The other day I came across an article called ‘The Pianoforte Recital’. It was published in The Musical Times in 1911 – over a century ago.

The author, Frederick Kitchener (himself a pianist), complained that piano recitals had become far too numerous, and that everyone was playing the same repertoire. He pointed out that there was a lot of interesting piano music which never seems to feature in these solo programmes, where every pianist feels they must play Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms and Liszt.

‘It is not too much to say that a great number of these pianoforte recitals are, in reality, ordeals of the most trying nature to those who attend them,’ he wrote; ‘but these brave people (especially among English audiences) set their teeth and make up their minds to ‘sit the thing through’, inwardly longing for the end. Then they will be able to say that they have really heard the Great So-and-So, for not to have heard him would be a mark of intellectual inferiority.

‘Even the true musician must sometimes confess to a feeling of boredom, be the player never so great and the compositions of the finest, in having to sit for a long time and listen to the tones of a single instrument. He suffers the pianoforte recital in silence, yearning in his heart for a violin solo or a song to break the monotony.’

He goes on to say that he longs for a concert where two or three different pianists take turns – or for a concert featuring artists on different instruments. And we might all agree with him, except that it would be unviable for a promoter to have to pay, say, three different solo pianists to take turns in the same concert, no matter how entertaining it might be for the audience. Equally, it would be very unpopular with pianists to get only 30% or 50% of their fee. Hence the solo piano recital continues more or less as Kitchener described it.

I have heard plenty of piano recitals where lots of pianists took turns, but they were always money-free events such as end-of-course concerts by students.

I was surprised to discover that Mr Kitchener was complaining about piano recitals as long ago as 1911. The repertoire has been updated (somewhat), but the format is still quite recognisable in 2024. And no doubt there are people today who inwardly long for piano recitals to be shorter – including perhaps the pianists themselves. Yet those same pianists, who put in a great deal of unpaid preparation, rely on getting a proper fee, as they have every right to. Where do we go from here?