The celebrated and controversial British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage says he has faced up to the fact that modern classical music is a major “turn-off” for many audiences, although he regrets the lack of repeat performances of contemporary work.
“What can you do? Strangely though, the pieces of mine that I have had played the most are the ones I thought were least likely to get performed again,” he said.
“So you can’t worry about it … I don’t write really difficult modern music, but still it doesn’t get played on Classic FM.”
Speaking candidly to Lauren Laverne as her Desert Island Discs castaway on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday morning, the Essex-born musician also reveals his own close encounters with unhappy concert-goers.
Recounting an incident in the men’s toilets at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank, he says: “I was at the urinal and one guy said to his mate: ‘What twisted person would write this sort of rubbish?’ I felt like I should put up my hand and say ‘It’s me’, but I just skulked out of the loo and went back to my seat.”
Choosing music by Igor Stravinsky, Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder for his island stay, Turnage says that attending his own concerts is challenging. “I am always worried about people getting bored. I have had a few occasions where I have heard people grumbling, sitting beside me or in front of me … Then at the end when I get up to take my bow, they are horrified, because they wonder if I’ve heard.”
Turnage, 64, also confesses that he too finds some living composers hard to enjoy. “I understand it and I have difficulty with a lot of contemporary classical music – obviously naming no names.
“I remember when GQ listed the biggest ‘turn-offs’ and contemporary classical music was at number one. And that was my world, so I thought: come on, that’s sad.”
But he has an explanation: “People feel trapped. If you go to an art gallery and there is a picture you don’t like, you can just move away, but if you are in a concert and sitting in the middle of a row, people are polite and won’t walk out.”
But the Ivor Novello and Olivier award-winning composer also assures Laverne that he “absolutely loves” his job. Among his best-known operas are an adaptation of the Steven Berkoff play Greek, regarded as a key modern piece, and his treatment of Seán O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie, which has entered the contemporary classical canon.
He is also famous for the amount of swearing in the lyrics of his operas. His foul-mouthed Covent Garden opera based on the lurid life of Playboy pin-up Anna Nicole Smith caused controversy in 2011. It returned to the Royal Opera House in 2014.
Although Turnage does not write the words, he admits to Laverne that he may have been secretly motivated by a desire to shock his religious parents. “All of my operas have got bad swearing in them, apart from The Silver Tassie and Coraline, my children’s opera.”
