Oh dear, oh dear!

The first concert – and what a disappointment, especially the first half and especially the piano concerto. It would have been old-fashioned when I was a boy in the 50s, just tricked out now with a few post-modern clichés. Boring orchestration, harmonies out of Rachmaninov, ‘cute’ melodic doodling. I could not believe that such music is still being written, let alone played at the opening concert of an important festival of contemporary music. What happened to the America of the modernists? They must be turning in their graves. Shame.