Music: Britain’s got talent

I HAVE spent every evening this week glued to my TV, watching the unfolding fortunes of the many exceptional semi-finalists in this year’s BBC Young Musician of the Year (YMY) competition, including the solitary Scots hope – Fife flautist David Smith – who wowed his way into the final in Monday’s woodwind heat. If ever a show warranted the title Britain’s Got Talent, this is it.

But, of course, that show already exists, and is more to do with belly-dancing, muscle-flexing pet jugglers and any other gauche eccentricity that passes for unmissable television these days. It’s a sign of a decadent society that freak shows from the shamelessly exploitative empire of Simon Cowell make it to prime-time ITV, while demonstrations of genuine talent are consigned to the backwaters of BBC4.

But even then, is what we have witnessed with YMY this week any better than the X Factors or Pop Idols of popular TV? There is something very disturbing about this week’s run of YMY heats that suggest the BBC is self-conscious about broadcasting serious musical programmes, even on its most identifiably high-culture digital channel.

Why, for instance, is it so important that we see so much airy-fairy “fly-on-the-wall” documentary-style footage of the competitors Facebooking each other, or going to the shops? By my reckoning, each programme spent three-quarters of its hour-long duration on the puff factor, compared to a mere 15 minutes on the critical performances. And even these have been brief snippets, constantly interrupted by overdubbed comments from the judges.

The one saving grace – and no doubt the BBC’s get-out excuse – is that the full performances can be viewed in their entirety on the internet. But that’s hardly an acceptable alternative to viewing them on the TV in our living rooms. Even this weekend’s final, to be screened on BBC 2 on Sunday night, is being cut down to a two-hour screening of highlights. For the full concerto performances, in which the competitors show their true worth with the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Wales, fans will have to wait till Monday evening to tune into Radio 3’s Performance on 3.

In short, the BBC is putting a lot of screen time into this year’s competition, but very little of that actually focuses on the critical performances.

Yet look how hugely successful and influential this long-running competition has been. This weekend’s final heat marks the culmination of 30 years of YMY. Just about every one of the former winners (and runners-up) have justified their success, unlike so many of the seven-day wonders manufactured by the more commercial talent shows.

Leading clarinettist and 1984 winner Emma Johnson appeared this week on the judging panel; Scotland’s own Nicola Benedetti, only four years after winning the competition and still only 20, is now a major international soloist, who sets off next week for tours with the RSNO in Spain, then with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in China.

For Benedetti, the greatest benefit of entering the competition was “the actual experience of intense preparation”.

“It demanded so much concentrated rehearsal time for each round, and provided the ideal performing scenario of the final,” she recalls. “Added to which, a lot of important industry people saw the live broadcast performance.”

But the most important thing, she says, is its “striving for excellence. I can never work out why there is not emphasis put on that in this country.”

Not that there haven’t been questionable attempts to “sex up” the YMY competition. In last Sunday’s 30th birthday documentary, its original presenter, Humphrey Burton, expressed his horror that the BBC – in a collaboration with a celebrity dress designer, given the task of finding suitable frocks for the finalists – had once tried to turn the competition into a fashion parade. Burton’s antagonistic views weren’t popular with the producers, he recalled, but the whim came and went, and the focus turned once again to the music.

In the end, this is the ultimate showcase for the crème de la crème of young British musical talent. No amount of puffery can hide the merest technical blemish. Whether 12 years old – the age of trombonist Peter Moore, the youngest remaining finalist in this year’s competition – or 18, only perfection counts. The musical sophistication expected by the admirably dispassionate judges this week has been frighteningly ambitious. They haven’t minced their words, but nor have they attempted, like Piers Morgan and company, to play for ratings.

For us here in Scotland, David Smith is one to watch. The 18-year-old star pupil of St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh demonstrated in the semi-final the magical art of the natural performer. How spectacular was his playing of Ian Clarke’s virtuoso showpiece Zoom Tube, which asks the performer to vocalise, huff and puff, and shout wildly while simultaneously playing the instrument in a conventional fashion.

More than anything, Smith proved, in the context of more traditional repertoire for his instrument, that audacious entertainment is not preclusive to high-minded art. Yes, his extremely colourful character – like so many of his final round peers – turned out to be just what the TV producers ordered. But I defy anyone not to have been mesmerised by his musical skill. That and that alone will be the yardstick by which he and the other hopefuls will be measured this weekend.

• BBC 2 will screen highlights of the YMY Grand Final Weekend on 11 May at 6pm. Radio 3 broadcasts the full concerto performances on 12 May at 7pm. Online coverage is on www.bbc.co.uk/youngmusician