Fiona Maddocks

Went to the NME awards at Brixton Academy
Well, I had my experience of being you, Kitty. It was quite hard. The odd thing was that, once friends knew I was going to the NME awards, after expressing general shock and envy – everyone has heard of New Musical Express; it’s been going since 1952 – they all asked only one question: what will you wear?

This old chestnut recurs every time newcomers go to classical concerts or opera: do I have to dress up? What’s the code? No one wants to feel silly, an outsider.

I invited a knowledgable friend who has been a Mercury prize judge to go with me, thinking she would have all the answers. “What do I wear?” came the email back.

I dressed as usual. The only addition was my “rock” T-shirt – black, emblazoned with Beethoven’s face and the message “Ludwig Lives”. It’s his anniversary year, after all. It felt like a talisman… in fact, as it was so cold inside the Brixton Academy, I kept my coat on for all five hours and no one knew about my subversive garb.

Can I just say: at classical concerts no one gives a damn what you wear.

Kitty Empire

Went to Mahler’s Symphony No 2, Royal Festival Hall
I did wonder about attire. I think nowadays it’s less about the music on offer than the habitual clientele of the venue hosting the concert. The Festival Hall is quite a modern and democratic space, so dressing down is no scandal, whereas somewhere like the Royal Opera House might have most people rummaging through their drawers searching in vain for some ancestral pearls. One of the first things I learned as an NME freelancer was how to juggle my coat, a notepad, a pen and a full pint of beer while remaining standing up in a heaving throng. Tangentially, there’s a US anthropologist called Wendy Fonarow who wrote a book about behaviour at indie gigs. Where you stick your Access All Areas pass says something about you, if I recall correctly. So, were you upstairs? Did you get a view of the moshpit? What did you make of all that, I wonder?

FM: Yes, I was upstairs at Brixton Academy, sitting down. Or standing up when an act came on. The acts were a long way away. It’s disconcerting watching everything on screens. You’ll know there was a ruckus with Slowthai [the rapper was marched off stage after leering over host Katherine Ryan]. I saw him throw his mic into the moshpit in anger, but after he disappeared in the crowd it was impossible to see what was happening. He’d seemed pretty angry from the word go. Standard punk, but maybe there’s more I should have picked up? He was the first number: Deal Wiv It. I was surprised he had his shirt off and trousers down so quickly. It takes a bit longer for a symphony orchestra.

KE: Ah, antics. Obnoxiousness is baked into the myth of rock’n’roll – and we’re using “rock’n’roll” as a shorthand here, and including the punk/grime hybrid of Slowthai. Pop critics – me included – routinely tie ourselves in knots, alternately calling out and defending bad behaviour, or uncouth lyrics, or what have you, because “rebelliousness” is both the fuel on which much pop music runs, but just as often a proxy for actual unsavouriness. Is an irritant speaking truth to power? Or are they just a misogynistic pillock?

The performing arts, as we well know now, actively enables all sorts of outré behaviour. In this case, it sounds like Slowthai behaved like a berk over and above what the Beastie Boys might have called his “License To Ill”. I imagine the classical world must have its fair share of bullying and sexism, all papered over by discussions of “genius”.

FM: How long have you got?

KE: Ha! Well, on to my gig. My initial thoughts about the Philharmonia doing Mahler’s second symphony? There was an entire city on stage. 245 people in total. And two harps! It was fascinating enough solely from the point of view of economics – how on earth does the money work? Like a bumblebee seems too big for its wings, this sort of orchestral piece should be too big to stage. The vastness of the endeavour, so many parts pulling together, conducted by Jakub Hrůša, a conductor straight out of central casting, was truly impressive. I loved that there were “surprise” brass instruments playing from the circle. The massed voices of the choir had a humbling dynamic range.

I had boned up on Mahler, and could apply some basic biographical understanding as to why he was moved to write about death and rebirth. He had lost so many loved ones. Then there was the intriguing fact of his Jewish heritage, and a Catholic conversion that, it seems, was the cost of doing business in 19th-century Europe. So I was wondering about the religiosity of the piece, which actually felt almost modern, in that it seemed to be about the human spirit rather than just your basic fealty to God.

FM: Only two harps? Never enough. You should try some Wagner. In the Ring he uses six.

I’m interested in how you found the whole business of sitting still in such a concentrated fashion? Mahler’s Second is about as big as it gets: an hour and a half long, in five movements, without a break (except enough for a wriggle between movements). It’s epic in reach, as you say. How do you write in depth about something on that scale where all that counts is the sound – the hardest thing to find words for? I’m still working that one out.

Most pop and rock tracks last a few minutes. Singing along, at least in the case of the NME gig’s star act the 1975 (winners of best British band, and my new passion) is actively encouraged. You’d be escorted out in a symphony concert. Both have their place. I loved the atmosphere, but it’s no more or less real than the intense silence of an audience listening to Mahler.

KE: Glad you liked the 1975, they are very clever boys. Sitting still for hours is not a problem. Being immersed and focused on the music at hand is a huge plus whether at classical or other sit-down gigs, or concerts where phones are locked away in Faraday pouches; clubbing, too, can be intense communion. I particularly loved how quiet a massive orchestra and a sold-out audience could be. You and I went to very different things, over and above the differences in our genres: one epic classical thing, one awards ceremony where the turnover and synapse-burn was even higher than usual.

FM: Yes, what I particularly noticed at my gig was that it’s the act, rather than the performance, that matters. Yungblud, who won the best video award, stomped around during his track, all high energy and aggro in mini yellow tartan kilt. It was fantastically noisy, everyone had a great time, just because he was there. I couldn’t judge how well he was singing, but that wasn’t the point. Maybe not surprisingly, I found FKA twigs easier – she had an amplified piano and cello playing behind her for the track Cellophane and the colours and breaks in her voice are immediately audible, part of the music. Her whole act looked as fabulous as opera.

KE: As for describing the music, which is, as you say, the very hardest thing, I think you want to identify aspects of the music that your reader will find pertinent, rather than go on and on floridly about what old NME writers might call “cathedrals of sound”. Similarly to you with the pop acts, I struggled with knowing whether the French horns were having a bad night or whether the oboe was on point. I particularly enjoyed the mezzo soprano, but I just personally like that bit of the sung spectrum. I think in both our fields, we rely on context, whether biographical, or historical, or some stated artistic aim, to frame the discussion of raw sound.

FM: Regarding the horn and oboe in the Mahler, you go to the heart of the matter. We could drown in the swirling waters of “historically informed performance” (engagingly referred to as Hip). What sound did Mahler, on his mountain in upper Austria but working with musicians in Hamburg and Prague, want when he wrote it at the end of the 19th century? Viennese horns were mechanically different from Czech or German. The modern oboe was still coming into being. You don’t need to know any of this to enjoy a performance, but it might explain any rustic strangeness.

As far as highlights go, I can trade you a glimpse of Taylor Swift looking smart in half a blazer (getting her best solo act in the world award) and AJ Tracey performing Ladbroke Grove.

KE: So, do you feel any closer to pop now you have been dropped into its giddy spin cycle? I hope so. Experiencing Mahler’s Second brought up a welter of thoughts about why we like what we like. Why do people hate jazz? I think it’s because they don’t hear the fracturedness, the urge towards freedom that strains against tidy metre, the boldness otherwise denied to African Americans in the 1920s. They just hear some busker be-bopping out of context in a shopping mall, and want to wrap that saxophone around the nearest lamppost. I have been that person, but grew up some time ago. There’s an American popular song from the 1960s called Do You Hear What I Hear? – it’s indirectly about the baby Jesus, but the central thought holds. A good critic will wear their learning lightly, but build a bridge of words from raw sound to a reader’s brain.

FM: Wearing learning lightly – ah, that’s a minefield. And technical language – the stuff of sports reports – is another discussion. Do I write “it modulated into a remote key” or “it sounded strange and moody”? Anyway, back to my night in Brixton. It was a great ear-opener, an instant immersion into what’s current. I’m practising saying “Surely that’s Beabadoobee.” I’m keen to persuade you to come to Mahler’s other eight-and-a-half symphonies, but I can’t promise I’ll be first in line for Slowthai. The 1975? I’ll see if I’m free...

Kitty Empire and Fiona Maddocks are pop critic and classical music critic for the Observer