Haydn in the Pub

Here's a story. It's not true. In the early 1990s, two mobile phone salespeople from different companies were sent to central Africa, to scope out the prospects for business. The first one texted home: 'Terrible news! They've never heard of mobiles and have no idea what to do with them!'. The other texted home: 'Brilliant news! They've never heard of mobiles and have no idea of all the great things you can do with them!'

That's a bit what it's like trying to spread the word about classical music. Contrary to some accounts, audiences are neither dying nor confined to the over-60s, but it is true that anybody who makes it through the average concert needs an unusual degree of commitment, and it's equally true that most musicians make it as hard as it can be for the audience to follow and enjoy what's going on.

There are a few honourable exceptions, and we're lucky enough to be working with one of the prime movers, the OAE. At the moment they're running a Pub Tour: crowd-funded and presented like a gig, with set lists not programmes, wristbands, loyalty cards, and liberal amounts of alcohol on hand for the audience, who stand about as they would listening to any indie band, with the sound of the cocktail shaker providing an interesting percussive counterpoint to the quiet passages.

String quartets: four musicians, not a lot of noise, all pretty similar, very formalised music - are not the obvious choice to win over a crowd of 20- and 30- something metropolitans, but the minute the gangly first violin got up to speak (yes, they spoke to us!) we were hooked. 'The thing about this piece' he said, 'is that Haydn had absolutely no idea how to finish it. Listen to this!' They played a bit. He was right! It was obvious. Then,'I love this movement because it's all about losing your nerve. Haydn lost his nerve all the time.' More demos. Again, when they played the whole thing, it made perfect sense.

He talked about why they play on period instruments with gut strings ('Sheep gut is good, but cat gut's the best. But we might have to stop in the middle and tune. When it gets this hot and steamy, these strings have a tendency to come back to life'). He made jokes about how string quartets destroy marriages, and viola players never speak.

But all of it was in the service of the music, and explaining it, and most of all, getting us in the audience really to listen. In the first half, they played single movements - maybe five minutes each, to get people used to it. Then the second set was a whole quartet, about twenty-five minutes. There was enthusiastic applause between each movement, but as soon as they began to play again, you could have heard your own breath - apart from the relentless cocktail shaker behind the bar, of course.

And when they finished, nobody wanted them to stop. So they pulled the best trick yet. 'Last time we were here', he began, 'We invented this drinking game... and it goes rather well with this fugue we're going to play next.'

The drinking game consisted of dividing the packed crowd into four teams. Each of them was assigned a musician. The fugue had a theme that kept repeating, and every time you heard your musician play it, you had to take a drink.

Then they began to play. It was hilarious and ridiculous, but what a way to learn to listen! We may all have been a bit mashed by the end, but we'd learned a lesson about fugues that nobody in that room will ever forget.

So this morning I'm feeling really lucky to be working with these folks. We're meeting up at the end of the month, and if we can get one tenth of that fun, passion, brilliance and revelation into our project I shall feel we've done a great job.