Is R3 Red Nose Day Concert the right outreach?

[kernelbogey]

OK, let's not make this into another excuse to harrumph about 'dumbing down' etc. There's a serious debate to be had about what is the right kind of outreach for serious music (of all kinds). I don't like Red Nose Day, and don't participate. But clearly this is an event that appeals to a certain group - I assume predominantly teens-twenties-thirties. I imagine most MBers would agree that outreach of some kind is appropriate, and that we want others to learn to enjoy the music that we value, as well as be able to learn to discriminate about repertoire and performance. The question is how?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

An annual "Hoffnung"-style concert would be fun, but one of the features of the three that took place between 1958 and 1961 was that the freshness of the concept evaporated as really good new ideas were difficult to find.

[Frances_iom]

An annual "Hoffnung"-style concert would be fun, ...but that the freshness of the concept evaporated as really good new ideas were difficult to find.
I suspect much of the appeal of the Hoffnung concerts (which listening to some records I find very dated) lay in the in-jokes - it needed an audience with some knowledge of classical music - for various reasons I suspect this audience is now much smaller - red-nose day also leaves me cold - an idea also well past its use-by date.

[DracoM]

Sorry, don't agree. A neo-Hoffnung would chime with new audiences eg the whole CFM awareness of many of the 'big tunes', the war-horses means that there is a reservoir of music and modes that could be very fruitfully sent up or 'differently realised'.

Problem for me is that the presentation needs to be quietly straight-faced, sending itself up, but without a knowing wink. And the presenter is all. The real objection to an update, then, would be that I can't think of anyone in the musical world who would come across in anything like the same way as Hoffnung's apparently humourless loony, Heath-Robinson-style prof. It was an amazingly skilful persona. Any candidates for such a ring master and supremely musical character? David Owen Norris maybe?