More and more, performers of classical music concerts are speaking to their audiences. Andrew Clark isn’t impressed: “The trouble with speaking to the audience is that it limits the imaginative scope of the music. Listening to someone discussing a piece of music before you have a chance to hear it pre-programmes your responses. The music has no chance to communicate freely. You are left with a number of objective ideas about what to think and feel, circumscribing the subjective impressions that music seeks to create in the listener through the medium of sound.”