sant lined up for inclusion over the next year) - they are beautiful pieces of music that happen to be written using contemporary harmonies or non-traditional intervals. I am currently starting to look at Gruber's Exposed Throat, but I am probably doing this more for my own benefit (I think it is good for me to tackle this sort of work, having not done so for a while) than because I will include it in any sort of public recital - I think it would be just too much for the majority of my audiences.
For players like Hakan, their audiences are now expecting this style of piece, so including it in a recital would be considered normal. My audiences are expecting to hear music that is basically pleasant on the ears, so that tends to be what I give them. This does not, however, mean that they will have heard the music before - I make a great effort to include "new" pieces to the audience, frequently from composers they will not have heard of. They might not be contemporary composers, but they are most certainly not on the regular lists that many audiences will have come across. |