Star is wrong to brand classical music elitist

As a communist and a composer, music for me is life in all its dialectical struggle, its joys, its sadness, its realities.

But my music is considered too elitist to be included in the Morning Star. Quite rightly we read about the latest pop music album, the latest drama, the best of the visual arts, the finest of the fine arts.

Yet modern and even traditional classical music are denied any value by the Star.

This attitude is not only elitist but shows that the Star is out of touch. There is so much great, subversive, thought-provoking art in both "traditional" and contemporary classical music and the prejudicial avoidance of that fact by the Morning Star is a crime against art and a crime against the working class.

For example, the BBC Proms are often derided as elitist. But in which other concert could you get a ticket for £3.75 to see the greatest musicians on this planet perform?

The fact that the Proms is the largest music festival in the world - and one of the cheapest to attend - seems lost on the Star.

I beg you, as a Marxist, musician, composer and worker - do not ignore this wonderful reality.

Classical music is not elitist, unless you make it so. And at £3.75 a ticket, it can't be all that bad!

Dr Peter Kalve FRSA
Southend-on-Sea