Sometimes I feel that this beloved country of ours has an Honours Degree, **First, in talking itself into the brimstone pit! OK, so we have a problem getting our young people into concert halls to hear Bach and Beethoven. That is accepted...but equally, we also have a problem getting them into the Polling Booths to vote! How many 18-25 year-olds will turn out on 4 June, I wonder? Is it ignorance or general malaise? Indifference or sheer frustration because we just don't hear them? So why should they vote, volunteer or come into the realms of what is perceived to be as far away from their thinking as it could possibly be?

Anyone around the concert world in London this Easter hols was exposed to musical experience sufficient to dispel any perception of malaise or indifference by young people to anything at all, never mind classical music. It wasn't our usual groups with their traditional Bach offerings making waves this passiontide but two world-famous musical institutions from abroad, both with significant 18th century connections and both offering us all hope for the future.

Bach's old choir, the Thomanerchor (St. Thomas Boys' Choir - pictured) joined the Tölz Boys and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra/Chailly on Palm Sunday (Barbican) in a sold-out performance of Bach's Matthäus-Passion that prompted five-star press ratings and unqualified praise. The choir was actually founded in 1212, but the Cantor with whom it is most closely associated is none other than J S Bach himself, Leipzig's Thomaskantor from 1723-1750. Today's generation numbers c.90 boys, whose ages range from 9-18, who live and study at their Alumnat, rehearse together for three hours every day, enjoy weekly individual vocal and instrumental tuition and maintain the musical traditions at the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas' Church) where their illustrious former 'boss' is buried in the chancel. Weekly Bach cantatas complement the annual Passion performances and Christmas Oratorio in a punishing national and international schedule that leaves little free time after study and sleeping! Bach's music is meat and drink to them, a friend for life and they know it better than most of us. The majority of boys eventually take up a variety of professions - the law, medicine, languages. However, tenor Christoph Genz, the vocal group amarcord and the German pop group Prinzen to name but a few, are all former Thomaner. The choir today is directed with total dedication by Professor Georg Christoph Biller- himself a former Thomaner - and his appointment in 1992, the first Thomaskantor in the unified Germany, is to me an expression of the value the choir places upon its alumni and musical traditions that stretches far beyond the politics going on all around them over the last century.

Simon Bolivar was a towering political and military figure in late 18th and early 19th century Latin America. His exploits to free many of these countries from Spanish rule earned him the title of El Liberador and even today, some two hundred years later, his name is revered and memory honoured throughout the continent. Therefore it is not surprising that it was given to a new youth orchestra created in 1975, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, that took London by storm thirty years later at its recent week-long South Bank residency. The enthusiasm of these young musicians, many drawn from some of the poorest districts, was infectious and the comparative 'informality' of their platform presence could eventually be the way forward for all of us here. That will require some real 'thinking out of the box' for many of us so used to the strict formality of Western European concert etiquette..but think out of the box we must and listen to the drumbeat of the young people in our own country to whom we ultimately entrust our priceless musical heritage. MS