How classical music is taking cues from pop's taste for retro

“Where would you go back in time?” asks Mark in Peep Show. “The 1960s: see The Rolling Stones and have a Coke,” replies Jeremy. “You can literally do that now,” comes Mark’s withering put-down, referencing the band’s impressive endurance and the ongoing appeal of retro pop acts. Dua Lipa might have been responsible for the best Glastonbury meme this year after she reacted awkwardly to a cringeworthy busker, but it was Sugababes who got the surprise rave reviews. And one-time slightly embarrassing boy band Busted were at Download, as were metal legends Pantera, regrouped after a short break of 20 years. 

Classical music is, naturally, rooted in the past. Playing Mozart well requires an understanding of what was going on in the 18th century, and how the sound connects with the music it preceded and followed. Even contemporary works, with seemingly new timbres – I’ve just returned from a performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’s 11,000 Strings, featuring ‘bowed’ cymbals and 50 pianos all tuned to slightly different pitches – are referencing what’s come before. 

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This juxtaposition is most clearly visible in opera, where stagings often pair music from previous centuries with contemporary costumes and settings. It can work brilliantly, such as Garsington Opera’s current production of comic opera Un giorno di regno (‘King for a Day’), which combines Verdi’s bubbly score with an incompetent arms dealer, karaoke-fuelled wedding and gun-slinging security detail (the chorus). 

Britten Pears Arts (BPA) recently took inspiration from pop’s appetite for nostalgia when it recreated two important concerts from Aldeburgh Festival’s history: the 1961 cello and piano recital – momentous for its two soloists, Rostropovich and Britten – and the 1948 season opener. The recreations marked the festival’s 75th edition, with original programme notes and reprised encores.

It was rather like a visit to a living museum, indeed, the newly knighted outgoing BPA CEO Roger Wright described it as “living heritage”. Except that these were not pure re-enactments; the contemporary work featured in 1948 (God’s Grandeur by Martin Shaw) was replaced by Luck, a new trumpet concerto by Robin Haigh, brilliantly played by Matilda Lloyd and the Britten Sinfonia.

The main draw of the 1961 recital was the premiere of Britten’s Cello Sonata, written especially for Rostropovich. Its shifting harmonies and sometimes obscure melodies retain a freshness, especially in the hands of cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Steven Osborne.

In 1961, the audience’s reception was so warm the soloists reprised the Scherzo-Pizzicato of the sonata, and then were joined by Peter Pears on stage for a Bach aria. The new, meticulous recreation brought on star tenor Ian Bostridge for that second encore, an addition that was ecstatically received. 

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An understanding of audience needs is, of course, critical. Never was more serious an error of judgement made than when Chesney Hawkes, on stage once at a club in Reading, attempted to play some new material. We wanted to harness memories connected with his big hit song, not to hear the musician as an artist (sorry). Hawkes finally gave in – he might as well have performed his No 1 hit The One and Only on a loop for the entire set. 

One way for revived bands to reconnect with fans is to stick with the hits, as Air did earlier this year when they performed 1998 album Moon Safari in its entirety on tour, including a show at the Royal Albert Hall. But Jean-Benoît Dunckel, one-half of the Parisian duo, has also been working on a very different project, composing his first-ever ballet, Möbius Morphosis. The work, commissioned as part of the Paris Cultural Olympiad, blends electronics, choral music and percussion – with a hint of Sexy Boy in the opening track to keep the old timers happy. 

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