In England the Second World War saw the rise of several musical enterprises, most famous of all being the National Gallery concerts.  On 23 July 1943 the 1,000^th concert in this series took place!  In the very same month readers of the Maidstone Telegraph were invited to join the Maidstone Music Club and, for only 5/- (25 pence in today’s money), to subscribe to a series of four concerts, the first on 27 September and the last on 7 February 1944.  The concerts were to take place at the Maidstone Grammar School and to start at 6.30pm so that members in outlying districts were able to catch the buses back to their homes.  To succeed in this venture 400 members were required but by the 17 September, ten days before the first concert, it was announced that 520 had joined which was felt to be the maximum that could be accommodated in the hall and no further applications for membership could be considered.

Given the success of these concerts, it was decided to hold five concerts the following season. With additional funding from the Committee for Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA – later to become the Arts Council), the Maidstone Music Club was able to carry on and flourish until 1993 when it was announced in the Maidstone Telegraph on 19 March 1993 that the Club had folded.  The then chairman, Leonard Bown, wrote under the headline:

Music to stop after 50 glorious years

DECLINING membership and cutbacks in public funding of the arts have forced Maidstone Music Club to close its activities at the end of its golden jubilee season.

The club was founded in 1943 during one of the darkest periods of the Second World War by a group of enthusiasts under the leadership of Dr William Claydon, then headmaster of Maidstone Grammar Schools.

This was not a group of people luxuriating far from the horrors of war; Maidstone had already seen much of the action of the Battle of Britain in its skies, and could show unhealed scars inflicted by German bombs. It was to endure more of them before peace returned.

Live music performed by a soloist or a small group of musicians (chamber music) was perhaps more of a minority interest in those times than it is today, when hi-fi recordings, FM radio and television have made it more widely accessible.

An evening trip to London to hear your favourite artists at the end of a long day in the war factory or office was hardly to be thought of with the uncertainties of railway journeys (are they much better 50 years on?)

Even if you were one of the minority who owned cars, there was no petrol available for trips of this kind. Not surprisingly, then, several hundred people in the Maidstone area were quick to respond to the new music club’s efforts to “promote high quality chamber music concerts in Maidstone”.

In the years that followed many famous musicians found their way to the hall of the grammar school to play for the club.

Among them were such names as Dame Myra Hess (who returned to play for the 100^th concert), the Griller String Quartet, Erich Gruenberg, Jurgen Hess, Raymond Leppard, The King’s Singers, John Ogden, Georgina Dobree, Hugh Bean, the Amici String Quartet, Nina Milkina and many others who went on to achieve international fame as performers of the highest calibre.

In later years the club moved to Invicta Girls’ Grammar School for its concerts, and finally to the Hazlitt Theatre, where on Monday the internationally renowned pianist Kendall Taylor returned to Maidstone for the second time to give an all-Beethoven recital.

My committee very much regrets the closing of what has been a vital part of Maidstone’s musical life for the past half-century. But we have to face reality.

The majority of our members of the past few years have been of that age group which is now finding it difficult to venture into Maidstone in the evening, many because of transport problems.

We have tried to create interest among the younger generation of music lovers, but it seems that most of those who appreciate this type of music prefer to play it rather than listen.

For the past 10 years or so the club has been supported financially by the Friends of Maidstone Music Club, but the loss or reduction of grants from public sources in recent years has put the club into an impossible situation.

The Friends, who have organised regular outings to opera, ballet, orchestral concerts and theatre in London and elsewhere, plan to continue their activities as Maidstone Friends of Music, and hope, when funds permit, to sponsor occasional chamber music concerts in Maidstone.

Maidstone Telegraph, 19 March 1993 © The British Library Board