IN DEFENCE OF EXCELLENCE

What a difference a year makes, unless it doesn’t. Twelve months ago, when we published our last spring Music special, the classical music world had rarely looked bleaker. A decade of funding squeezes, rising costs and Lockdown’s destruction of audiences had placed orchestras and concert halls under unprecedented financial pressure. Meanwhile, ideologically-motivated defunding by the Arts Councils of England and Wales had stripped large parts of the country of regular access to live opera and pu...