Sean O'Hagan has been reaching out from the world of rock to the world of classical with something like a flaming olive branch. But he's wrong about one thing.
"If live rock is often overloaded with emotion, with angst and anger," he writes, "classical has somehow arrived at the other extreme." OK, so it's true that classical audiences aren't really known for their moshing, headbanging or crowd-surfing; nor do they tend to scream the lyrics back at the choir during the finale of Beethoven's Ninth or hold their lighters aloft during a Mahler slow movement. But that doesn't make classical music a "well-behaved form" - far from it.
When Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring premiered in 1913, the Parisian police had to be called in to break up the brawling and caterwauling that greeted the new piece's violent rhythms and dangerous harmonies. It still strikes a visceral blow to most listeners today, though anyone who finds it tame is urged to take in a performance of Birtwistle's Earth Dances or Edgard Varèse's Amériques, both masterpieces of large scale noise-mongering.
Nor is the classical world bereft of its rock star characters. Try Jean-Baptiste de Lully, the French Baroque scene's equivalent of Sid Vicious. A self-taught musician, he had 10 children, countless affairs with boys and women, and was even implicated in the (possible) murder of rival Robert Cambert. Or how about Niccolò Paganini, the violin's Jimi Hendrix? He actively encouraged rumours that he had sold his soul to Satan, and liked to break three of his (priceless) instrument's strings and play entire pieces on the remaining one. He used to boast that "when women hear me play, they come crawling to my feet". Heck, Klaus Kinski even played him in a movie once - 'nuff said, really.
As for those classical audiences ... yes, OK, it's true - they can be a bit stuffy. Scratch that, they can be very stuffy. But those people you see dripping with pearls and affecting boredom at the Royal Opera House are not the people for whom the music was written. In the same way as you can't imagine the White Stripes were targeting the ubiquitous 50-quid bloke when they wrote Seven Nation Army, you can't really blame Beethoven or Wagner - both firebrand revolutionaries in their day - because their music has been taken up as an emblem of good taste. The fire and the fury are still there in the music, thank God - just listen to Hermann Scherchen conducting Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, or Takashi Asahina doing Wagner's Götterdämmerung if you don't believe me.
My best advice to anyone grappling with classical music for the first time is to ignore everyone around you. Abstract music is a deeply private experience, and it's for this reason that classical audiences sit in quiet contemplation while the music is being played. Go home with a copy of Mahler's Second Symphony or Brahms's First, crank up the volume on your stereo, and enjoy the experience on your own terms. There'll be plenty of time to figure out the "culture" of classical music later.
