There have been many complaints about this year’s BBC Young Musician competition especially from Susan Tomes who felt outraged enough for two articles: format, final. The complaints are only the latest in a series of gripes against the BBC’s attempts to popularise classical music, although why the BBC shouldn’t try to modernise its coverage is beyond me. I can only imagine the same people would have thought the advent of radio was dangerous because it would halt live performance.

Although even I have to admit that leaving the 12 year old winner standing by himself on the stage just after the result is announced while the insipid Gethin Jones ‘interviews’ the winner’s family was tasteless and ultimately boring, and that judges should be treated with at least some respect, not everything about this years contest was bad. I feels someone needs to speak up for the poor BBC’s efforts. Think how terrible it would be if ITV got the contract; Ant and Dec are annoying by themselves, put them in the same room as Aled Jones and you might as well kill me now.

The main issue seems to be the balance of the semi finals programs on BBC Four. Critics of the program tell us that Young Musician should be about the music, not about the people. They are, apparently, not interested that some of the pianists travel halfway across the country to their lessons, or that the woodwind finalist, David Smith, only shops in Harvey Nicolas.

Well, I am. And so is just about everyone I have spoken to about the event.

At school after the grand final, our conversation was not “Did you hear the subtones in that low A the oboe girl played. Weren’t they well achieved?” or “Don’t you just love Rachmaninoff?” it was “Harvey Nicks? The jammy bastard!” Yes, my fellow musical friends enjoyed the music, and yes, I watched the full concerts online of the players I liked, but at the end of the day if I wanted a concert, I would go to one. To me, Young Musician is about musicians, and the player profiles provide a picture of what life is like for the poor things. Although music critics who watch the programme may already be aware that an oboist can use just the one reed from a box of ten, much of the audience does not, and it seems churlish to deny them that insight into the musical world that they would not otherwise have experienced.

So the message to the BBC is: Strictly Come Dancing is all very well, but importing its stars into a different programme was never going to work. And maybe a leeetle more music, please.

And the message to YC’s critics? TV likes people. Music and musicians are not the same thing; if the emphasis is on the music, we lose human interest, but if the emphasis is on the people, the same number of people who would have listened to it anyway do so online. In every other field of music, the players take on an importance which (almost) transcends the music. We don’t go to a Kylie gig to hear “Can’t Get you Out of My Head”, we go see Kylie. Classical stars who follow this trend are dismissed by the establishment; yet an audience is drawn to Classical music, prehaps eventually to more ‘worthy’ music, and the same audience that listens to Wagner without a break carries on regardless.

Anyone who thinks Young Musician has become lowest common denominator has obviously never read a Kylie lyric.

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