BACK IN 1928, A MAGAZINE CALLED The Musical Mirror published a satirical yet affectionate article about the relative popularity of classical music and sport. It imagined a future, 50 years hence, in which concerts drew larger crowds than football matches and presented a spoof review of a recital by the pianist “Schweinhund” at which the audience stormed the platform and 900 people had to be hospitalised for injuries.
In a companion piece, a fictional manager complained that football, “instead of being, like music, a great national sport, was merely the pursuit of the cultured few”, and dreamed of the day when a cup final would be as popular as a symphony concert. For the time being though, the average man considered football a bit “heavy” and preferred to relax with a Schoenberg sextet.
Needless to say, the 1970s looked nothing like this. Yet classical music did still have a relatively prominent place in everyday British life. Implausible as it might sound today, in 1975 the chose Monteverdi’s Homeric opera as its pick of the week for the August bank holiday and billed a Christmas broadcast of Puccini’s as “not to be missed”. Classical music remained part of the mainstream British conversation, so much so
