Far from the fashionable crowd

the long version

Far from the fashionable crowd tells something of the many organisations that brought classical music to the working classes of the time. It tells of their endeavour, their successes and their failures. It tells of music by the great composers being given a reception by East-End audiences that amazed contemporary writers and commentators. Particular emphasis is given to the activities of the People's Concert Society and its main offspring, the South Place Sunday Concerts, since they were the most enduring. But the suburban middle classes were also enjoying Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, and the concert life in London's more superior outlying districts is here compared with that of the East End.