The announcement by the Royal Philharmonic Society's keynote speaker Grayson Perry that the Queen had sent for David Cameron last night was met with audible groans from the great and the good of the classical music world at their Awards ceremony. Speaker after speaker made it perfectly clear that the Lib Dems (though almost certainly not the economically liberal, pro-nuclear, immigration-capping, Tory-serving Lib Dems that they have now woken up to) were the choice of the majority here and one after the other they pleaded that the Government ring-fence arts funding.
None of this is particularly surprising. The left-wing bias in the arts is no secret. And it wouldn't be the only sector campaigning to fend off budget cuts. But is all this begging and moaning and visceral anti-Conservatism right, helpful or grown-up? Cutting state funding of the arts is not the end of the world. Indeed, there is an argument that says that the arts thrive best on less. Look at America. Is it any wonder that some (if not most) of the greatest art, music and theatre of the past 50 years did not take place under the sclerotic system of state patronage in Europe but in the lithe, capitalist market of America?
The classical music industry needs to accept that cuts will come. They need to start thinking about how to slim down, or shall we say focus, their operations. Education? Outreach? Conductors' salaries? Are we perhaps producing too many musicians? If they don't, Cameron will just start slashing, willy-nilly, Freddy Krueger-style, and they'll have themselves to blame.
Oh, and here are the winners:
- Award for Audience Development: the Philharmonia Orchestra's re-rite
- Singer: Philip Langridge (the award was delivered to him in hospital two days before he died)
- Young Artist: counter-tenor Iestyn Davies
- Instrumentalist: pianist Stephen Hough
- Conductor: Oliver Knussen
- Opera and Music Theatre: the BBC Symphony Orchestra's performance of Martinů’s Juliette
- Education: English Touring Opera with Hall for Cornwall’s One Day, Two Dawns
- Chamber Music Celebrations, and Song: the Wigmore Hall’s Haydn Bicentenary Season Celebrations
- Concert Series and Festivals: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
- Ensemble: London Sinfonietta
- Large-Scale Composition: Kaija Saariaho's Notes on Light
- Chamber-Scale Composition: Kevin Volans's viola: piano
