Antidote to Berio

For reasons that need not detain us here, I have recently had to endure more than my fair share of Luciano Berio and other blighters of that ilk, and I wanted to consider how the glorious Western classical music tradition of structure, harmony and melodic invention could have descended into plinkety plonk rubbish and the kind of sounds foxes make when copulating. As Thomas Beecham once memorably remarked, he never knowingly listened to Schoenberg, but he thought he might once have trod in some by mistake.

But it’s the Easter weekend as I write, the sun is shining for the third successive day here in verdant, primrose-blessed west Dorset, and the idea of refreshing my indignation by listening to Berio’s intolerable Sinfonia is too ghastly to contemplate. So I’m going to tell you about the gig I went to on Saturday night instead.