By 1984 the Schütz Choir, London Classical Players, and the Early Opera Project had put on a large number of “re-creations” of Baroque and Classical masterpieces, seeking to play them as nearly as we could to the way their composers might have expected.

The concerts  of these pieces were exciting, but the audiences had little or no chance to grasp the research that lay behind them. I began to feel how good it might be to share this research,- for the audience to live with the music for a while, as we normally did in rehearsals. I came up with the idea of a weekend-long immersion, with the rather brash title of an “Experience”.

Instead of a season of three concerts of different works in a season, we could have three days on one work alone. But it would of course be very expensive. First I went to talk to the Artistic Director of the South Bank. He was most encouraging, so I went on to Westminster Bank, who had supported us in an earlier London festival, and had asked to be kept in touch. He too was very positive, and didn’t faint at the large sum I proposed. Rather to my surprise we were in business.

Preparing such an event  was a tremendous amount of work: choosing works, booking  soloists and speakers, working with Clifford Bartlett who created the exhibitions, making publicity and so on. My wife Kay was very much involved as we got it all ready in our London flat. She also acted as Stage Manager at the show.

I wanted to present only major landmark works, probably involving chorus, which could typify a whole era. I thought we should start with the Classical period and Haydn’s Creation.

I insisted that the audience could only buy tickets for the whole weekend,- a risky strategy it must be said. But here’s what they got for their tickets: On Friday evening a fairly straightforward concert, which I introduced informally. It consisted of music which preceded and led up to the Creation. As they arrived at the Elizabeth Hall there was already music being played and sung in the foyer. There was an exhibition to look at, and free programme books for the whole weekend. By the end of that concert the audience would hopefully be feeling at home and settling in for the long haul.

Saturday morning was free time for the audience (shopping, car washing etc), but in the afternoon and evening they must be on parade. The afternoon consisted of two highly informative talks about Haydn and the Creation, interspersed with chamber music and songs given by our orchestra players and soloists, and always introduced by them. Informality as well as information was key.

The evening event turned out to be something the audience especially enjoyed. It was an Open Rehearsal of the Creation, in which I discussed the sort of background research which went into these performances: the sizes of the original forces involved (both very large and very small), the seating of the orchestra, the speeds of the movements (often different from today of course), the sound world (we didn’t use vibrato for instance), and other more arcane points of style. The audience had heard most of the piece, and got used to how it would sound the next day.

On Sunday morning it was back to two more interesting talks (one given by the great American Haydn scholar H.C.Robbins Landon),and more delightful chamber music. After a Viennese-themed light lunch the final concert took place  in the afternoon, (so that people who had come a distance could get home). Before we began I got my friend the actor Dan Massey read a hilarious account of the first  performance in Vienna by a country woman who happened to be there. It brought the house down. And because the audience was now so familiar with the performers and the work, the concert  became electric; the whole weekend began to fall into place, and everyone seemed delighted as they wound down at the open bar afterwards.

The following morning Kay and I met a man at Victoria Station by chance. He was still ecstatic: “I was there” he cried. “I was there”!

Altogether we put on five Experience Weekends with Westminster Bank. The shape of the first one was so satisfactory that we kept exactly the same format for all the others:

BEETHOVEN (Ninth Symphony) in 1987,

BERLIOZ (Fantastique and Romeo) in 1988,

MOZART (Zauberflöte) in1989, and

BRAHMS (Requiem) in 1992 .

The Beethoven weekend was revived at the Pepsico Festival in America.

In addition, for the South Bank, we gave a

MOZART WEEKEND in 1991, a 

PURCELL EXPERIENCE (Fairy Queen) in 1993, and a WAGNER DAY in 1994.

Later, with the OAE, I made a TCHAIKOVSKY EXPERIENCE in 1998, which we also took to Paris and Birmingham. Finally in San Francisco I conducted an Experience Weekend about the Beethoven Missa Solemnis.

Some people wrote in thanks to remark that they only wanted weekends like this rather than traditional concerts. I know what they meant. To live in the aura of a great work for many hours, as we musicians are privileged to do in our rehearsals and repeated concerts, is a precious Experience. We were happy to share it.