I am a great admirer of Ian Bostridge, but buying tickets to his concert 20 months in advance is madness. Photograph: Jane Bown
Last week I did something unusual. I bought some concert tickets. But it wasn't the buying that was unusual. It was the date on the tickets. Because the tickets are for a concert that doesn't take place until October 21 2008 - more than 20 months from now.
As I am a great admirer of Schubert song cycles, of Ian Bostridge and of Mitsuko Uchida, it was hardly surprising that the Barbican's recent announcement of a Bostridge/Uchida performance of Schubert's Winterreise immediately felt unmissable. Naturally I went online and bought the tickets. But on sale now for October 2008? This is madness.
Anyone who loves cricket will know that if you want to get a ticket for a test match in this country these days you have to be on your marks in the autumn to grab a seat for the following summer. It may still be only February but I doubt that there is now a seat to be bought for any of this summer's home games against the West Indies and India.
I used to think that this was bad enough. But in the light of the Barbican's ticketing practices, what strikes me about cricket's system now is its comparative modesty. Where is the limit to what the Barbican is now encouraging? Logically, there is none. If cricket and football are any guide, it will not be long before we get deep into a debenture seat culture in our arts venues too.
The Barbican policy will surely revolutionise audience building in a restrictive way because it will load the dice still further in favour of the organised and the wealthy. It may not have the dire sociological impact that the advance sale of Oval test match tickets has had -- 20 years ago, an Oval test with the West Indies was a multi-racial event whereas today the crowd is as white, male and middle-class as all the others -- but it is bound to move in the same direction. And that's unambiguously a bad thing. Great performers in a great work will sell out whenever the seats are made available. But to put concert tickets on sale 20 months in advance is absurd.
The essential issue here is access. During the next year and a half, a new generation of music lovers will stumble upon the power of Winterreise, or discover the artistry of Bostridge and Uchida. But hey, just when they discover that Bostridge and Uchida are preparing to perform the Schubert cycle in October 2008 they risk discovering that all the seats were sold months before -- quite possibly to some music lovers who have died in the interim.
But this is clearly becoming the new normality. I went online last weekend to have a look at what tickets are available for Daniel Barenboim's Beethoven sonata cycle in the reopened Festival Hall next February. Still a year to go, but the tickets are disappearing fast. If you want to hear it, book now for 2008. What if you only discover about Beethoven piano sonatas in the autumn?
I was no fan of the old, pre-internet booking rituals -- the form filling, open cheques and making sure you got your application in the post on the right day, normally a calendar month before the event itself. And of course the keenies, the organised and the affluent will always do best under any system. But modern ticketing policy, for all its other huge advantages of convenience, is now building walls that will keep out the audiences it seeks.
