My wife says: “You’re doing what?” Taking our five-year-old daughter Pearl to
a classical concert presented by Barbie, I say. Besides being the star of
countless fairytales, leading the way in everything from fashion to
humanitarian aid and somehow finding the time to squeeze in on-off boyfriend
Ken, this leggy, 11½in, ever-smiling, superblonde doll is also on a mission
to inspire a love of classical music in little girls – or flog more product
to their parents, depending on which way you look at it.
“It’s a cynical marketing exercise,” says my wife about the concert at the
Barbican Centre in London, part of a worldwide tour, in which the London
Concert Orchestra will play popular classics while animated Barbie films are
screened above them. “The fact that a trade-mark sign is included in the
billing is very telling,” she continues.
Admittedly, Barbie at the Symphony is unlikely to have been conceived
purely as an altruistic exercise in musical education. But it does address a
serious issue. Symphony orchestras are in trouble. The cost of staging
classical concerts and the narrow demographic making up their core audience
– in Britain concert-goers tend to be over 50, middle-class and white – mean
that knife-edge finances are not unusual for even the most acclaimed
orchestras. There have been encouraging signs, with Manchester’s Hallé and
Liverpool’s Royal Philharmonic reporting a rise in box-office takings, but
it’s clear that a younger, wider audience has to be found, preferably before
the old one dies off.
This is where Barbie at the Symphony comes in. It is the brainchild
of the conductor Arnie Roth, a violinist, conductor – musical director of
the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra – and the very essence of the populist. He
has performed with the sort of classical names whose CDs can be found in
motorway service stations (Il Divo, Charlotte Church), conducted concerts
featuring music from video games, and brought orchestral flourishes to
records by the Beach Boys, Johnny Mathis and Diana Ross. And he is entirely
convinced of Barbie’s cultural worth as a spokeswoman for a new generation.
“The most critical step in keeping the arts alive is exposure,” says Roth, who
inaugurated the concerts after being approached by Mattel, the doll’s maker,
to write scores for Barbie films. “There are kids growing up not knowing
what it’s like to see a ballet or hear the transcending power of a symphony
orchestra.”
Needless to say, Pearl needs no encouragement to see the concert. The mere
mention of the name Barbie is enough to send her into the special kind of
hysteria only five-year-old girls are capable of. I’m less excited. Like so
many people who spent their youth transfixed by rock’n’roll my knowledge of
classical music is poor. But some years ago I interviewed the cellist Julian
Lloyd Webber, who pointed out the simple problem the form faces. “The fact
is that people do like classical music, they just don’t realise it,” he
said. “They like it when they hear it in films and on television, but they
can’t imagine ever attending a concert.”
It’s this dilemma that Roth hopes to solve with the Barbie concerts, but it’s
easy to see how they can be regarded as a cheapening of a rich tradition.
“We’ve had knee-jerk reactions from people who say that Barbie doesn’t
belong on a concert stage,” says Roth. “But she’s just a way of getting kids
to hear mature, emotionally deep material that will empower them. These
concerts are not about selling Barbie dolls.”
By the time we arrive at the Barbican there’s already a large crowd that’s
clearly not made up of classical music’s core demographic. The foyer is
filled with excited dressed-up girls aged from about 4 to 10, a handful of
boys, their cheerful mums and a few surly-looking dads. The audience is as
ethnically mixed as London itself. There is, of course, a Barbie merchandise
stall, and there are plenty of parents, their spirits weakened by new year
hangovers, willing to shell out £20 for a doll to stop the high-pitched
pleading emanating from a few feet below.
Then – clutching her new Princess Genevieve Barbie – Pearl freezes in
amazement: a real-life Barbie has just walked in. Panic breaks out among the
young fans, desperate to have their picture taken. Parents accuse one
another of queue-jumping. Barbie, anatomically correct at around 6ft 2in and
striking in a princess sort of way, smiles benignly in her enormous ballgown
– and everyone calms down. Pearl solemnly tells Barbie that she loves her.
The concert that follows is a bizarre mix of beautifully performed pieces by
Tchaikovsky, Dvorák and Beethoven, rather insipid CGI Barbie films featuring
our heroine as the star of fairytales and ballets, including Rapunzel
and Swan Lake, and conversations between Roth and an on-screen
Barbie. “Hello Arnie, or should I call you Maestro?” says Barbie, from
Geneva apparently. “How come Barbie is up there when I just said hello to
her?” asks Pearl, not unreasonably.
Barbie’s on-screen pronouncements are all about empowerment. “I’m always
pursuing my dreams at light speed,” she claims. “It’s a privilege to be
given the opportunity to make a difference.”
It’s hard to imagine Simon Rattle holding this kind of conversation with a
talking doll.
There are also simple introductions to the worlds of ballet and classical
music. Roth gives brief biographies of the composers whose works are played,
explains how a chord works and what a pas de deux is, and introduces the
components of an orchestra to demonstrate how the overall sound is
constructed. And the rich voice of a great orchestra drives home Lloyd
Webber’s dictum that people like classical music without knowing it.
Excerpts from Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony and Dvorák’s New
World Symphony are instantly recognisable from countless films and
period dramas and are beautifully transporting.
Is the concert a success? As a marketing exercise it certainly is, as the £20
dent in my wallet proves. And as an introduction to what my daughter calls
“ballet music” it is too. “I really, really like it,” says Pearl in the
interval. “The music is nice and I like it more than rock’n’ roll. That’s
too loud.”
Has the concert inspired her to pursue a musical education? “Yes,” she
announces. “I want to learn to play the harp.”
I suggest that she might like to start out on an instrument that doesn’t cost
around £1,500 for a starter model – a recorder, perhaps. “No, I want to play
the harp. It has the prettiest sound.”
She may not be able to pursue that dream at Barbie-like levels of light speed
quite yet, but it’s a start. And the fact that Pearl didn’t say a word
during the 90-minute concert is proof that the performance had an effect on
her. Clearly there are disadvantages in playing to such a young crowd. A
number burst into tears at the scary parts to The Nutcracker and
not all of them understand the concept of not climbing over the back of your
seat while the orchestra is playing, but the happy chatter at the end speaks
of its success.
... but the little girls understand: children’s classics
The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns (1886) Used by
music teachers to show how an orchestra works. Boris The Spider by
The Who (1966) Pressurised by Pete Townshend to write a song, bassist John
Entwistle looked to his childhood fear of spiders for inspiration. Peter
and the Wolf by Sergei Profokiev (1936) Proof that accessibility and
complexity are not mutually exclusive.
Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles (1967) The
Fabs’ most lauded album has touches of comic book and vaudeville that make
it work especially well when entertaining children on long car journeys. Bugsy
Malone original soundtrack (1976) Alan Parker’s children’s film of
Prohibition-era gangsters battling it out with custard pies and splurge guns
is a classic, but it is Paul Williams’s songs that really stick in the
memory.
Barbie at the Symphony is at Birmingham Symphony Hall (0121-780
3333), tomorrow (2.30pm)
