A noticeably large number of young music fans attended the most recent concert given by the Royal Bangkok Symphony Orchestra in the Thailand Cultural Centre last Friday, a very encouraging sight indeed.
The very future of classical concert-going depends absolutely on building the interest of younger generations, and more often than not the main attraction increasingly seems to be the appearance of a similarly youthful superstar instrumentalist. On this occasion it was the fresh-faced German-Spanish cellist Gabriel Schwabe who drew in the crowds, for a performance of that most elegiac of cello concertos -- that by Sir Edward Elgar in the melancholic tonality of E minor. He has been a fast-rising star of his instrument, earning critical comparisons to such greats of the past as Emanuel Feuermann.
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