Last night saw the opening of the Bristol Proms, a week of experimentation with classical performance in the city’s beautiful old auditorium, designed to challenge the expectations of regular concert-goers, and attract the new. It’s the brainchild of Max Hole, chairman and CEO of Universal Music – parent company of DG and Decca – and Tom Morris, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic, in whose previous job as head of Battersea Arts Centre he nurtured an artistic environment known for freedom of theatrical experimentation. 

The evening’s first concert saw choral music in the dark from the Bristol-based Fitzhardinge Consort. It drew inspiration from the service of Tenebrae, performed in Holy Week, when music of lamentation is accompanied by the gradual extinguishing of candles. We moved in and out of darkness here, as the choir moved around the studio space – though for me the more successful visual element was not darkness (or the glitter ball during Palestrina…), but when I found myself sitting between the singers and the conductor, staring straight up at his gestures and direction: that might be an unusual performance experience worth developing. Next, the phenomenally talented 18-year-old pianist Jan Lisiecki played Bach and Chopin while being filmed, the literal and abstract images drawn from multiple cameras woven into a visual interpretation of the performance on a screen behind him. There were also lasers shooting across the auditorium, though what they were supposed to add I've no idea. The rest of the week will see other similarly exploratory approaches to classical performance, given by young artists, a presumably not unimportant part of the season’s message. 

In a speech to the Association of British Orchestras in January, Max Hole expressed his views about the way concerts are presented and the impact this has on new audiences. He called for new thinking and imaginative presentation: the Bristol Proms are the manifestation of his concerns. Such thoughts were echoed last night by culture minister Ed Vaizey, and by Tom Morris from the stage prior to one of the performances. Morris offered the audience a number of rules which included that you can clap whenever you like, and that you mustn't ‘shush’ people. The aim was to try to put first-timers at ease, and it successfully created an air of informality. I worry though that such comments simply risk reinforcing the perception that the traditional concert experience is stuffy and alienating, which might actually dissuade any converts from exploring further. 

Debate about applause etiquette will rumble on, and I’d personally fall in the spontaneity over sit-on-your-hands camp, though achieving spontaneity isn’t easy: people applauded between movements of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7 at the BBC Proms last week, and that sounded fine. Here, the applause after every Etude, sincerely meant (and much-earned), did run the risk of rendering them stop-start showpieces of virtuosity. 

As for ‘shushing’, there are many historic performance conventions I feel could be addressed: drop the tails, disrupt the overture/concerto/interval/symphony/7.30pm-start format (as indeed many organisations have). But it might be that the creation of an acoustic environment where one can listen and engage in a focussed, undisturbed manner is one of the great gifts of the 19th century to music, not just an anachronistic convention, and something we’d be much the poorer for losing. Besides, would Morris be equally as tolerant of people talking during a play – surely a traditional performance format? – at the Bristol Old Vic? But I’m also aware that his comments, and probably this concert, were not aimed at me. I go to concerts, and in my mid-30s am aware I’m already turning into the kind of curmudgeon who gets impatient if well-wishers chat to me when I’m listening to the organ voluntary at the end of a church service. 

All attempts to encourage people to come and hear the most sublime pieces of art should be applauded. People last night heard Bach and Chopin played with both thoughtfulness and impressive virtuosity, and responded incredibly warmly and enthusiastically. This can only really be a good thing. 

So two cheers for Max Hole and Tom Morris for championing classical music (with one cheer deducted for at the same time reinforcing the negative perceptions of the ‘traditional’ concert). But three cheers for the artistic brilliance of Jan Lisiecki, Chopin and Bach.