As concert venues start to reopen this autumn, Alexandra Coghlan finds herself as mesmerised by the audience around her as by the performers

As concert venues start to reopen this autumn, our writer finds herself as mesmerised by the audience around her as by the performers

How do you solve a problem like a pandemic? Musical responses to the crisis have varied dramatically, from Glyndebourne and Scottish Opera’s gung-ho outdoor performances and Grange Park’s Covid-inspired world premiere A Feast in the Time of Plague, Bold Tendencies’ brilliant ad hoc season in a Peckham car park and ENO’s drive-in opera, to complete shut-down by the Barbican, Southbank Centre and Royal Opera House.

Almost without exception it’s the smaller venues and festivals that have led the way. Without the burden of large buildings and workforces around their necks, they have been able to move faster and make braver moves, experiment with location, format and repertoire in ways that not only make the best of a bad situation, but start to move towards a broader reimagining of what concerts could look like in the future.

Because despite the nostalgia currently clouding our judgement, we have to ask: do we really want to go back to exactly how things were before? If ever there was a tabula rasa moment, an opportunity to do things differently – better, bolder – in an artform that hasn’t seen a significant shake-up since the seventeenth century, then this is it.

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