ABSTRACT
With the demise of two of the most well-established routes to a career as a concert pianist in mid-twentieth-century England – the BBC audition system and the Wigmore Hall debut recital – there is a sense of both loss and gain. The pianistic global marketplace of the early twenty-first century has inevitably had the effect of diluting the English input into the country's music-making. Piano competitions have of course discovered and launched many top-rank pianists, and there does not seem any great likelihood that such events will lose their appeal or their grip on pianistic quality control, at least in the immediate future. A state culture that seemingly places little emphasis on music education, classical music in particular, is not a supportive environment in which to nurture promising talent within the classical tradition. More significantly for music performance, the government's 'Wider Opportunities' programme was launched in 2003, providing primary-level children with free group tuition on a range of instruments.
